Introducing Innovations into Open Source projects

Dear F/OSS-Researchers,

I would like to share my Ph.D. thesis with you which I just completed on
the topic of introducing innovation into Open Source projects.

The basic question is the following: Since Open Source projects are not
driven using authoritative power from the top but rather grant each
participant much freedom in their choice of development tools, software
development practices and interaction in the development process, then how
do Open Source projects adopt new tools and processes which affect the
whole project? The widespread switch to decentralized version control tool
Git is a good example of such project-wide innovations.

The methodology to answer this question is qualitative using Grounded
Theory methodology on data from 13 Open Source projects which were studied
in their e-mail communication for one year.

The main result of the thesis is a set of concepts, which explain
important aspects of innovation introduction. For instance the role of
hosting for innovations is explained and split into principle components
such as cost, control or community identity.

I hope some of you find this work useful for your own research on
understanding the Open Source development paradigm.

Best regards,

Christopher Özbek

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