@conference {1256, title = {Analyzing Leadership Dynamics in Distributed Group Communication}, booktitle = {2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2010)}, year = {2010}, note = {"Our analysis examines the communication patterns in two FLOSS development projects, Fire and Gaim" "These data were imported into a database to allow automated analysis. The Fire data set includes about 1,800 events in the user email list, 7,800 messages in the developer venues, and 1,300 events in the combined trackers, spanning a period of 54 months. The significantly larger Gaim data set included over 41,000 events in the user forum, over 30,000 events in the developer venues, and about 20,000 events in the trackers, generated over 78 months." "The dynamic network analysis was performed using a scientific workflow tool, Taverna Workbench"}, pages = {1 - 10}, publisher = {IEEE}, organization = {IEEE}, address = {Honolulu, Hawaii, USA}, abstract = {We apply social network analysis (SNA) to examine the dynamics of leadership in distributed groups, specifically Free/Libre Open Source Software development projects, and its relation to group performance. Based on prior work on leadership in distributed groups, we identify leaders with those who make the highest level of contribution to the group and assess the degree of leadership by measuring centralization of communications. We compare the dynamics of leadership in two FLOSS projects, one more and one less effective. We find that in both projects, centralization was higher in developer-oriented communications venues than in user-oriented venues, suggesting higher degrees of leadership in developer venues. However, we do not find a consistent relation between centralization and effectiveness. We suggest that SNA can instead be useful for identifying interesting periods in the history of the project, e.g., periods where the leadership of the project is in transition.}, keywords = {core, DYNAMICS, email, email archives, fire, flossmole, gaim, leadership, mailing list, project success, social network analysis, srda}, isbn = {978-1-4244-5509-6}, doi = {10.1109/HICSS.2010.62}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/07-06-02.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Andrea Wiggins and Howison, James} } @conference {1257, title = {The Importance of Social Network Structure in the Open Source Software Developer Community}, booktitle = {2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences}, year = {2010}, note = {"Using data from the SourceForge Research Data Archive [2, 9] and the new dataset of concurrent versions system (CVS) metadata described in [8]..." (M. Van Antwerp. Studying open source versioning metadata. Master{\textquoteright}s thesis, University of NotreDame, Notre Dame, IN, January 2009) "To measure long-term popularity, we used the SourceForge activity percentile."}, pages = {1 - 10}, publisher = {IEEE}, organization = {IEEE}, address = {Honolulu, Hawaii, USA}, abstract = {This paper outlines the motivations and methods for analyzing the developer network of open source software (OSS) projects. Previous work done by Hinds [5] suggested social network structure was instrumental towards the success of an OSS project, as measured by activity and output. The follow-up paper by Hinds [4] discovered that his hypotheses, based on social network theory and previous research on the importance of subgroup connectedness, were vastly different than the results of his study of over 100 successful OSS projects. He concluded that the social network structure had no significant effect on project success. We outline how his approach disregarded potentially important factors and through a new study evaluate the role of the OSS developer network as it pertains to long-term project popularity. We also present an initial investigation into the adequacy of using the SourceForge activity percentile as a long-term success metric. In contrast with Hinds, we show that previously existing developer-developer ties are an indicator of past and future project popularity.}, keywords = {developers, popularity, project success, social network analysis, sourceforge, srda}, isbn = {978-1-4244-5509-6}, doi = {10.1109/HICSS.2010.385}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/07-06-07.pdf}, author = {Matthew Van Antwerp and Madey, Greg} } @conference {1223, title = {Success and Abandonment in Open Source Commons: Selected Findings from an Empirical Study of Sourceforge.net Projects}, booktitle = {Second International Workshop on Building Sustainable Open Source Communities (OSCOMM 2010)}, year = {2010}, note = {"we utilize data collected from August through October 2006 on 107,747 OSS projects hosted on the open source hosting site Sourceforge.net (SF henceforth). We combined SF project data gathered by the FLOSSmole project (Howison et al., 2006) with other SF data we {\textquotedblleft}crawled{\textquotedblright} ourselves"}, month = {05/2010}, abstract = {Some open source software collaborations are sustained over long periods of time and across several versions of a software product, while others become abandoned even before the first version of the product has been developed. In this study, we identify factors that might be responsible for one or the other of these collaborative trajectories. We examine 107,747 open source software projects hosted on Sourceforge.net in August 2006 using data available through the FLOSSmole Project. We employ Classification and Regression Tree modeling and Random Forests statistical approaches to begin to establish an understanding of how various project attributes, especially physical and community ones, contribute to project success or abandonment. We find that factors associated with success and abandonment differ for projects in the early stage of development (pre-first release) compared to projects that have had a first release, and that product utility, project vision, leadership, and group-size are associated with success in open source collaborations. We also find that successful open source projects exist across all types of software and not simply in areas associated with the open source {\textquotedblleft}movement.