Following the Code: Spillovers and Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge spillovers in Open Source Software (OSS) can occur via two channels: In the first channel, programmers take knowledge and experience gained from one OSS project they work on and employ it in another OSS project they work on. In the second channel, programmers reuse software code by taking code from an OSS project and employing it in another. We develop a methodology to measure software reuse in a large OSS network at the micro level and show that projects that reuse code from other projects have higher success. We also demonstrate knowledge spillovers from projects connected via common programmers.