Source Ecosystem Research Articles

Understanding the relation between repeat developer interactions and bug resolution times in large open source ecosystems: A multisystem study

AbstractLarge‐scale software systems are being increasingly built by distributed teams of developers who interact across geographies and time zones. Ensuring smooth knowledge transfer and the percolation of skills within and across such teams remain key challenges for organizations. Towards addressing this challenge, organizations often grapple with questions around whether and how repeat collaborations between members of a team relate to outcomes of important activities. In the context of this paper, the word ‘repeat interaction’ does not imply a greater number of interactions; it refers to repeat interaction between a pair of developers who have collaborated before. In this paper, we empirically examine such a question using real‐world data from three diverse development ecosystems, collectively involving 400,000+ units of work and 600,000+ comments exchanged between numerous developers. Our statistical models consistently establish a counter‐intuitive relation between repeat developer interaction and bug resolution times. Our experimental results show that more instances of repeat developer interactions over bug fixing are associated with more time taken for the bugs to be fixed. Given the expanse and variety of the underlying data, our results offer an unexpected set of insights on a key dynamic of collaboration in software development ecosystems. We discuss how these insights can influence the practice of large‐scale software development at individual, team and organizational levels.

Assurance and certification of cyber–physical systems: The AMASS open source ecosystem

Many cyber–physical systems (CPS) are subject to rigorous assurance and certification processes to provide confidence that undue risks are not posed and thus the systems are trustworthy. These processes are complex and time-consuming and tool support can greatly aid in their execution. In line with other trends for systems and software engineering, the need for and interest in open source tools for assurance and certification is growing and different initiatives have been launched. As a concrete example, we report on our experience in developing the AMASS open source ecosystem. This ecosystem includes (1) an open source tool platform that supports the main CPS assurance and certification activities, (2) external tools with added-value features, and (3) an open community of developers and users. The platform integrates existing solutions for system modelling, process engineering, and compliance and argumentation management. We also present the application of the AMASS tool platform in 11 industrial case studies from five different application domains. The results show that the platform is a feasible means for CPS assurance and certification and that practitioners find benefits in assurance-oriented system modelling and in integrated system assurance information, among other areas. Nonetheless, improvement opportunities also exist, most notably regarding tool interoperability and usability.

Is Open Hardware Worthwhile? Learning from Thales’ Experience with RISC-V

OverviewIn this article we frame the concept of a hardware-rich open source ecosystem (H-ROSE) that generates software and hardware components. In an H-ROSE, the designs of some components are accessible under open source licenses, while other component designs remain proprietary. We describe seven adoption factors used by the multinational French firm Thales to assess the efficacy of RISC-V to design processors. Other companies can use these adoption factors to explore whether an open hardware initiative supported by an H-ROSE is worthwhile.

Contribution of Spatial Heterogeneity and Temporal-Spatial Change of Ecosystems to the Thermal Environment of Tourist Destinations: A Case Study of Sichuan-Chongqing Region, China

Tourism development activities affect the structure and functions of ecosystems directly triggering changes in the thermal environment of tourism destinations and raising a need for sustainable development of the tourism industry. Using the 2005–2015 moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data on the land surface temperature combined with the land use data, the urban thermal environment contribution index (CI) of prefecture-level cities and ecosystem types corresponding to the study area in Sichuan-Chongqing region were quantitatively calculated under various seasonal and diurnal conditions in terms of the scales of administrative divisions and ecosystem types. The characteristics of the roles played by different cities and ecosystem types to contribute to the thermal environment of the metropolitan region were summarized, and the differences and changes in the corresponding contribution intensity of various ecosystem types were measured. The results indicate the following: (1) Different cities play different roles as the sources and sinks with respect to the thermal environment in the daytime and nighttime. Based on the diurnal differences of the contribution indices, cities can be divided into three types: the day-night heat source type, the day-sink and night-source type, and the day-night heat sink type. (2) The farmland and the grassland ecosystems are the most important source and sink landscapes in the thermal environment of the Sichuan-Chongqing Region, respectively. (3) The region is affected by the spatial arrangement of the internal ecosystems and its own development conditions, and, consequently, there are significant temporal-spatial variations and role transitions between heat source and heat sink regarding the contribution of different ecosystem types to the thermal environment of individual cities. It is important to scientifically regulate the thermal environment effect on tourism destinations and maintain the comfort and sustainable development through identifying the source and sink ecosystems of the thermal environment, controlling the quantity and spatial arrangement of the heat source ecosystems, and fully enabling the cooling effect of the heat sink ecosystems.

