Open Source Software Communities Research Articles

A graduate student perspective on overcoming barriers to interacting with open-source software

Computational methods, coding, and software are important tools for conducting research. In both academic and industry data analytics, open-source software (OSS) has gained massive popularity. Collaborative source code allows students to interact with researchers, code developers, and users from a variety of disciplines. Based on the authors’ experiences as graduate students and coding instructors, this paper provides a unique overview of the obstacles that graduate students face in obtaining the knowledge and skills required to complete their research and in transitioning from an OSS user to a contributor: psychological, practical, and cultural barriers and challenges specific to graduate students including cognitive load in graduate school, the importance of a knowledgeable mentor, seeking help from both the online and local communities, and the ongoing campaign to recognize software as research output in career and degree progression. Specific and practical steps are recommended to provide a foundation for graduate students, supervisors, administrators, and members of the OSS community to help overcome these obstacles. In conclusion, the objective of these recommendations is to describe a possible framework that individuals from across the scientific community can adapt to their needs and facilitate a sustainable feedback loop between graduate students and OSS.

The emergence of governance norms in volunteer driven open source communities

Free and open source software communities develop their governance norms and practises as they grow from small to medium to large size social groups. Communities with a small number of participants typically organise informally. As the community grows, the need for coordination grows as well and at some point more pronounced organisation becomes necessary. The growth stages are defined by the coordination mechanisms applied - ad-hoc coordination for the initial small group, consensus focused auto-organisation for the medium size group, and structured, more formalised coordination for the large size group. The main interest of the communities is to attract and retain contributors and to facilitate contributions to their products. The communities studied in this qualitative embedded multiple-case study exhibit governance related debates and conflicts as they reached a large size, leading to difficulties in further growing the number of involved contributors and sustaining the community activities. The paper researches the emergence of governance norms in these communities and the role these norms, once established, play in the management of the communities in their current stage. The study finds that the governance norms in communities are commonly developed by participants that do not think them necessary for a community that does not want them at the time. The result is a pre-eminence of implicit, under-documented norms that increase barriers of entry for newcomers and afford incumbent contributors with instruments to derail unwanted decisions. The paper isolates the essential contradiction that the communities aim to maintain devolved authority at the contributor level, but require effective decision making and policing mechanisms to implement and maintain that. It recommends that communities, instead of deferring or down-playing the need to set up explicit governance norms, purposefully develop norms that explicitly define structure and processes so that they support, enforce and protect the devolved authority their participants should have.

A network-centric approach for estimating trust between open source software developers.

Trust between developers influences the success of open source software (OSS) projects. Although existing research recognizes the importance of trust, there is a lack of an effective and scalable computational method to measure trust in an OSS community. Consequently, OSS project members must rely on subjective inferences based on fragile and incomplete information for trust-related decision making. We propose an automated approach to assist a developer in identifying the trustworthiness of another developer. Our two-fold approach, first, computes direct trust between developer pairs who have interacted previously by analyzing their interactions via natural language processing. Second, we infer indirect trust between developers who have not interacted previously by constructing a community-wide developer network and propagating trust in the network. A large-scale evaluation of our approach on a GitHub dataset consisting of 24,315 developers shows that contributions from trusted developers are more likely to be accepted to a project compared to contributions from developers who are distrusted or lacking trust from project members. Further, we develop a pull request classifier that exploits trust metrics to effectively predict the likelihood of a pull request being accepted to a project, demonstrating the practical utility of our approach.

Development and Contribution of Open Source Software Communities for the Library Progress in Indonesia

Background of the study: Open source software is an open-based software and can be accessed for free. This open source software is growing rapidly at domestic and overseas. Many criteria are used by users. In this case, the library Also, choosing the open source software they need. There are several organization that a accommodate Review these users of open source software in Indonesia. Some of the open source software is the Slims organizes community and Surabaya's Linux Community.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the development and contribution of the community to libraries in Indonesia.Method: The method used is a qualitative method with a descriptive approach.Findings: The results of this study are the Open Source Community the which plays an important role in the progress of libraries in Indonesia, this can be seen from the number of school libraries that have implemented an IT in providing services to users by using open source software.Conclusion: The conclusion is the development and contribution of the Open Source Community in Indonesia is needed for the progress of the library in the future.

