Successful Open Source Projects Research Articles

An Open Approach to Autonomous Vehicles

The evolution of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is rapidly transforming the automotive industry, driving innovations in safety, efficiency, and user experience. This research paper explores the impact of open approaches on the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles. By leveraging open-source software and hardware platforms, such as OpenPilot and Apollo, the study highlights how collaborative, transparent methodologies foster innovation and accelerate technological advancements. The paper examines the technical, regulatory, and ethical challenges associated with open-source AV development, including data management, sensor integration, and compliance with safety standards. Through a comprehensive analysis of successful open-source projects and emerging trends, the research identifies the benefits of open approaches in promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration and addressing complex challenges. The findings underscore the potential of open-source solutions to drive the future of autonomous vehicle technology, offering insights into their role in shaping industry standards and regulatory frameworks

Dual analysis for helping developers to find collaborators based on co‐changed files: An empirical study

SummarySoftware developers must collaborate at all stages of the software life‐cycle to create successful complex software systems. To enable this collaboration, social coding platforms, for example, GitHub, include an increasing number of tools to support collaboration. However, for large projects with hundreds of dynamic developers, such as several successful open–source projects, it can be complex to find developers with the same interest and familiarity and thus, gain suitable collaborations and new insights. In this context, resources and efforts may be wasted, discouraging many developers from contributing. Moreover, it can be costly to manage many contributions, which is another challenge for the maintainer who wants to take advantage of this small, timid, but valuable contribution made by a volunteer developer in a short time. In this context, this paper presents an empirical study aiming to evaluate two strategies to recommend collaborators based on co‐changed files. Inspired in the TF–IDF (Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency) weighting scheme established in the Information Retrieval field, these strategies first estimate the importance of relevant files modified by developers and use these estimates to represent each developer “profile”. As a second step, they estimate the similarity between developers using the Cosine metric, providing top‐ranked developers according to this measure as recommendations. We evaluated these strategies based on an extensive survey with 102 real–world developers. We observed that developers have interest and familiarity with the co‐changed files for all strategies evaluated. These considerations are of relevance because many opportunities for contributions to the project are linked to coding. Thus, theses results may indicate one less barrier for improving collaboration among developers. Overall, the strategies present an acceptance rate of up to 81%, contributing to the discovery of further collaborators.

SonifyIt: Towards Transformative Sound for All Robots

Transformative robot sound yields perceptual, functional, and social benefits in human-robot interactions, but broader research and implementation related to this topic is impeded by the lack of a common sound generation system for robots. Such a system could enable a wide array of situated robot sound studies, smoother collaborations with sound designers than current state of the art methods, and broader adoption of transformative robot sound. Based on other successful open-source projects in the robotics community, we integrated Robot Operating System, a popular robotics middleware, and Pure Data, a visual programming language for multimedia, to enable live sound synthesis and sample playback for robots. This sound generation system synthesized sound in an in-the-wild pilot study with positive qualitative results. Furthermore, an online within-subjects survey study with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N=96$</tex-math></inline-formula> showed that the proposed sound system made the robot seem warmer, happier, and more energetic. This work benefits robotics researchers by providing the current sound system as a validated artifact and demonstrating its potential impact on broader robotics applications. We plan to develop this software into an open-source package: SonifyIt.

Open Source Community Governance the Apache Way

An open source project without the people is a dead project—or at least one that is fairly deep asleep. While all successful open source projects understand that they need to build a community around their project, the exact options for doing so differ.

Dynamic Robustness of Semantic-Based Collaborative Knowledge Network of Open Source Project.