Open Software/Hardware Platform for Human-Computer Interface Based on Electrooculography (EOG) Signal Classification.

Electrooculography (EOG) signals have been widely used in Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI). The HCI systems proposed in the literature make use of self-designed or closed environments, which restrict the number of potential users and applications. Here, we present a system for classifying four directions of eye movements employing EOG signals. The system is based on open source ecosystems, the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, the OpenBCI biosignal acquisition device, and an open-source python library. The designed system provides a cheap, compact, and easy to carry system that can be replicated or modified. We used Maximum, Minimum, and Median trial values as features to create a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. A mean of 90% accuracy was obtained from 7 out of 10 subjects for online classification of Up, Down, Left, and Right movements. This classification system can be used as an input for an HCI, i.e., for assisted communication in paralyzed people.

Ambidexterity in the age of asset sharing: Development of dynamic capabilities in open source ecosystems

Evidence suggests the growing importance of interorganizational relationships in developing intrapreneurial capabilities. In this paper, we argue that exploitation- and exploration-oriented network ties strengthen intrapreneurial capabilities in dynamic environments. To do so, we integrate the underlying assumptions of asset positions in the dynamic capabilities perspective with the open innovation perspective to highlight the implications of interorganizational ties for value capturing and value creating. The resulting model is discussed using the open source ecosystem as a context that exemplifies the complexities of the symbiotic relationships among network actors in the software industry. This study makes several contributions. First, we contribute to research on intrapreneurial capabilities by explicating the role of different types of network ties in recognizing and leveraging opportunities. Second, we extend the scope of the dynamic capabilities literature by integrating a network perspective to reconceptualize asset positioning in the context of value co-creation and co-capture. Third, we address the complexities associated with intellectual property rights in sharing assets through different forms of network ties. Lastly, we link the dynamic capabilities literature with ambidexterity research by offering insights on how asset sharing can facilitate the simultaneous development of capabilities related to both exploration and exploitation in dynamic environments.

65 Sustainability of fish-derived feed inputs: an ecological perspective

Abstract Fishmeals and fish oils (FMFOs) sourced traditionally from directed fisheries and increasingly from seafood processing by-product streams, are important sources of key nutrients in animal diets. While attention is understandably paid to the relative nutritional attributes and prices of FMFOs, little consideration is typically paid to the resource utilization and environmental performance attributes of these products, beyond attending to the management status of source fisheries. This is somewhat surprising, however, given the diversity of species and ecosystems from which FMFOs are derived, their relative abundance, the technologies used in their capture, and energy sources used in their processing. Here, we present results of analyses of the greenhouse gas emission intensity (carbon footprint) and area of marine ecosystem to support the primary productivity required to sustain production of the species-specific biomass required (marine ecological footprint) to yield a tonne of fishmeal or oil for 18 distinct combinations of species, source ecosystem and fishing gear used to produce fishmeal and oil. Analyses of the carbon footprint of meals and oils included direct combustion and related upstream GHG emissions associated with direct fuel inputs to fishing along with emissions from processing-related fuel and electricity inputs. Analyses of the marine ecological footprint of meals and oils accounted for the trophic level of the source species as well as the source ecosystem-specific trophic transfer efficiency and average annual primary productivity. Results indicate that the carbon footprint of FMFOs varied by an order of magnitude while the marine ecological footprint of meals and oils varied by four orders of magnitude amongst the sources assessed. Given these substantial environmental and ecological performance differences between many widely traded FMFOs, there is substantial scope for feed formulators to construct and market low environmental impact feeds while maintaining nutritional and cost profiles.