{\textquotedblright} Other evidence suggests that Sourceforge.net may play an important role in {\textquotedblleft}intellectual match-making.{\textquotedblright}}, keywords = {abandonment, flossmole, metadata, project failure, project success, sourceforge, time}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/osscomm003.pdf}, author = {Schweik, C. M. and English, R. and Paienjton, Q. and Haire, S.} } @article {Subramaniam:2009:DOS:1480545.1480824, title = {Determinants of open source software project success: A longitudinal study}, journal = {Decis. Support Syst.}, volume = {46}, year = {2009}, month = {January}, pages = {576{\textendash}585}, publisher = {Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands}, abstract = {In this paper, we investigate open source software (OSS) success using longitudinal data on OSS projects. We find that restrictive OSS licenses have an adverse impact on OSS success. On further analysis, restrictive OSS license is found to be negatively associated with developer interest, but is positively associated with the interest of non-developer users and project administrators. We also show that developer and non-developer interest in the OSS project and the project activity levels in any time period significantly affect the project success measures in subsequent time period. The implications of our findings for OSS research and practice are discussed. }, keywords = {contributors, developers, licenses, longitudinal study, Open source project, OSS, project success, restrictive, Software project success}, issn = {0167-9236}, doi = {10.1016/j.dss.2008.10.005}, url = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1480545.1480824}, author = {Subramaniam, Chandrasekar and Sen, Ravi and Nelson, Matthew L.} } @article {10.1109/HICSS.2009.713, title = {Evaluating Longitudinal Success of Open Source Software Projects: A Social Network Perspective}, journal = {2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2009)}, year = {2009}, note = {"We collect data of various OSS projects over an extended period of 13 months and utilize cross-sectional time-series panel data analysis methods..." "we observe and analyze the developers{\textquoteright} interactions through bug, patch, support request, and feature request (BPSF) tracking systems hosted on SourceForge.net" "Three criteria are adopted to select useful projects: projects are selected from top 7000 ranked projects; projects have at least three developers; and there are enough interactions to ensure that each sociomatrix is equal to or larger than 3{\texttimes}3 matrix..."}, pages = {1-10}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA}, abstract = {To date, numerous open source projects are hosted on many online repositories. While some of these projects are active and thriving, some projects are either languishing or showing no development activities at all. This phenomenon thus begs the important question of what are the influential factors that affect the success of open source projects. In a quest to deepen our understanding of the evolution of open source projects, this research aims to analyze the success of open source projects by using the theoretical lens of social network analysis. Based on extensive analyses of data collected from online repositories, we study the impact of the communication patterns of software development teams on the demand and supply outcomes of these projects, while accounting for project-specific characteristics. Using panel data analysis of data over 13 months, we find significant impacts of communication patterns on project outcomes over the long term.}, keywords = {bug tracking system, communication, project success, social network analysis, sourceforge}, isbn = {978-0-7695-3450-3}, doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2009.713}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/09-02-12.pdf}, author = {Jing Wu and Khim Yong Goh} } @article {1235, title = {Open Source Software Adoption: Anatomy of Success and Failure}, journal = {International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes}, volume = {1}, number = {1}, year = {2009}, month = {01/2009}, pages = {1-23}, abstract = {Current estimates suggest widespread adoption of open source software (OSS) in organizations worldwide. However, the problematic nature of OSS adoption is readily evidenced in the fairly frequent reports of problems, unforeseen hold-ups, and outright abandonment of OSS implementation over time. Hibernia Hospital, an Irish public sector organization, have embarked on the adoption of a range of OSS applications over several years, some of which have been successfully deployed and remain in live use within the organisation, whereas others, despite achieving high levels of assimilation over a number of years, have not been ultimately retained in live use in the organization. Using a longitudinal case study, we discuss in depth the deployment process for two OSS applications {\textendash} the desktop application suite whose deployment was unsuccessful ultimately, and the email application which was successfully deployed. To our knowledge, this is the first such in-depth study into successful and unsuccessful OSS implementation.