Collaboration in software ecosystems: A study of work groups in open environment

Abstract

As a particular type of software ecosystem, an open source software ecosystem (OSSECO) is a collection of interdependent open source software (OSS) projects which are developed and evolve together. Events happening within an OSSECO inherently involve the collaboration of participants from multiple OSS projects, forming a temporary work group. However, it is still unclear how different members of a work group collaborate to fix cross-project bugs, a typical event in the maintenance of OSSECOs. This study aims to investigate the characteristics of collaboration within a work group when fixing cross-project bugs in an OSSECO. It involves the participants from the upstream (which caused the bugs) and the downstream (which were affected by the bugs) OSS projects. We conducted our study on 236 cross-project bugs from the scientific Python ecosystem, involving 571 participants and 91 OSS projects, to understand open collaboration within a work group. We established a quantitative analysis to investigate the members of a work group, along with a qualitative analysis to understand the roles of the members from different OSS communities. The results show that: (1) A typical work group is constituted of four to eight members from the core development teams of the two OSS communities. More members concern with the upstream OSS projects and few can make active contributions to both sides; (2) Distinct responsibilities are taken by the two OSS communities, with the downstream members as the problem-finders and the upstream members as the decision-makers or gatekeepers. Our findings reveal the collaborative mechanism and the responsibility allocation between the upstream and downstream OSS communities in the ecosystems. • A study on 236 cross-project bug fixing activities to understand open collaboration in open source software ecosystems. • Six findings that reveal the members of a cross-project bug fixing work group. • Five findings that summarize the roles of cross-project bug fixing group members. • Recommendations to the researchers, developers, and practitioners.