Dynamics of open-source software developer's commit behavior

Ma, Yutao; Wu, Yang; Xu, Youwei

doi:10.1145/2554850.2555079

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Such developers are common in utility-oriented FLOSS which doesn't have an independent community associated with it, such as the Linux system excluding the kernel. Ma et al [75] JBossAS, Apache Geronimo, and JOnAS Some developers took several months off between commits. The median commit interval for inactive committers was 2.4 days, compared to 0.08 days for active committers.…”

Section: Koch Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Periphery: A Qualitative Survey of Episodic Volunteering in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Communities

Barcomb

Kaufmann

Riehle

et al. 2020

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities are composed, in part, of volunteers, many of whom contribute infrequently. However, these infrequent volunteers contribute to the sustainability of FLOSS projects, and should ideally be encouraged to continue participating, even if they cannot be persuaded to contribute regularly. Infrequent contributions are part of a trend which has been widely observed in other sectors of volunteering, where it has been termed "episodic volunteering" (EV). Previous FLOSS research has focused on the Onion model, differentiating core and peripheral developers, with the latter considered as a homogeneous group. We argue this is too simplistic, given the size of the periphery group and the myriad of valuable activities they perform beyond coding. Our exploratory qualitative survey of 13 FLOSS communities investigated what episodic volunteering looks like in a FLOSS context. EV is widespread in FLOSS communities, although not specifically managed. We suggest several recommendations for managing EV based on a framework drawn from the volunteering literature. Also, episodic volunteers make a wide range of value-added contributions other than code, and they should neither be expected nor coerced into becoming habitual volunteers.

show abstract

Section: Koch Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Periphery: A Qualitative Survey of Episodic Volunteering in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Communities

Barcomb

Kaufmann

Riehle

et al. 2020

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Applicability Of Traditional Effort Estimation Techniques To...mentioning

confidence: 82%

Development Effort Estimation in Free/Open Source Software from Activity in Version Control Systems

Robles¹,

Capiluppi²,

González-Barahona³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Effort estimation models are a fundamental tool in software management, and used as a forecast for resources, constraints and costs associated to software development. For Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, effort estimation is especially complex: professional developers work alongside occasional, volunteer developers, so the overall effort (in person-months) becomes non-trivial to determine.The objective of this work it to develop a simple effort estimation model for FOSS projects, based on the historic data of developers' effort. The model is fed with direct developer feedback to ensure its accuracy.After extracting the personal development profiles of several thousands of developers from 6 large FOSS projects, we asked them to fill in a questionnaire to determine if they should be considered as full-time developers in the project that they work in. Their feedback was used to fine-tune the value of an effort threshold, above which developers can be considered as full-time.With the help of the over 1,000 questionnaires received, we were able to determine, for every project in our sample, the threshold of commits that separates full-time from non-full-time developers.We finally offer guidelines and a tool to apply our model to FOSS projects that use a version control system.

show abstract

“…The authors also found that commits follow power laws, with large bursts and long tails. Power laws were again found in 4 Apache projects, when analysing the time interval between commits and files committed (Ma et al 2014). Mockus and Votta (2000) showed that, out of nearly 400 programmers in the Apache project, the 15 most productive ones contributed 88 percent of the total lines of code (LOC).…”

Section: Applicability Of Traditional Effort Estimation Techniques To...mentioning

confidence: 95%

Development effort estimation in free/open source software from activity in version control systems

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Effort estimation models are a fundamental tool in software management, and used as a forecast for resources, constraints and costs associated to software development. For Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, effort estimation is especially complex: professional developers work alongside occasional, volunteer developers, so the overall effort (in person-months) becomes non-trivial to determine. The objective of this work it to develop a simple effort estimation model for FOSS projects, based on the historic data of developers’ effort. The model is fed with direct developer feedback to ensure its accuracy. After extracting the personal development profiles of several thousands of developers from 6 large FOSS projects, we asked them to fill in a questionnaire to determine if they should be considered as full-time developers in the project that they work in. Their feedback was used to fine-tune the value of an effort threshold, above which developers can be considered as full-time. With the help of the over 1,000 questionnaires received, we were able to determine, for every project in our sample, the threshold of commits that separates full-time from non-full-time developers. We finally offer guidelines and a tool to apply our model to FOSS projects that use a version control system.

show abstract

Dynamics of open-source software developer's commit behavior

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

Uncovering the Periphery: A Qualitative Survey of Episodic Volunteering in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Communities

Uncovering the Periphery: A Qualitative Survey of Episodic Volunteering in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Communities

Development Effort Estimation in Free/Open Source Software from Activity in Version Control Systems

Development effort estimation in free/open source software from activity in version control systems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About