Strategic Release and Co-Creation: Empirical Insights for Managing Open Source Software

Abstract

Open-source software (OSS) plays a critical role in modern technology development, yet managing OSS projects remains challenging due to their iterative release cycles and ongoing collaboration with the contributor community. Core teams must balance short-term coordination costs with the long-term goal of sustaining community interest and growth. These challenges are evolving with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation tools, which enhance efficiency and reshape how teams coordinate contributions. This paper develops a dynamic structural model that incorporates unobserved project heterogeneity to examine how OSS core teams jointly manage release and co-creation decisions over time. Using detailed data from GitHub, the world's largest open source platform, we find that both release and co-creation positively influence community interest. These decisions are shaped by community interest, operational burdens, and project-specific cost structures, with team capacity playing a key moderating role. Through counterfactual simulations, we assess how emerging AI and automation tools might reshape OSS decision-making. We find that increases in internal capacity, driven by these tools, lead to consistent gains in both release and co-creation activity, while growth in external participation primarily boosts co-creation. More broadly, our framework provides actionable insights for managing crowd-sourced innovation in complex, technology-driven environments.

Keywords: Release Decisions, Co-creation, Community Interest, AI and Automation, Open source software, Structural Model