}, keywords = {adoption, project failure, project success}, doi = {10.4018/jossp.2009010101}, author = {Fitzgerald, Brian} } @article {1082, title = {Returns from social capital in open source software networks}, journal = {Journal of Evolutionary Economics}, volume = {19}, year = {2009}, note = {"The data we use in this analysis come from the SourceForge.net Research Data (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame)." "Particularly, our dataset is a sub-sample of 2,962 valid observations over twelve months of projects aimed at developing games{\textquoteright} software. To get this sample, we look at the monthly dumps of data and select all projects that belong to the category of GNU Public License (GPL) [6]. " dependent variable: performance (number of downloads); independent variable: social network ("Here we measure ties among projects through the individuals{\textquoteright} member and contributor roles at projects on the network over time.)}, month = {4/2009}, pages = {277 - 295}, abstract = {Open Source Software projects base their operation on a collaborative structure for knowledge exchange in the form of provision or reception of information, expertise, and feedback on the creation of source code. Here, we address the direction of these knowledge flows among projects throughout social networks and their impact on project success. We identify the roles of membership or contribution that individuals play within projects. We found that connections through contributors who bring their knowledge to the project, improve project success, and that connection through members, who transfer their knowledge towards other projects, enhance project success. Finally, we found that ties through shared membership and contributions hamper project success. The analysis of knowledge flows and their impact on project success imply a translation of returns from investment in social capital, where investment takes the shape of knowledge flows and the returns mean the projects{\textquoteright} diffusion over the network.}, keywords = {contributors, developers, games, gpl, project success, roles, social capital, social network analysis, social networks, sourceforge, srda, teams}, issn = {1432-1386}, doi = {10.1007/s00191-008-0125-5}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Mendez-DuronGarcia.pdf}, author = {M{\'e}ndez-Dur{\'o}n, Rebeca and Garc{\'\i}a, Clara E.} } @article {Crowston:2008, title = {Bug Fixing Practices within Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Teams}, journal = {Journal of Database Management}, volume = {19}, number = {2}, year = {2008}, note = {"Projects to be studied were selected from those hosted on SourceForge, (http://sourceforge.net/)" "we chose projects for which data we need for our analysis are publicly available, meaning a large number of bug reports" "we chose teams with more than 8 developers" "Only 140 projects of SourceForge met the first two requirements in 2002 when we drew our sample" kicq, gaim, phpmyadmin, dynapi "First, we obtained data indica- tive of the effectiveness of each project, such as its level of activity, number of downloads and development status" "we elected to use objective data about the bug- fixing process. Hence, the main source of data about the bug-fixing process was obtained from the archives of the bug tracking system, which is the tool used to support the bug-fixing process"}, pages = {1{\textendash}30}, abstract = {Free/libre open source software (FLOSS, e.g., Linux or Apache) is primarily developed by distributed teams. Developers contribute from around the world and coordinate their activity almost exclusively by means of email and bulletin boards, yet some how profit from the advantages and evade the challenges of distributed software development. In this article we investigate the structure and the coordination practices adopted by development teams during the bug-fixing process, which is considered one of main areas of FLOSS project success. In particular, based on a codification of the messages recorded in the bug tracking system of four projects, we identify the accomplished tasks, the adopted coordination mechanisms, and the role undertaken by both the FLOSS development team and the FLOSS community. We conclude with suggestions for further research.}, keywords = {activity, bug tracker, bug tracking system, coordination, downloads, dynapi, effectiveness, FLOSS, gaim, kicq, phpmyadmin, project success, size, status}, issn = {1063-8016}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CrowstonScozziJDBM2008.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Barbara Scozzi} } @article {Crowston:2006a, title = {Hierarchy and centralization in Free and Open Source Software team communications}, journal = {Knowledge, Technology \& Policy}, volume = {18}, number = {4}, year = {2006}, pages = {65{\textendash}85}, abstract = {Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams provide an interesting and convenient setting for studying distributed work. We begin by answering perhaps the most basic question: what is the social structure of these teams? Based on a social network analysis of interactions represented in 62,110 bug reports from 122 large and active projects, we find that some OSS teams are highly centralized, but contrary to expectation, others are not. Projects are mostly quite hierarchical on four measures of hierarchy, consistent with past research but contrary to the popular image of these projects. Furthermore, we find that the level of centralization is negatively correlated with project size, suggesting that larger projects become more modular. The paper makes a further methodological contribution by identifying appropriate analysis approaches for interaction data. We conclude by sketching directions for future research.