The meaningfulness of open data in Public Health and Healthcare

Abstract Background The growing challenges and opportunities of Big Data for Public Health have revealed the potential to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of public policy, for example through better targeting of resources with regard to General Practice (GP) prescribing. Open data has an important role due to its easy access and potential to complement proprietary data sources from, e.g., regional hospitals, and also itself be complemented with social data acquired by specialized approaches. Methods MIDAS pipeline of open source tools aiming integrating, analysing and visualising Open Data enabling health professionals and decision-makers to: (i) improve the usability of open data in combination with proprietary data through combining multiple visualisation tools in an integrated dashboard (ii) to explore the meaning of data in a global/local context based on new information using tone analysis and natural language techniques; and (iii) to have better informed decision-making based on evidence from trusted knowledge-bases. Specific data sources used have included information extracted from the biomedical database MEDLINE, worldwide news and government open data. Social media sources have also been used to gather information from the general public. Results Results include a strong correlation between antidepressant prescribing and economic deprivation, and a wide variation in how individual GP practices respond to demographic conditions. Automated anomaly detection based on the Local Outlier Probability has also been shown to be an easily understood and controllable approach to identifying prescribing outliers. Conclusions MIDAS demonstrates the significant value of open data from heterogeneous sources as basis decision-making in public health and healthcare, particularly when it is combined with proprietary or closed datasets. A key challenge in this regard is the ability to integrate and utilize data from diverse sources in a variety of formats and standards. Key messages MIDAS is exemplar on tackling the need for improved standards of open data, and new software architectures, tools and platforms addressing a complex ecosystem of heterogenous data sources and formats. MIDAS demonstrates the significant value of open data from heterogeneous sources as basis decision-making in public health and healthcare, particularly when combined with proprietary datasets.

From Art to Science: The Evolution of Community Development

Community development in open source ecosystems is increasingly complex. This article focuses on the OpenShift and CNCF ecosystems and concludes that cross-community collaboration analysis is challenging and a more scientific approach is required.

T reble

This paper presents our experience with T reble , a two-year initiative to build the modular base in Android, a Java-based mobile platform running on the Linux kernel. Our T reble architecture splits the hardware independent core framework written in Java from the hardware dependent vendor implementations (e.g., user space device drivers, vendor native libraries, and kernel written in C/C++). Cross-layer communications between them are done via versioned, stable inter-process communication interfaces whose backward compatibility is tested by using two API compliance suites. Based on this architecture, we repackage the key Android software components that suffered from crucial post-launch security bugs as separate images. That not only enables separate ownerships but also independent updates of each image by interested ecosystem entities. We discuss our experience of delivering T reble architectural changes to silicon vendors and device makers using a yearly release model. Our experiments and industry rollouts support our hypothesis that giving more freedom to all ecosystem entities and creating an equilibrium are a transformation necessary to further scale the world largest open source ecosystem with over two billion active devices.

Ambidexterity in Age of Asset-Sharing: Development of Dynamic Capabilities in Open Source Ecosystems

The rise and popularity of ventures built around innovation networks suggests the importance of inter-organizational relationships in developing capabilities central to creating and capturing value...

Healthy or Not: A Way to Predict Ecosystem Health in GitHub

With the development of open source community, through the interaction of developers, the collaborative development of software, and the sharing of software tools, the formation of open source software ecosystem has matured. Natural ecosystems provide ecological services on which human beings depend. Maintaining a healthy natural ecosystem is a necessity for the sustainable development of mankind. Similarly, maintaining a healthy ecosystem of open source software is also a prerequisite for the sustainable development of open source communities, such as GitHub. This paper takes GitHub as an example to analyze the health condition of open source ecosystem and, also, it is a research area in Symmetry. Firstly, the paper presents the healthy definition of GitHub open source ecosystem health and, then, according to the main components of natural ecosystem health, the paper proposes the health indicators and health indicators evaluation method. Based on the above, the GitHub ecosystem health prediction method is proposed. By analyzing the projects and data collected in GitHub, it is found that, using the proposed evaluation indicators and method, we can analyze the healthy development trend of the GitHub ecosystem and contribute to the stability of ecosystem development.

