Foundations function as a vital institutional support infrastructure for many of the most successful open-source projects, but the different roles played by these support entities are understudied in Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) research. Drawing on Open Hub (formerly known as Ohloh) data, this paper empirically investigates how these entities support projects and interact with other projects. This study was conducted using the Theoretical Saturation Grounded Theory approach given the large volume of data on hand. The findings are synthesized as a taxonomy of support entities, a categorization of support mechanisms and a set of dynamics of the interactions between different FLOSS support entities.

中文翻译：

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FLOSS基金会和其他实体提供的支持机制

基金会是许多最成功的开源项目的重要机构支持基础设施，但是在自由/自由和开源软件（FLOSS）研究中，这些支持实体所扮演的不同角色得到了研究。本文利用Open Hub（以前称为Ohloh）数据，通过经验研究了这些实体如何支持项目以及如何与其他项目进行交互。鉴于现有大量数据，本研究使用“理论饱和基础理论”方法进行。这些发现综合为支持实体的分类法，支持机制的分类以及不同FLOSS支持实体之间的相互作用的动态集。