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This paper investigates the influence of team dynamics on OSS project selection by surveying 198 OSS practitioners. The study reveals that communication-related team dynamics like responsiveness and clarity are consistently prioritized, but the relative importance varies based on contributor motivations such as gaining reputation or networking. The findings demonstrate that aligning team dynamics with contributor motivations is crucial for understanding project selection behavior and designing better project recommendation systems.
OSS contributors care more about team communication quality (responsiveness, tone, clarity) than technical attributes when choosing projects, and these preferences shift depending on whether they're motivated by reputation or networking.
Open-source software (OSS) development relies on effective collaboration among distributed contributors. Yet, current OSS project recommendation systems primarily emphasize technical attributes, overlooking the collaboration and community aspects that influence contributors'decisions to join and remain in projects. This study investigates how team dynamics within OSS communities influence project selection and how these preferences vary across contributors'motivations. We conducted an online survey with 198 OSS practitioners, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to capture contributors'perceptions of team dynamics. The results reveal that communication-related team dynamics such as responsiveness, tone, and clarity of replies are consistently prioritized across practitioners. However, the relative importance of these team dynamics differs according to contributors'motivations. For instance, practitioners motivated by gaining reputation or networking preferred inclusive project communities that encouraged diverse participation. These findings highlight that understanding how team dynamics align with contributors'motivations provides valuable insights into practitioners'project selection behaviour. Those insights can inform the design of future human-aware project recommendation systems that better account for social collaboration quality and motivational fit.