Modeling the impact of Python and R packages using dependency and contributor networks

This paper develops methods to estimate the factors that affect the impact of open-source software (OSS), measured by number of downloads, with a study of Python and R packages. The OSS community is characterized by a high level of collaboration and sharing which results in interactions between contributors as well as packages due to reuses. We use data collected from Depsy.org about the development activities of Python and R packages, and generate the dependency and contributor networks. We develop three Quasi-Poisson models for each of the Python and R communities using network characteristics, as well as author and package attributes. We find that the more derivative a package is (the more dependencies it has), the less likely it is to have a high impact. We also show that the centrality of a package in the dependency network measured by the out-degree, closeness centrality, and pagerank has a significant effect on its impact. Moreover, the closeness and weighted degree centralities of the developers in the Python and R contributor networks play an important role. We also find that introducing network features to a baseline model using only package features (e.g., number of authors, number of commits) improves the performance of the models.

The Third Design Space: A postcolonial perspective on corporate engagement with open source software communities

AbstractCorporations increasingly engage with open source software communities in the co‐creation of software. This collaboration between corporate professionals and open source software community members is strikingly different from the early days of software development where for‐profit firms attempted to dominate and control the industry while attempting to throttle the success of independent developers offering an alternative, open source option. While many metaphors like trading zones, common pool resources and ecosystems have helped understand the phenomenon, the metaphors do not portray what the industry was like before and after the transition. We adopt a postcolonial metaphor as an analytical lens to examine such collaboration based on qualitative data gathered over three years from executives, managers and developers within corporations that engage in open source software development. Drawing on these insights, we then theorize a “Third Design Space,” based on the concept of the third space proposed by Bhabha. This metaphor encourages the cultivation of a new design environment, creation of new design associations and circulation of shared design resources. Together these practices and behaviours make it possible to nurture innovative methods and new rituals for designing software with results and methods that represent a distinct departure from the competitive and proprietary past, even creating innovative artefacts that could not have been created without the Third Design Space.

How to Communicate when Submitting Patches

Communication when submitting patches (CSP) is critical in software development, because ineffective communication wastes the time of developers and reviewers, and is even harmful to future product release and maintenance. In distributed software development, CSP is usually in the form of computer-mediated communication (CMC), which is a crucial topic concerned by the CSCW community. However, what to say and how to say in communication including CSP has been rarely studied. To bridge this knowledge gap and provide relevant guidance for developers to conduct CSP, in this study, we conducted an empirical study on the Linux kernel. We found four themes involving 17 expression elements that characterize what to express when submitting patches and three themes of contextual factors that determine how these elements are applied. Considering both expression elements and context, combined with an online survey, we obtained 17 practices for communication. Among them, four practices, such as "provide sufficient reasons" and "provide a trade-off" are the most important but difficult practices, for which we provide specific instructions. We also found that the "individual factors" plays a special role in communication, which may lead to potential problems even in accepted patches. Based on these findings, we discuss the recommendations for different practitioners, including patch submitters, reviewers, and tool designers, and the implications for open source software (OSS) communities and the CSCW researchers.

Maintaining interoperability in open source software: A case study of the Apache PDFBox project

Software interoperability is commonly achieved through the implementation of standards for communication protocols or data representation formats. Standards documents are often complex, difficult to interpret, and may contain errors and inconsistencies, which can lead to differing interpretations and implementations that inhibit interoperability. Through a case study of two years of activity in the Apache PDFBox project we examine day-to-day decisions made concerning implementation of the PDF specifications and standards in a community open source software (OSS) project. Thematic analysis is used to identify semantic themes describing the context of observed decisions concerning interoperability. Fundamental decision types are identified including emulation of the behaviour of dominant implementations and the extent to which to implement the PDF standards. Many factors influencing the decisions are related to the sustainability of the project itself, while other influences result from decisions made by external actors, including the developers of dependencies of PDFBox. This article contributes a fine grained perspective of decision-making about software interoperability by contributors to a community OSS project. The study identifies how decisions made support the continuing technical relevance of the software, and factors that motivate and constrain project activity.

A mechanism to explore proactive knowledge retention in open source software communities

AbstractOpen‐source software (OSS) is a type of computer software wherein the source code is distributed under a special type of licence in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to inspect, alter, and redistribute the software. OSS projects are collaborative endeavours which have multiple contributors who are constantly joining, leaving, or changing their role in the project. This ever‐changing and ever‐transient nature of OSS project contributors contributes to a contributor turnover‐induced knowledge loss in OSS projects. In this case, “knowledge loss” refers to the phenomenon of the loss of project‐specific knowledge, experience, and expertise in an OSS project, caused by contributors regularly joining and leaving the OSS project. This paper describes the design and development of a robust research methodology and contributes towards the formation of proactive knowledge retention practices in OSS projects to transform contributor's use of knowledge and engagement in knowledge‐relevant activities including knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer.

