A Research On Knowledge Structure And Developers Cooperation Structure Of R Software And Their Evolution

It is an indisputable fact that the knowledge division and cooperation can realizein the production fields of peer production. But the knowledge accumulation processunder this new mode of production has not been fully understand this new productionmode of. In this paper, the machanism and order behind OSS is explored from theperspect of the knowledge structure and the developer cooperation structure and itsevolution based on the famous R software as the research object. Main works andconclusions are as follows:First the study of the knowledge structure of R software shows: the networkscale submit to power law distirbution over time, as the scale growing, the density andthe cohesion decreases,which means the accelerated cohesive trend of the knowledgeof R software and the expansive trend of R software knowledge structure; R softwaredeveloped through that the maximal connected component constantly absorb andgather free and small connective components.As the expansion of knowledgestructure, the spindle of R software knowledge structure does not fork. Based on thetree relationship network model analysis, we found the existence of the core structurein the R software and successfully identify the functional communities in theknowledge structure.There exist a close relationship between knowledge structure and cooperativestructure of R software. The study shows there exist evolution properties in thecooperational structure and the study also found the relationship couple phenomenabetween co-developer packages networks and R package network, reflecting therelationship overlap at the dimensions of people and technolgy that inspiring a"technology-cooperation" perspective to explore the properties of OSS.Employing the stochastic actor oriented model(SAOM), the paper studied on theevolution machanism of knowledge structure and developers cooperational structureof R software. And the results reveals that there are some statistically significantendogenous network structure which drive these two structure evolution. Besidespreferential attachemnt which also know as indegree popularity, such as transitivity effect, four-cycles, out-indegree assortativity are statistical significant also. Thesefindings broaden the knowledge of the mechanisms for network evolution.The main contribution of this paper is the research of knowledge structure andcooperative structure of R software at a new perspective on the division of knowledge,with method of dynamic evolution complex network analysis. At the methodsperspective, this paper presents tree modeling method based on acyclic directednetwork and no-hub-community detection method which can indentify communityfrom the network with core and community both; generalizes SAOM to moreapplication fields; proposes a "technology-cooperation" framework to analyse OSS.In conclusion, the research is helpful theoretically to understand production process ofpeer production and useful to the knowledge management of software development.