A systematic literature review on the barriers faced by newcomers to open source software projects

Steinmacher, Igor; Silva, Marco Aurélio Graciotto; Gerosa, Marco Aurélio; Redmiles, David

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2014.11.001

Cited by 168 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…These occurrences indicate that the developers used the gatekeeping tactic labeled non-response to silence usability discussions even before they started. This tactic gains further support from the FLOSS literature in which "receiving an improper answer", and "not receiving a (timely) answer" have been reported as contribution barriers to newcomers [25]. These results have not been produced related to usability work, while our study shows that these are relevant also as regards usability work…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…These occurrences show that the developers used the gatekeeping tactic of social exclusion. Also this gatekeeping tactic can be connected with the existing FLOSS research that has indicated that "lack of social interaction with project members" acts as a contribution barrier for new me mbers in FLOSS projects [25]. In our cases, the usability team should have been integrated into the planning and decision-making processes of the FLOSS projects or at least they should have been better informed of the outcomes of such processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…For a developer to become an accepted contributor or even an acknowledged member of a FLOSS project certain procedures or 'joining scripts' need to be relied on [14,25,26]. A developer may have to provide feature gifts, i.e.…”

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, many obstacles have been witnessed as regards entering FLOSS projects. In a recent systematic literature review, Steinmacher and colleagues [25] identified 20 published studies dealing with contribution barriers that newcomers face in FLOSS projects. These barriers represent 5 main types: social interaction, newcomers' previous knowledge, technical hurdles, finding a way to start, and documentation.…”

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These barriers represent 5 main types: social interaction, newcomers' previous knowledge, technical hurdles, finding a way to start, and documentation. Social interaction was the biggest category with 12 studies, and it divided into three subcategories: "lack of social interaction with project members", "receiving an improper answer", and "not receiving a (timely) answer" [25].…”

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Non-response, Social Exclusion, and False Acceptance: Gatekeeping Tactics and Usability Work in Free-Libre Open Source Software Development

Rajanen

Iivari

Lanamäki

2015

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Boundary Management and Gatekeeping In Floss Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Non-response, Social Exclusion, and False Acceptance: Gatekeeping Tactics and Usability Work in Free-Libre Open Source Software Development

Rajanen

Iivari

Lanamäki

2015

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015

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Documentation and access to knowledge in online communities: Know your audience and write appropriately?

Østerlund

Crowston

2019

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Virtual collaborations bring together people who must work together despite having varied access to and understanding of the work at hand. In many cases, the collaborations are technology supported, meaning that the work is done through shared documents. We develop a framework articulating the characteristics of documents supporting collaborators with access to asymmetric knowledge versus those with access to symmetric knowledge. Drawing on theories about document genre, boundary objects, and provenance, we hypothesize that documents supporting asymmetric collaborators are likely to articulate or prescribe their own (a) purpose, (b) context of use, (c) content and form, and (d) provenance in greater detail than documents supporting symmetric collaborators. We explore these hypotheses through content analysis of documents and instructions for documents from a variety of free/libre open‐source projects (FLOSS). We present findings consistent with the hypotheses developed as well as results extending beyond our theory‐derived assumptions. When participants have access to the same knowledge, the study suggests that prescriptions about the content of documents become less important compared with prescriptions about the context, provenance, and process of work. The study contributes with a dynamic perspective on communicative practices that consider an often‐uneven distribution of knowledge in virtual collaborations.

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Onboarding software developers and teams in three globally distributed legacy projects: A multi‐case study

Britto

Cruzes

Šmite

et al. 2017

J Software Evolu Process

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Onboarding is the process of supporting new employees regarding their social and performance adjustment to their new job. Software companies have faced challenges with recruitment and onboarding of new team members, and there is no study that investigates it in a holistic way. In this paper, we conducted a multi‐case study to investigate the onboarding of software developers/teams, associated challenges, and areas for further improvement in 3 globally distributed legacy projects. We employed Bauer's model for onboarding to identify the current state of the onboarding strategies employed in each case. We learned that the employed strategies are semi‐formalized. Besides, in projects with multiple sites, some functions are executed locally, and the onboarding outcomes may be hard to control. We also learned that onboarding in legacy projects is especially challenging and that decisions to distribute such projects across multiple locations shall be approached carefully. In our cases, the challenges to learn legacy code were further amplified by the project scale and the distance to the original sources of knowledge. Finally, we identified practices that can be used by companies to increase the chances of being successful when onboarding software developers and teams in globally distributed legacy projects.

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A systematic literature review on the barriers faced by newcomers to open source software projects

Cited by 168 publications

References 12 publications

Non-response, Social Exclusion, and False Acceptance: Gatekeeping Tactics and Usability Work in Free-Libre Open Source Software Development

Non-response, Social Exclusion, and False Acceptance: Gatekeeping Tactics and Usability Work in Free-Libre Open Source Software Development

Documentation and access to knowledge in online communities: Know your audience and write appropriately?

Onboarding software developers and teams in three globally distributed legacy projects: A multi‐case study

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