}, keywords = {apache, bug fixing, bug tracking, FLOSS, project success, savannah, social network analysis, sourceforge, team size, teams}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CrowstonHierarchyAndCentralization.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Howison, James} } @article {flosswp325, title = {Identifying Knowledge Brokers that Yield Software Engineering Knowledge in OSS Projects}, journal = {Information and Software Technology}, volume = {46}, year = {2006}, note = {Uses the Debian mailing lists "kde", "mentor", and "user". the collection period was from January 2001 to September 2004}, month = {11/2006}, pages = {1025-1033}, abstract = {Much research on open source software development concentrates on developer lists and other software repositories to investigate what motivates professional software developers to participate in open source software projects. Little attention has been paid to individuals who spend valuable time in lists helping participants on some mundane yet vital project activities. Using three Debian lists as a case study we investigate the impact of knowledge brokers and their associated activities in open source projects. Social network analysis was used to visualize how participants are affiliated with the lists. The network topology reveals substantial community participation. The consequence of collaborating in mundane activities for the success of open source software projects is discussed. The direct beneficiaries of this research are in the identification of knowledge experts in open source software projects.}, keywords = {debian, email, email archives, expertise, knowledge sharing, mailing list, project success, social network analysis}, doi = {10.1016/j.infsof.2005.12.019}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/IST-Vol-48-11-2006.pdf}, author = {Sowe, Sulayman K. and Ioannis Stamelos and Lefteris Angelis} } @article {Crowston:2006, title = {Information systems success in Free and Open Source Software development: Theory and measures}, journal = {Software Process{\textendash}Improvement and Practice}, volume = {11}, number = {2}, year = {2006}, note = {"we continue our examination of success measures using data from Sourceforge..." "e chose the number of developers (assessed from the records of the project and from bug fixing logs), bug-fixing time, and popularity (assessed from the number of downloads and viewings of project Web pages, and inclusion in distributions). These measures were chosen because they span the reconsidered FLOSS development process discussed above, including inputs (number of developers), process (speed of bug fixing) and output (popularity)."}, pages = {123{\textendash}148}, abstract = {Information systems success is one of the most widely used dependent variables in information systems (IS) research, but research on Free/Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) often fails to appropriately conceptualize this important concept. In this paper, we reconsider what success means within a FLOSS context. We first review existing models of IS success and success variables used in FLOSS research and assess them for their usefulness, practicality and fit to the FLOSS context. Then, drawing on a theoretical model of group effectiveness in the FLOSS development process, as well as an online discussion group with developers, we present additional concepts that are central to an appropriate understanding of success for FLOSS. In order to examine the practicality and validity of this conceptual scheme, the second half of our paper presents an empirical study that demonstrates its operationalization of the chosen measures and assesses their internal validity. We use data from SourceForge to measure the project{\textquoteright}s effectiveness in team building, the speed of the project at responding to bug reports and the project{\textquoteright}s popularity. We conclude by discussing the implications of this study for our proposed extension of IS success in the context of FLOSS development and highlight future directions for research.}, keywords = {bug fixing, developers, downloads, FLOSS, flossmole, page views, popularity, project success, size, sourceforge, success, team size}, doi = {10.1002/spip.259}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CrowstonHowisonAnnabi2006.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Howison, James and Hala Annabi} } @article {Grewal:2006:LLL:1246148.1246155, title = {Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems}, journal = {Management Science}, volume = {52}, number = {7}, year = {2006}, month = {July}, pages = {1043{\textendash}1056}, publisher = {INFORMS}, address = {Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), Linthicum, Maryland, USA}, abstract = {The community-based model for software development in open source environments is becoming a viable alternative to traditional firm-based models. To better understand the workings of open source environments, we examine the effects of network embeddedness---or the nature of the relationship among projects and developers---on the success of open source projects. We find that considerable heterogeneity exists in the network embeddedness of open source projects and project managers. We use a visual representation of the affiliation network of projects and developers as well as a formal statistical analysis to demonstrate this heterogeneity and to investigate how these structures differ across projects and project managers. Our main results surround the effect of this differential network embeddedness on project success. We find that network embeddedness has strong and significant effects on both technical and commercial success, but that those effects are quite complex. We use latent class regression analysis to show that multiple regimes exist and that some of the effects of network embeddedness are positive under some regimes and negative under others. We use project age and number of page views to provide insights into the direction of the effect of network embeddedness on project success. Our findings show that different aspects of network embeddedness have powerful but subtle effects on project success and suggest that this is a rich environment for further study.