Trust and Distrust in Open Source Software Development

Few open source software (OSS) projects have been great success stories. One reason for this is project stagnation after developers quit their projects. This fact has motivated researchers to examine the factors that influence developers' intention to continue their participation. One factor is trust among developers. The effects of trust on developers' intention to remain with their projects have been studied. However, little is known about its conceptual counterpart, distrust. This dearth of knowledge motivates our research. First, we studied what OSS project features affect trust and distrust among developers. Second, we examined how trust and distrust influence developers' intention to continue participating. We tested our hypotheses with 451 data points from an online survey. Our findings indicate that cooperative norms and effective communication engender trust, whereas an accreditation mechanism eliminates distrust. Additionally, trust positively influences their intention to continue participating, whereas distrust negatively influences it.