Educating to achieve healthy open source ecosystems

Abstract

When developers contribute to an open source software ecosystem project, they follow practices defined by governing authorities, architects, maintainers, committers, and other stakeholders. Many of these practices are incorporated into training videos and guidelines for newcomers to guide the work of contributors, including architectural practices that influence the quality of the software product and the health of the open source ecosystem. This research is investigating architectural practices intended to orient and train newcomers during their first contacts with the ecosystem. This includes using the software architecture to trace a picture of how the education artifacts have been built to achieve a healthy ecosystem. This research identifies architectural practices spread by some training resources and analyzes how these practices contribute to achieving a healthy ecosystem. Our research method consisted of a qualitative study conducted with data obtained from various training sources. The findings show the connection between existing education for newcomers and their possible impact to achieve healthy open source ecosystems.