Robustness of the collaborative knowledge network (CKN) is critical to the success of open source projects. To study this robustness more comprehensively and accurately, we constructed a weighted CKN based on the semantic analysis of collaborative behavior, where (a) open source designers were the network nodes, (b) collaborative behavior among designers was the edges, and (c) collaborative text content intensity and collaborative frequency intensity were the edge weights. To study the robustness from a dynamic viewpoint, we constructed three CKNs from different stages of the project life cycle: the start-up, growth and maturation stages. The connectivity and collaboration efficiency of the weighted network were then used as robustness evaluation indexes. Further, we designed four edge failure modes based on the behavioral characteristics of open source designers. Finally, we carried out dynamic robustness analysis experiments based on the empirical data of a Local Motors open source car design project. Our results showed that the CKN performed differently at different stages of the project life cycle, and our specific findings could help community managers of open source projects to formulate different network protection strategies at different stages of their projects.

Experience with Rucio in the wider HEP community

Managing the data of scientific projects is an increasingly complicated challenge, which was historically met by developing experiment-specific solutions. However, the ever-growing data rates and requirements of even small experiments make this approach very difficult, if not prohibitive. In recent years, the scientific data management system Rucio has evolved into a successful open-source project that is now being used by many scientific communities and organisations. Rucio is incorporating the contributions and expertise of many scientific projects and is offering common features useful to a diverse research community. This article describes the recent experiences in operating Rucio, as well as contributions to the project, by ATLAS, Belle II, CMS, ESCAPE, IGWN, LDMX, Folding@Home, and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The application of crowdsourcing and the Bazaar model to the development of library classifications: an assessment of the Open Shelves Classification

Abstract This paper presents a discussion of crowdsourcing approaches to knowledge organization and more specifically to the development of classification schemes. It analyzes the case of Open Shelves Classification, a terminated project that was developed by the LibraryThing community following the “open source model”, and assesses its outcomes from methodological and sociological points of view. Working with all the documentation of the project that is freely available, the text conducts an analysis of the project following the structure of the methodological lessons for open source (Bazaar model) presented by Eric Raymond in his seminal work “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” and complementing it with the discussion of the sociological aspects presented in “Homesteading the Noosphere” and other writings. The paper concludes with some recommendations for the success of open source projects and some possibilities of research for crowdsourcing projects and social epistemology.

How founders’ social capital affects the success of open-source projects: A resource-based view of project teams

Abstract Volunteers under the open-source paradigm organize themselves and coordinate their efforts through the Internet to develop new products and services. Researchers have recognized open-source project founders’ social capital as an important factor to determine the performance of innovations in the open-source software (OSS) context. This study extends previous research by considering the founders’ social capital as a means to create strategic resources of project teams. We use data collected from an OSS development community to identify the role of founders’ social capital in team resource acquisition and utilization. We also clarify its inconsistent effects on innovation performance. From a resource-based view, we find that team size, as a manifestation of human resources, and team brokerage, as a manifestation of organizational resources, are determined by the social capital of project founders, and, in turn, have effects on innovation performance. However, team size and team brokerage contribute differently to innovation performance. The findings enrich our understanding of the impact of founders’ social capital in OSS communities and provide OSS project leaders and firm managers with guidelines on boosting their chances for successful projects.

RETRACTED: How the founders’ social capital affects the success of open-source projects: A resource-based view of project teams

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and Authors. It was found that there were textual and figure overlaps with a paper that had already appeared in Marketing Sci. 31(2012), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1110.0690. Whilst the article does present a novel contribution, this is not made clear in the paper. The authors agreed that due to the amount of revisions required the paper should be retracted and a new version submitted.

Support mechanisms provided by FLOSS foundations and other entities

Foundations function as a vital institutional support infrastructure for many of the most successful open-source projects, but the different roles played by these support entities are understudied in Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) research. Drawing on Open Hub (formerly known as Ohloh) data, this paper empirically investigates how these entities support projects and interact with other projects. This study was conducted using the Theoretical Saturation Grounded Theory approach given the large volume of data on hand. The findings are synthesized as a taxonomy of support entities, a categorization of support mechanisms and a set of dynamics of the interactions between different FLOSS support entities.