}, keywords = {affiliation network, age, developers, latent class analysis, network embeddedness, open source software, page views, perl, project success, registration, sourceforge}, issn = {0025-1909}, doi = {10.1287/mnsc.1060.0550}, url = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1246148.1246155}, author = {Grewal, Rajdeep and Lilien, Gary L. and Mallapragada, Girish} } @article {1079, title = {Are All Open Source Projects Created Equal? Understanding the Sustainability of Open Source Software Development Model}, journal = {AMCIS 2005 Proceedings}, number = {435}, year = {2005}, note = {uses first 300 most active projects on Sourceforge: {\textquoteright}Our data sample consists of 300 open source software development projects hosted in the Sourceforge.Net. They are the first 300 active projects ranked by Sourceforge.Net....Our dependent variable in the model to measure the success of the projects is the number of downloads. It is an essential variable to show how successful the project is. Generally, more number of downloads means a more successful project. Independent variables include: development status, project lifespan, number of developers, number of messages in the forums, number of mailing list, number of bug report, number of patch report, number of CVS report, number of file releases and also number of news release."}, abstract = {A very intriguing question in Open Source software (OSS) development is: why there are only a few open source projects succeed, while the majority of projects never do. In this research, we examine the factors that may influence the performance of OSS projects. We particularly focus on the OSS{\textquoteright}s core developers{\textquoteright} role in the project{\textquoteright}s success. Extant research has yet to distinguish core developers and non-core developers from the community at large. The different roles of the core developers and non-core developers in OSS projects{\textquoteright} success still remain unclear. Our research contributes to the literature by separating the core developers from the development forces in general and empirically examining the core developers{\textquoteright} importance. Drawing the evidences from our extensive dataset of 300 open source projects, we demonstrated that core developers{\textquoteright} leadership and project advocation are crucial in determining the fate of the OSS projects. Our research could provide better understanding of OSS sustainability. It could also give practical advice to the OSS community on how to make the project successful.}, keywords = {contributors, core, developers, downloads, metadata, project success, sourceforge}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/LongYuan.pdf}, author = {Long, J. and Yuan, M.J.} } @proceedings {citeulike:3052508, title = {Development Success in Open Source Software Projects: Exploring the Impact of Copylefted Licenses}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Copyleft prevents the source code of open source software (OSS) from being privately appropriated. The ethos of the OSS movement suggests that volunteer developers may particularly value and contribute to copylefted projects. Based on social movement theory, we hypothesized that copylefted OSS projects are more likely than non-copylefted OSS projects to succeed in the development process, in terms of two key indicators: developer membership and developer productivity. We performed an exploratory study using data from 62 relevant OSS projects spanning an average of three years of development time. We found that copylefted projects were associated with higher developer membership and productivity. This is the first study to empirically test the relationship between copylefted licenses and OSS project success. Implications for OSS project initiators as well as future research directions are discussed.}, keywords = {contributions, copyleft, developer, developers, membership, productivity, project success, success}, url = {http://aisel.isworld.org/password.asp?Vpath=AMCIS/2005\&\#38;PDFpath=OSSDAU01-1167.pdf}, author = {Colazo, Jorge A. and Fang, Yulin and Neufeld, Derrick J.} } @article {1077, title = {Profiling an Open Source Project Ecology and Its Programmers}, journal = {Electronic Markets}, volume = {14}, year = {2004}, month = {6/2004}, pages = {77 - 88}, abstract = {While many successful and well-known open source projects produce output of high quality, a general assessment of this development paradigm is still missing. In this paper, an online community of both small and large, successful and failed projects and their programmers is analysed mainly using the version-control data of each project, also according to their productivity and estimation of expended effort. As the results show, there are indeed significant differences between this cooperative development model and the commercial organization of work in the areas explored. Both open source software projects in their size and their programmers{\textquoteright} effort differ significantly, and the evolution of projects{\textquoteright} size over time seems in part to contradict the laws of software evolution proposed for commercial systems. Both the inequality of effort distribution between programmers and an increasing number of developers in a project do not lead to