Open Source Software Project Critical Success Factors

The past decade has witnessed the uprise of open source software across the whole world.Large scale open source software,such as Linux and Apache,as well as many produeced by small open source projects received warm appraisal.However,the quality of open source software and suviral of open source projects differ greatly.Questions as "what kind of factors contribute to the success of open source projects" have profound implications for the theoretical research as well as practices in industries.This paper has developed a key success factor model of open source software projects based on our understanding and observation of the software development process within open source project community. The influencing factors include opnnness of the project,software modularity,license restrictions,user motivation based on software customizability and developer motivation driven by reputation and signaling effect.The cause effect pathes between these factors are also examined.Through data analysis,we confirmed the positive impact of customizability based user motivation and reputation based developer motivation on OSS project success.Further,openness promotes OSS projects success via customizability based user motiavation and reputation based developer motivation,while modulatiry enhances OSS project success through reputation based developer motivation.This research was a preliminary exploration into the path dependent factor analysis model of OSS projects success and has certain theorectical and practical value.