Open source project success: Resource access, flow, and integration

Open source software projects share key resources including knowledge and developer attention. Developers who participate on multiple projects create ties among projects and facilitate access to those projects’ resources. However, projects also compete for developer attention, and they vary in their ability to integrate knowledge. This paper explores how factors that facilitate knowledge integration (low software coupling and high interactive discussion) impact project success and how developers’ attention to external projects may dampen a focal project’s success. Further, we explore how these factors may moderate the positive impact of a project’s network degree centrality to develop a more nuanced model of their influences on project success. Using data from 175 OSS projects we find that software coupling, interactive discussion and externally focused developer attention directly impact completed code commits. Interactive discussion also amplifies the benefit of high network degree centrality, while developers’ external attention weakens the positive impact of high network degree centrality. Results add to theory by providing a more nuanced view of how key strategic resources (knowledge and attention) drive OSS success. In particular it describes how knowledge integration ability, developer attention, and network degree centrality interact to influence project outcomes.

About Our Authors

About Our Authors

The Effects of Diversity in Global, Distributed Collectives: A Study of Open Source Project Success

Diversity is a defining characteristic of global collectives facilitated by the Internet. Though substantial evidence suggests that diversity has profound implications for a variety of outcomes including performance, member engagement, and withdrawal behavior, the effects of diversity have been predominantly investigated in the context of organizational workgroups or virtual teams. We use a diversity lens to study the success of nontraditional virtual work groups exemplified by open source software (OSS) projects. Building on the diversity literature, we propose that three types of diversity (separation, variety, and disparity) influence two critical outcomes for OSS projects: community engagement and market success. We draw on the OSS literature to further suggest that the effects of diversity on market success are moderated by the application development stage. We instantiate the operational definitions of three forms of diversity to the unique context of open source projects. Using archival data from 357 projects hosted on SourceForge, we find that disparity diversity, reflecting variation in participants' contribution-based reputation, is positively associated with success. The impact of separation diversity, conceptualized as culture and measured as diversity in the spoken language and country of participants, has a negative impact on community engagement but an unexpected positive effect on market success. Variety diversity, reflected in dispersion in project participant roles, positively influences community engagement and market success. The impact of diversity on market success is conditional on the development stage of the project. We discuss how the study's findings advance the literature on antecedents of OSS success, expand our theoretical understanding of diversity, and present the practical implications of the results for managers of distributed collectives.

Changing computational research. The challenges ahead

Changing computational research. The challenges ahead

Competency rallying in electronic markets: implications for open source project success

This paper studies the success of Open Source Software (OSS) projects in attracting developer interest and achieving project efficiency. The focus of our study is on examining the relationship between the four sets of capabilities proposed in the Theory of Competency Rallying (TCR) and the success of OSS projects. The data collected from 607 OSS projects mainly confirm that the capabilities proposed in the TCR are necessary for the success of OSS projects. The results of this study show that in order to succeed, OSS projects should constantly identify their market’s quality and functionality needs. Ability of OSS project managers to know which developers possess certain skills required to meet a particular market need is also found to be critical. Another capability that is recognised to be crucial in predicting project success is the ability of OSS developers in effectively addressing market needs and continuously learning from such experiences. Finally, the ability of stakeholders involving in addressing a particular market need to efficiently collaborate and fulfil that specific market need is found to be another essential capability required for OSS projects to succeed. Implications of the results for practitioners and the research community are presented.

An empirical investigation on the reusability of design patterns and software packages

Nowadays open-source software communities are thriving. Successful open-source projects are competitive and the amount of source code that is freely available offers great reuse opportunities to software developers. Thus, it is expected that several requirements can be implemented based on open source software reuse. Additionally, design patterns, i.e. well-known solution to common design problems, are introduced as elements of reuse. This study attempts to empirically investigate the reusability of design patterns, classes and software packages. Thus, the results can help developers to identify the most beneficial starting points for white box reuse, which is quite popular among open source communities. In order to achieve this goal we conducted a case study on one hundred (100) open source projects. More specifically, we identified 27,461 classes that participate in design patterns and compared the reusability of each of these classes with the reusability of the pattern and the package that this class belongs to. In more than 40% of the cases investigated, design pattern based class selection, offers the most reusable starting point for white-box reuse. However there are several cases when package based selection might be preferable. The results suggest that each pattern has different level of reusability.

