Software development is a critical work practice of the information economy. New models of software development are emerging that show significant ability to deliver and maintain the complex social relations of software projects. To understand these emerging forms of production we invite papers that focus on empirical studies of collaboration and collective development of software projects, including the development of open-source software.

Related collective products like documentation, support, and design will also be considered. Also, studies that highlight important group processes and practices associated with robust software are welcome.

Microsoft has contributed $10K to INSNA's general fund to sponsor this award. This is a onetime contribution to sponsor the competition for the 2009 Sunbelt Social Networks Conference. Half of the donation has been earmarked for INSNA's endowment. In 2008 Joseph Cottam and Andrew Lumsdaine of Indiana University received the Microsoft Award for their paper, "Extended Assortivity and the Structure in the Open Source Development Community." There will be a $1,000 prize for the best paper on these topics. If this competition proves successful, Microsoft will consider continuing the contribution on an annual basis.

An INSNA committee will select the winning paper. Microsoft will have a nonvoting representative on the committee. If you wish to be considered for the Microsoft Award, please send a completed paper or a PowerPoint presentation to INSNA President, Professor George A. Barnett, gbarnett@ucdavis.edu. The deadline is December 1, 2008.

"I think that Microsoft's contribution demonstrates its commitment to supporting academic research and that it is ahead of other information and communication companies in recognizing the significance of social networking and its implications for the 21st century organization."

George A. Barnett,
INSNA President, 2007

Abstract : Most prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing has characterized the dominant governance modes as either ‘Formal’ or ‘Relational,’ which rely on stringent assumptions of perfect foresight or about the extent to which one party can punish unilateral deviations by the other. We propose a third alternative in addition to dyadic measures of inter-firm reputation. The reputation of an actor can be associated with how the firm is positioned in a network, which in turn influences how information about a particular actor flows within the network. Such aspects of structural embeddedness suggest a role in predicting not only characteristics of inter-firm exchange, but also for the continuation and expansion of the relationship. The social network capital offers a measure to mitigate the uncertainty associated with both the nature of service outsourced as well as the uncertainty pertaining to the nature of the service provider. The network of trading partners enables a community enforcement of contracting terms by providing safeguards that may not be offered by traditional measures of formal or relational governance.

Based on a large dataset of publically announced IT Outsourcing arrangement, we examine the role that structural embeddedness can play in predicting contract duration and the likelihood of contract renewal. Our preliminary results are very encouraging. We find evidence suggesting that network position does matter in predicting contract structure over and above the traditional economic variables.

Abstract : Open source software development represents the work of hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of developers around the world and is a critical component of many widely-used software products. Much of this development is self-organizing, taking place outside the structures of specific organizations. In this regard, open-source development communities are similar to academic research communities, which are also self-organizing and trans-institutional in nature. The structure of academic research communities has been characterized by the use of Bibliometrics techniques, which provide a quantitative basis for the self-organizing networks of academic artifacts (publications). In this paper, we introduce ‘Developmetrics,’ the application of Bibliometrics techniques to similarly characterize the artifacts produced by open source development (software). Similar cross-over analysis has been done before in the study of other self-organizing networks, such as the Internet. We use a standard Bibliometrics visualization technique to guide our discussion and we introduce extensions to concepts of network assortativity, node afference and node efference to accommodate network meta-data. With the help of these tools, we investigate issues related to community formation and the product development life-cycle. Through visualizations and measurement, we show that the strongest organizing factor in the open source community is the choice of programming language. This paper describes how we reached this (and other insights) and discusses the implications these results may have on open source software development. We also discuss future questions and directions for Developmetrics analysis.