Abstract
Software crowdsourced has emerged in recent years, and is an evolving problem-solving approach in software industry. However, crowdsourced software engineering is not a risk-free activity, where organizations face various trust issues. To better prepare for such emerging trust issues, this study aims to investigate the critical issues in establishing the trust in context of software crowdsourcing. An industrial survey is conducted to identify the trust issues faced by crowdsourced organizations in conduction of crowdsourced software engineering. The sample of industrial survey comprised of 95 relevant respondents. The authors have identified a list of 11 trust issues. Of these trust issues, 9 have been tagged as critical enclosing 'deficient assistance to best practices', 'malicious code', 'lack of licensed software utilization', 'loss of data', 'network security risks', 'quality of workers', 'social attacks', 'crowd legal action', and 'loss of intellectual property'. The findings of the study are validated via focus group from four academia experts. The results showed that there are no major disagreements between the focus group experts and the industry practitioners. The identified trust issues can eventually permit software development organizations to handle the challenges in development of software in crowdsourced environment and to prepare themselves for any vulnerable situation.