Let Me In: Guidelines for the Successful Onboarding of Newcomers to Open Source Projects

Many community-based open source software (OSS) projects depend on a continuous influx of newcomers for their survival and continuity, yet newcomers face many barriers to contributing to a project. We provide guidelines based on our previous work for both OSS communities and newcomers to OSS projects.

A Community Strategy Framework – How to obtain influence on requirements in meritocratic open source software communities?

Context: In the Requirements Engineering (RE) process of an Open Source Software (OSS) community, an involved firm is a stakeholder among many. Conflicting agendas may create miss-alignment with the firm's internal requirements strategy. In communities with meritocratic governance or with aspects thereof, a firm has the opportunity to affect the RE process in line with their own agenda by gaining influence through active and symbiotic engagements. Objective: The focus of this study has been to identify what aspects that firms should consider when they assess their need of influencing the RE process in an OSS community, as well as what engagement practices that should be considered in order to gain this influence. Method: Using a design science approach, 21 interviews with 18 industry professionals from 12 different software-intensive firms were conducted to explore, design and validate an artifact for the problem context. Results: A Community Strategy Framework (CSF) is presented to help firms create community strategies that describe if and why they need influence on the RE process in a specific (meritocratic) OSS community, and how the firm could gain it. The framework consists of aspects and engagement practices. The aspects help determine how important an OSS project and its community is from business and technical perspectives. A community perspective is used when considering the feasibility and potential in gaining influence. The engagement practices are intended as a tool-box for how a firm can engage with a community in order to build influence needed. Conclusion: It is concluded from interview-based validation that the proposed CSF may provide support for firms in creating and tailoring community strategies and help them to focus resources on communities that matter and gain the influence needed on their respective RE processes.

Applying participatory action approach to integrating professional librarians into open source software communities

This article theoretically explores how participatory action research might support integration of library professionals into open source software development communities. The author makes a case for the integration of library professionals into open source software communities to help develop better, context-specific, customizable software for use by libraries and advocates for inclusion of library professionals in open source software communities to produce high quality, customizable software. The value of open source software for libraries is discussed and the importance of this integration is articulated by the impacts of this approach. A plan for integration of library professionals into open source software communities is presented.

Managing to release early, often and on time in the OpenStack software ecosystem

The dictum of “Release early, release often.” by Eric Raymond as the Linux modus operandi highlights the importance of release management in open source software development. However, there are very few empirical studies addressing release management in this context. It is already known that most open source software communities adopt either a feature-based or time-based release strategy. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages that are also context-specific. Recent research reports that many prominent open source software projects have overcome a number of recurrent problems by moving from feature-based to time-based release strategies. In this longitudinal case study, we address the release management practices of OpenStack, a large scale open source project developing cloud computing technologies. We discuss how the release management practices of OpenStack have evolved in terms of chosen strategy and timeframes with close attention to processes and tools. We discuss the number of practical and managerial issues related to release management within the context of large and complex software ecosystems. Our findings also reveal that multiple release management cycles can co-exist in large and complex software ecosystems such as OpenStack.

Developer Centrality and the Impact of Value Congruence and Incongruence on Commitment and Code Contribution Activity in Open Source Software Communities

Open source software (OSS) communities are dependent on the code contributions of developers who, in many cases, never meet face-to-face and collaborate primarily through technology-enabled means. With their fluid membership, such communities often rely

Does every formal peer review really need to take place? An industrial case study

Existing studies on formal peer reviews (FPR) are mostly based on design and code review practices observed from the open source software (OSS) community, and there is a lack of studies and evidence from proprietary, large scale software development in systems engineering settings. This study fills the gap by reporting an industrial case study on FPR practices in a safety-critical embedded system development organization. First, we follow the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) methodology to establish a set of metrics for understanding FPR practices and the resulting effectiveness. Second, we collect the metric data from 100 programs employing FPR practices on a variety of document types. Third, we analyze the data and derive answers to a set of questions defined in the GQM. The study contributes to more comprehensive understanding of FPR practices and effectiveness evaluation, and the findings reported here may serve as a basis for process improvements initiatives in similar settings.

