Conclusion
This paper makes a contribution to the developing body of empirical research on OSS by identifying a collection of success measures that might be applied to OSS. We have identified a range of possible measures by applying a popular model of IS success and by more detailed consideration of the vision of software development underlying that model. Furthermore, we have identified where data is available for particular measures. Finally, we checked our list of factors by comparing it to opinions of community members, which suggested additional measures beyond those we identified and raised questions about others.
We emphasize again that we do not view any single measure as the final word on success. As the measures focus on different aspects of the process, we expect that they will offer different perspectives on the process. Therefore, we suggest using a portfolio of measures, or perhaps developing synthetic measures that draw on different perspectives. Using multiple measures might be particularly interesting for examining how projects change their emphasis from one measure to another at different points in their evolution (Heo and Han 2003).