Google summer of code: Student motivations and contributions

Abstract

Several open source software (OSS) projects expect to foster newcomers' onboarding and to receive contributions by participating in engagement programs, like Summers of Code. However, there is little empirical evidence showing why students join such programs. In this paper, we study the well-established Google Summer of Code (GSoC), which is a 3-month OSS engagement program that offers stipends and mentors to students willing to contribute to OSS projects. We combined a survey (students and mentors) and interviews (students) to understand what motivates students to enter GSoC. Our results show that students enter GSoC for an enriching experience, not necessarily to become frequent contributors. Our data suggest that, while the stipends are an important motivator, the students participate for work experience and the ability to attach the name of the supporting organization to their resumés. We also discuss practical implications for students, mentors, OSS projects, and Summer of Code programs.

Will You Come Back to Contribute? Investigating the Inactivity of OSS Core Developers in GitHub

“…Such personal reasons concern life events (e.g., child birth, vacation) as well as professional (e.g., new job) and financial changes (e.g., stopped volunteer contribution to focus on a paid job). These reasons for disengagement extend the current literature that focuses on motivations to join and factors that explain longer attachment (Zhou and Mockus, 2012;Silva et al, 2020;Lin et al, 2017;Constantinou and Mens, 2017;Gerosa et al, 2021). We contribute by showing that, in addition to job-related reasons (also reported also by Miller et al (2019)), a non-negligible share of the reasons to leave are related to life-events and change of interest.…”

“…Overall, the studies that model OSS developers' life cycles address how to onboard, remain, and become long-term contributors. Even the motivationrelated literature focuses on what compels developers to join projects (Von Krogh et al, 2003;Hannebauer and Gruhn, 2017;Alexander Hars, 2002;Silva et al, 2020) and remain active (Zhou and Mockus, 2012;Barcomb, 2014;Yamashita et al, 2016). Very little is known about developers' inactive periods and disengagement.…”

GitHub-OSS Fixit: Fixing Bugs at Scale in a Software Engineering Course

“…8https://github.com/google/guice 9https://github.com/alibaba/fastjson 10https://github.com/stefan-niedermann/nextcloud-notes To encourage contributions to OSS, DigitalOcean organized Hacktoberfest 11 where those who submit pull requests on October received free t-shirts but it is not an education-focus program. Similar to GSoC [36], [37], our GitHub-OSS Fixit project focuses on encouraging participate in OSS projects. Our project differs from GSoC because: (1) our project does not require pre-registration which makes it more accessible and easier to incorporate into a classroom setting than GSoC, and (2) GSoC have appointed mentors for giving advice to students, whereas the person who has opened an issue will provide advice due to the need to resolve the issue.…”

Improvement of student’s learning outcomes and motivation with chemical practicum e-module

“…With practicum methods, students' learning motivation and science process skills will be stimulated to become better (Harefa, 2018). The science process skills will influence students 'scientific processes and learning outcomes (Harefa & Suyanti, 2019) as well as students' ability to experiment (Silva et al 2019). Therefore, it is important to stimulate student motivation so that learning outcomes can increase (Muhammad, 2016).…”

“…A student who has a low learning motivation will get low learning outcomes (Muhammad, 2016) because students with low motivation generally have low learning interest ). In addition, learning motivation also influences critical thinking skills, reading ability, understanding of an object, and scientific literacy (Wahyuni et al 2018) and students' experience (Silva et al 2019).…”