Abstract
As Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) increases in importance and use by global corporations, understanding the dynamics of its communities becomes critical. This paper measures up to 21 years of activities in 1314 individual projects and 1.4 billion lines of code managed. After analyzing the FOSS activities on the projects and organizations level, such as commits frequency, source code lines, and code comments, we find that there is less activity now than there was a decade ago. Moreover, our results suggest a greater decrease in the activities in large and well-established FOSS organizations. Our findings indicate that as technologies and business strategies related to FOSS mature, the role of large formal FOSS organizations serving as intermediary between developers diminishes.
Highlights
Online communities in general and Free and Open Source (FOSS) communities in particular, have been a subject of stable academic interest since their inception [1,2,3]
In order to understand it better, we explore the following research question: What is the structure of commits, code and comments contribution among the selected Open Source Software Organizations over the last 20 years?
We argue that activity in Free/ Open Source Software (FOSS) projects measured in commits, source code, and comments has declined over the last 10 years
Summary
Online communities in general and Free and Open Source (FOSS) communities in particular, have been a subject of stable academic interest since their inception [1,2,3]. Within the field of organization studies, researchers have studied topics such as the emergence of new teams from FOSS development networks [4], continued engagement [5], successful productization of peer production in software [6], group activity, dynamics, and social ties [7,8], diversity [9], leadership [10,11], interdependencies [12], the influence of leaders on project sustainability [13], network ties between projects [14], or and IP strategies [15]. In order to avoid complex, ideological, and licensing-nuanced discussions we attempt to stay neutral and use Free/ Open Source Software (FOSS) as a caveat term [23,24,25]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