History-Driven Fix for Code Quality Issues

To ensure the internal code quality of contributions in open source software (OSS) communities, static analysis tools (e.g. Code Climate and SonarQube) have been integrated into the modern pull-based workflow for detecting code quality issues (CQIs). Automated CQI fixing is conducive to improve the efficiency of converging massive contributions. In this paper, we propose a history-driven approach to automatically fix CQIs utilizing the fixing knowledge mined from the change history in the code repositories. We collected 5,047,678 CQI isstances, 31,013 fixes of the CQIs that were detected by SonarQube from 206 GitHub projects and mined 68 common Fix Patterns for 56 CQI types. Evaluated by fixing the unfix CQI Instances, we find that the average correctness of our approach is 80% in top 1 fix patch and 69.17% of Top 5. We further conducted a live study by sending CQI’s fix patches to GitHub projects. The results show that developers approved or merged 11 of 17 patches.

Data Set Failures and Intersectional Data

In 2016, a software developer named David and I met to discuss creating a quan- titative demographic survey of the open source software community to which we were both long-time contributors. David and I did not know each other well, but shared a belief that our open source community (OSC, hereafter) was an un- safe place for anyone who did not identify as white, cisgendered, heterosexual and male. That lack of safety was further complicated by any one individual’s distance from privileged modes of contribution.

On Company Contributions to Community Open Source Software Projects

The majority of contributions to community open source software (OSS) projects are made by practitioners acting on behalf of companies and other organisations. Previous research has addressed the motivations of both individuals and companies to engage with OSS projects. However, limited research has been undertaken that examines and explains the practical mechanisms or work practices used by companies and their developers to pursue their commercial and technical objectives when engaging with OSS projects. This research investigates the variety of work practices used in public communication channels by company contributors to engage with and contribute to eight community OSS projects. Through interviews with contributors to the eight projects we draw on their experiences and insights to explore the motivations to use particular methods of contribution. We find that companies utilise work practices for contributing to community projects which are congruent with the circumstances and their capabilities that support their short- and long-term needs. We also find that companies contribute to community OSS projects in ways that may not always be apparent from public sources, such as employing core project developers, making donations, and joining project steering committees in order to advance strategic interests. The factors influencing contributor work practices can be complex and are often dynamic arising from considerations such as company and project structure, as well as technical concerns and commercial strategies. The business context in which software created by the OSS project is deployed is also found to influence contributor work practices.

Developing a procedure for learning and assessing peer review in a forensic science programme

Peer review of forensic casework is essential for ensuring quality and reducing error rates. However, it is not a common component of forensic science degree courses, and there are no published studies, guidelines or methods for teaching and learning forensic peer review. This study describes a method of learning, teaching and assessing forensic peer review through the use of group work to prepare checklists for reviewing casefiles and expert witness reports, followed by individual peer feedback. Example checklists and assessment criteria are provided. The peer feedback comments on expert reports were categorised revealing that suggestions are the most frequent type of feedback provided, followed by questions. Through a questionnaire, participants strongly agreed that the learning and teaching process described here was relevant to their future professional practice, and that through the use of checklists they understood the criteria for effective forensic peer review. It emerged from a semistructured interview that limited time led some students to surface review expert reports, that peers were seen as legitimate sources of knowledge, and additional feedback from lecturers was required. This study may be relevant to other areas where professional peer review is used, such as open source software development, nursing and community pharmacy.

Sharing my way to success: A case study on developing entrepreneurial ventures using social capital in an OSS community

While Open Source Software (OSS) communities provide opportunities for knowledge creation, we have a limited understanding of how entrepreneurs leverage OSS communities for their entrepreneurial ventures. Using social capital theory in a mixed methods case study, we compare entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur behaviors to investigate how entrepreneurs build social capital within an OSS community. This study shows that entrepreneurs differentiate themselves from non-entrepreneurs by focusing on cognitive and relational capital building activities, which in return makes it possible for them to leverage their social capital to influence and shape the environment in which they are operating. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs strategically select which activities within the community to expend their limited resources on (e.g., developing code over participating in email conversations) and build their social capital more through their actions than through their words (e.g., showing their commitment to the community through code commits, bug fixes, and documentation). Given the liabilities of newness and smallness as well as other challenges faced by entrepreneurs, applying an open innovation strategy in OSS communities could be one approach where entrepreneurs, by developing and freely revealing their intellectual property to the community, share their way to success via OSS-infused entrepreneurial business ventures.