The Impact of Large Language Models on Open-source Innovation: Evidence from GitHub Copilot

Understand

Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping knowledge work, yet their impact on voluntary, self-guided open innovation forums (contributors choose tasks without managerial direction) may differ fundamentally from effects observed in organizational settings.

• We study this question in open-source software development, where individuals' contributions collectively drive innovation at a community level.
• Unlike product innovation, where typologies for classifying innovation are well established, knowledge work in open-source settings calls for a distinction grounded in the cognitive demand a task places on the contributor.
• Burgeoning literature distinguishes substantive contributions, which require creative problem formulation to introduce new functionality, from incremental contributions, which draw on comprehension of existing code to maintain and refine it.