a decrease in productivity, opposing Brooks{\textquoteright}s Law. Effort estimation based on the COCOMO model for commercial organizations shows a large amount of effort expended for the projects, while a more general Norden-Rayleigh modeling shows a distinctly smaller expenditure. This proposes that either a highly efficient development is achieved by this self-organizing cooperative and highly decentralized form of work, or that the participation of users besides programming tasks is enormous and constitutes an economic factor of large proportions. }, keywords = {affiliation network, brooks law, cocomo, effort estimation, evolution, productivity, project success, scm, size, time, version control}, issn = {1422-8890}, doi = {10.1080/10196780410001675031}, author = {Koch, Stefan} } @conference {flosswp180, title = {Towards a Portfolio of FLOSS project Success Measures}, booktitle = {Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering, International Conference on Software Engineering}, year = {2004}, month = {May}, abstract = {Project success is one of the most widely used dependent variables in information systems research. However, conventional measures of project success are difficult to apply to Free/Libre Open Source Software projects. In this paper, we present an analysis of four measures of success applied to SourceForge projects: number of members of the extended development community, project activity, bug fixing time and number of downloads. We argue that these four measures provide different insights into the collaboration and control mechanisms of the projects.}, keywords = {bug fixing, developers, downloads, project success, sourceforge, team, team size}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/crowston04towards.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Hala Annabi and Howison, James and Chengetai Masango} } @conference {DBLP:conf/csmr/CapiluppiLM03, title = {Characteristics of Open Source Projects}, booktitle = {7th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR{\textquoteright}03)}, year = {2003}, note = {"We analyze a sample of around 400 projects from a popular OS project repository. " no pdf to confirm what projects these are or what the repository is.[ms]}, pages = {317-}, abstract = {Most empirical studies about Open Source (OS)projects or products are vertical and usually deal with the flagship, successful projects. There is a substantial lack of horizontal studies to shed light on the whole population of projects, including failures. This paper presents a horizontal study aimed at characterizing OS projects. We analyze a sample of around 400 projects from a popular OS project repository. Each project is characterized by a number of attributes. We analyze these attributes statically and over time. The main results show that few projects are capable of attracting a meaningful community of developers. The majority of projects is made by few (in many cases one) person with a very slow pace of evolution.}, keywords = {evolution, project success, repository}, author = {Capiluppi, Andrea and Patricia Lago and Maurizio Morisio} } @conference {DBLP:conf/pakdd/ChawlaAD03, title = {Mining Open Source Software (OSS) Data Using Association Rules Network}, booktitle = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science }, volume = {2637}, year = {2003}, pages = {461-466}, abstract = {The Open Source Software(OSS) movement has attracted considerable attention in the last few years. In this paper we report our results of mining data acquired from SourceForge.net, the largest open source software hosting website. In the process we introduce Association Rules Network(ARN), a (hyper)graphical model to represent a special class of association rules. Using ARNs we discover important relationships between the attributes of successful OSS projects. We verify and validate these relationships using Factor Analysis, a classical statistical technique related to Singular Value Decomposition(SVD).}, keywords = {arn, association rules, factor analysis, project success, sourceforge, svd}, author = {Sanjay Chawla and Bavani Arunasalam and Joseph G. Davis} } @conference {Wynn03organizationalstructure, title = {Organizational Structure of Open Source Projects: A Life Cycle Approach}, booktitle = {Proceedings of 7th Annual Conference of the Southern Association for Information Systems}, year = {2003}, note = {"The three graphs in Figure 2 below were taken from smoothed download counts for existing open source projects on Sourceforge.net" "A random sample of 150 open source projects will be taken from data provided by Sourceforge.net. Each project will be evaluated to determine their current life cycle stage (where possible) using download counts. Next, the project admins, developers, and several identifiable users for each evaluated project will be contacted via email to request completing a brief questionnaire to measure the current focus of the project, formal structure, division of labor, leader role, coordination, level of commitment, user success, and developer success. "}, abstract = {The structure of open source project communities is discussed in relation to the organizational life cycle. In lieu of sales figures, the download counts for each project are used to identify the life cycle stage of a random sample of open source projects. A research model is proposed that attempts to measure the fit between the life cycle stage and the specific organizational characteristics of these projects (focus, division of labor, role of the leader, level of commitment, and coordination/control) as an indicator of the success of a project as measured by the satisfaction and involvement of both developers and users.