Empirical Research on the Evaluation Model and Method of Sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem

The development of open source brings new thinking and production modes to software engineering and computer science, and establishes a software development method and ecological environment in which groups participate. Regardless of investors, developers, participants, and managers, they are most concerned about whether the Open Source Ecosystem can be sustainable to ensure that the ecosystem they choose will serve users for a long time. Moreover, the most important quality of the software ecosystem is sustainability, and it is also a research area in Symmetry. Therefore, it is significant to assess the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem. However, the current measurement of the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem lacks universal measurement indicators, as well as a method and a model. Therefore, this paper constructs an Evaluation Indicators System, which consists of three levels: The target level, the guideline level and the evaluation level, and takes openness, stability, activity, and extensibility as measurement indicators. On this basis, a weight calculation method, based on information contribution values and a Sustainability Assessment Model, is proposed. The models and methods are used to analyze the factors affecting the sustainability of Stack Overflow (SO) ecosystem. Through the analysis, we find that every indicator in the SO ecosystem is partaking in different development trends. The development trend of a single indicator does not represent the sustainable development trend of the whole ecosystem. It is necessary to consider all of the indicators to judge that ecosystem’s sustainability. The research on the sustainability of the Open Source Ecosystem is helpful for judging software health, measuring development efficiency and adjusting organizational structure. It also provides a reference for researchers who study the sustainability of software engineering.

Eight Observations and 24 Research Questions About Open Source Projects

The rapid acceleration of corporate engagement with open source projects is drawing out new ways for CSCW researchers to consider the dynamics of these projects. Research must now consider the complex ecosystems within which open source projects are situated, including issues of for-profit motivations, brokering foundations, and corporate collaboration. Localized project considerations cannot reveal broader workings of an open source ecosystem, yet much empirical work is constrained to a local context. In response, we present eight observations from our eight-year engaged field study about the changing nature of open source projects. We ground these observations through 24 research questions that serve as primers to spark research ideas in this new reality of open source projects. This paper contributes to CSCW in social and crowd computing by delivering a rich and fresh look at corporately-engaged open source projects with a call for renewed focus and research into newly emergent areas of interest.

An Integrated Platform for the Internet of Things Based on an Open Source Ecosystem

The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly part of daily life. However, the development of IoT applications still faces many problems, such as heterogeneity, complex management, and other difficulties. In this paper, first, the open source technologies of IoT are surveyed. We compare these technologies from the point of view of different levels of technical requirements, such as device management, data management, communication, intelligent data processing, security and privacy protection; we also look at requirements of application development and deployment. Second, an IoT integrated development platform architecture for IoT applications based on open source ecosystem is proposed and evaluated in an industrial setting. We applied P2P technology to distributed resource management and blockchain-based smart contract mechanics for resource billing management. The results show that the IoT gateway based on an open source ecosystem had a stable and reliable system performance with a certain data size and concurrency scale. These conditions satisfy the application requirements of the IoT in most sensing environments.

The importance of ecological memory for trophic rewilding as an ecosystem restoration approach.

Increasing human pressure on strongly defaunated ecosystems is characteristic of the Anthropocene and calls for proactive restoration approaches that promote self-sustaining, functioning ecosystems. However, the suitability of novel restoration concepts such as trophic rewilding is still under discussion given fragmentary empirical data and limited theory development. Here, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates the concept of 'ecological memory' into trophic rewilding. The ecological memory of an ecosystem is defined as an ecosystem's accumulated abiotic and biotic material and information legacies from past dynamics. By summarising existing knowledge about the ecological effects of megafauna extinction and rewilding across a large range of spatial and temporal scales, we identify two key drivers of ecosystem responses to trophic rewilding: (i) impact potential of (re)introduced megafauna, and (ii) ecological memory characterising the focal ecosystem. The impact potential of (re)introduced megafauna species can be estimated from species properties such as lifetime per capita engineering capacity, population density, home range size and niche overlap with resident species. The importance of ecological memory characterising the focal ecosystem depends on (i) the absolute time since megafauna loss, (ii) the speed of abiotic and biotic turnover, (iii) the strength of species interactions characterising the focal ecosystem, and (iv) the compensatory capacity of surrounding source ecosystems. These properties related to the focal and surrounding ecosystems mediate material and information legacies (its ecological memory) and modulate the net ecosystem impact of (re)introduced megafauna species. We provide practical advice about how to quantify all these properties while highlighting the strong link between ecological memory and historically contingent ecosystem trajectories. With this newly established ecological memory-rewilding framework, we hope to guide future empirical studies that investigate the ecological effects of trophic rewilding and other ecosystem-restoration approaches. The proposed integrated conceptual framework should also assist managers and decision makers to anticipate the possible trajectories of ecosystem dynamics after restoration actions and to weigh plausible alternatives. This will help practitioners to develop adaptive management strategies for trophic rewilding that could facilitate sustainable management of functioning ecosystems in an increasingly human-dominated world.