Network Effects: The Influence of Structural Capital on Open Source Project Success

What determines the success of open source projects? In this study, we investigate the impact of network social capital on open source project success. We define network social capital as the benefits open source developers secure from their membership in developer collaboration networks. We focus on one specific type of success as measured by the rate of knowledge creation in an open source project. Specific hypotheses are developed and tested using a longitudinal panel of 2,378 projects hosted at SourceForge. We find that network social capital is not equally accessible to or appropriated by all projects. Our main results are as follows. First, projects with greater internal cohesion (that is, cohesion among the project members) are more successful. Second, external cohesion (that is, cohesion among the external contacts of a project) has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the project's success; moderate levels of external cohesion are best for a project's success rather than very low or very high levels. Third, the technological diversity of the external network of a project also has the greatest benefit when it is neither too low nor too high. Fourth, the number of direct and indirect external contacts positively affects a project's success such that the effect of the number of direct contacts is moderated by the number of indirect contacts. These results are robust to several control variables and alternate model specifications. Several theoretical and managerial implications are provided.

Comparing practices for reuse in integration‐oriented software product lines and large open source software projects

AbstractThis article compares the organization and practices for software reuse in integration‐oriented software product lines (SPLs) and open source software projects. The main observation is that both approaches are successful regarding large variability and reuse, but differ widely in their practices and organization. To capture practices in large open source projects, we describe an open compositional model, which reflects their more decentralized organization of software development. We capture key practices and organizational forms for this and validate these by comparing four case studies of this model. Two of these studies are based on published SPL case studies, for the other two we analyze the practices in two large and successful open source projects based on their published developer documentation. Our analysis highlights key differences between the practices in the two open source organizations and the more integrational practices used in the other two cases. Finally, we discuss which practices are successful in which environment and how the current practices can move towards more open, widely scoped and distributed software development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Collective Development in Open-Source Communities: An Activity Theoretical Perspective on Successful Online Collaboration

Online collaboration is often organized without strong predetermined rules or central authority, which is why coordination and ways of organizing cooperation become crucial elements of collaboration. This article investigates how online projects can overcome problems of dispersed work, solve inherent contradictions and utilize tensions in the activity system to develop collaborative artefacts and practices. Empirical evidence is based on a detailed observation of a successful open-source project — the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Our findings show that successful collaboration is based on coat-tailing systems. Coat-tailing means to inextricably bind together individual action and collective activity through careful design of complexes of technological, mental and cultural artefacts.

Exploring the effects of SourceForge.net coordination and communication tools on the efficiency of open source projects using data envelopment analysis

In this paper we explore possible benefits of communication and coordination tools in open source projects using an efficiency score derived from data envelopment analysis (DEA) as dependent variable. DEA is a general non-parametric method for efficiency comparisons without asking the user to define any relations between different factors or a production function. The method can account for economies or diseconomies of scale, and is able to deal with multi-input, multi-output systems in which the factors have different scales. Using two different data sets, successful and random open source projects, retrieved from SourceForge.net, we analyze impacts on their efficiency from the usage of communication and coordination tools. The results were mixed with no clear positive effects being proven consistently: In the data set of successful projects, mostly negative influences were found. On the contrary, tool adoption showed positive relationships to efficiency in the random data set. This stresses the importance of development status as a moderating variable and might also hint at threshold values for tool benefits. In addition, adoption of tools outside the hosting platform may be more likely for successful projects.