Dynamic atomicity: optimizing swift memory management

Swift is a modern multi-paradigm programming language with an extensive developer community and open source ecosystem. Swift 3's memory management strategy is based on Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) augmented with unsafe APIs for manually-managed memory. We have seen ARC consume as much as 80% of program execution time. A significant portion of ARC's direct performance cost can be attributed to its use of atomic machine instructions to protect reference count updates from data races. Consequently, we have designed and implemented dynamic atomicity, an optimization which safely replaces atomic reference-counting operations with nonatomic ones where feasible. The optimization introduces a store barrier to detect possibly intra-thread references, compiler-generated recursive reference-tracers to find all affected objects, and a bit of state in each reference count to encode its atomicity requirements. Using a suite of 171 microbenchmarks, 9 programs from the Computer Language Benchmarks Game, and the Richards benchmark, we performed a limit study by unsafely making all reference counting operations nonatomic. We measured potential speedups of up to 220% on the microbenchmarks, 120% on the Benchmarks Game and 70% on Richards. By automatically reducing ARC overhead, our optimization both improves Swift 3's performance and reduces the temptation for performance-oriented programmers to resort to unsafe manual memory management. Furthermore, the machinery implemented for dynamic atomicity could also be employed to obtain cheaper thread-safe Swift data structures, or to augment ARC with optional cycle detection or a backup tracing garbage collector.

Restoring Brazilian savanna ground layer vegetation by topsoil and hay transfer

AbstractTropical grassy biomes have been widely neglected for conservation and, after unplanned land use conversion, ecological restoration becomes urgent. The majority of interventions have been based on the misapplication of forest restoration techniques, because there are no validated techniques to restore the species‐rich ground layer. In search for innovative techniques to restore the herbaceous layer of the cerrado vegetation, we carried out an experiment based upon topsoil and hay transfer, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The restoration treatments were: (1) transfer of topsoil collected at the end of the dry season; (2) topsoil collected at the end of the rainy season; (3) transfer of hay collected at the end of the dry season; (4) topsoil + hay collected at the end of the dry season; and (5) control. We used an old‐growth grassland as source of material and as reference ecosystem to assess the efficacy of the restoration techniques applied to an area severely degraded after invasion by African grasses. After 211 days, hay transfer apparently inhibited germination and did not contribute to grassland vegetation recovery. Topsoil transfer, however, was effective at reintroducing herbaceous plants, including target species. The season of topsoil collection mattered: material collected at the end of the rainy season provided better results in terms of density and richness of the restored community than that from the dry season. The remaining challenge is to find sources of topsoil not invaded by exotic grasses in large enough amounts to support restoration initiatives without jeopardizing the source ecosystems.

The Future of Supply Chain Information Systems: The Open Source Ecosystem

The open source phenomenon has made a significant impression, not only on the software industry, but also on software-intensive organizations in both the public and private sectors. The collaborative model offered by the open source ecosystem can potentially change the collective nature of organizations and is claimed to increase innovation and technology adoption while reducing costs. These potential advantages are influencing how organizations acquire software and are leading to significant adoption of open source products across several domains. In fact, a recent Forrester Research report found that 78% of companies surveyed are running part or all of their operations on open source and 66% use open source to create software applications for their customers. Unfortunately, limited research exists regarding the implications and boundaries of open source technologies employed for supply chain management. For a firm to decide whether or not to pursue open source strategies, the field needs more research that helps us to understand how a firm’s use of open source information systems relate to flexibility, agility, operational performance, and the triple bottom line. In this brief thought piece, we describe the potential for open source software to change the nature of supply chain information systems.

Kickstarting Semiconductor Innovation with Open Source Hardware

Hardware innovation is slowing, yet software innovation is flourishing, in large part because of a thriving open source ecosystem. Open source can similarly boost hardware development, but the way forward will require industry, academia, and hardware enthusiasts to address five significant issues.