}, keywords = {division of labor, downloads, growth, interview, leadership, life cycle, lifecycle, project success, roles, sourceforge, Survey}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/wynn2004.pdf}, author = {Donald E. Wynn} } @article {65, title = {Analyzing cloning evolution in the Linux kernel}, journal = {Information and Software Technology}, volume = {44}, number = {13}, year = {2002}, pages = {755-765}, abstract = {Identifying code duplication in large multi-platform software systems is a challenging problem. This is due to a variety of reasons including the presence of high-level programming languages and structures interleaved with hardware-dependent low-level resources and assembler code, the use of GUI-based configuration scripts generating commands to compile the system, and the extremely high number of possible different configurations. This paper studies the extent and the evolution of code duplications in the Linux kernel. Linux is a large, multi-platform software system; it is based on the Open Source concept, and so there are no obstacles in discussing its implementation. In addition, it is decidedly too large to be examined manually: the current Linux kernel release (2.4.18) is about three million LOCs. Nineteen releases, from 2.4.0 to 2.4.18, were processed and analyzed, identifying code duplication among Linux subsystems by means of a metric-based approach. The obtained results support the hypothesis that the Linux system does not contain a relevant fraction of code duplication. Furthermore, code duplication tends to remain stable across releases, thus suggesting a fairly stable structure, evolving smoothly without any evidence of degradation. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.}, keywords = {cvs, kernel, lines of code, linux, loc, project success, source code}, url = {web.soccerlab.polymtl.ca/~antoniol/publications/.../infsoft2002.pdf}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/infsoft2002.pdf}, author = {Antoniol, G. and Villano, U. and Merlo, E. and Di Penta, M.} } @article {flosswp40, title = {Cave or Community? An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects}, journal = {First Monday}, volume = {7}, number = {6}, year = {2002}, note = {The author conducts an empirical study of the top 100 mature projects on SourceForge.net to develop an understanding of the F/OSS community. The author sought empirical evidence that would help us understand which is more common- the cave (i.e., lone producer) or the community in F/OSS development. Some key findings include: first, most F/OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. Second, most OSS programs do not generate a lot of discussion. Third, products with more developers tend to be viewed and downloaded more often. Fourth, the number of developers associated with a project is unrelated to the age of the project.}, month = {06/2002}, abstract = {Starting with Eric Raymond{\textquoteright}s groundbreaking work, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", open-source software (OSS) has commonly been regarded as work produced by a community of developers. Yet, given the nature of software programs, one also hears of developers with no lives that work very hard to achieve great product results. In this paper, I sought empirical evidence that would help us understand which is more common - the cave (i.e., lone producer) or the community. Based on a study of the top 100 mature products on Sourceforge, I find a few surprising things. First, most OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. The median number of developers in the 100 projects I looked at was 4 and the mode was 1 - numbers much lower than previous numbers reported for highly successful projects! Second, most OSS programs do not generate a lot of discussion. Third, products with more developers tend to be viewed and downloaded more often. Fourth, the number of developers associated with a project was positively correlated to the age of the project. Fifth, the larger the project, the smaller the percent of project administrators.}, keywords = {age, contributors, developers, project success, registration, sourceforge}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/krishnamurthy.pdf}, author = {Sandeep Krishnamurthy} } @conference {1153, title = {Characterizing the OSS process}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd ICSE Workshop on Open Source}, year = {2002}, note = {"We have considered two well-known Open Source portals (FreshMeat [1] and SourceForge [2] )." "Using pseudo-random sampling we have selected a sample of 400 projects (mostly from FreshMeat). Each project is described by several variables (programming language, type of license, size of source code, type of documentation available and others). By indirect means (analysis of the Changelog file, or CVS) it is also possible to compute the number of people working on the project, and the number of external contributors. From FreshMeat we get both a vitality index, that considers the number of releases per time period, and a popularity index, which is a first measure of the interest of users to the project (project URL hits, mixed with subscriptions to it)."}, abstract = {The Open Source model of software development has gained the attention of both the business, the practitioners{\textquoteright} and the research communities. The Open Source process has been described by the seminal paper by Eric Raymond [4] and [5]. However, sound empirical studies are still very limited [3], [6]. Our goal is to investigate the OS process by empirical means, to analyze, characterize it, and possibly model it with quantitative models. It should be noted that the Open Source process provides open process and product data, and therefore is a rare opportunity for empirical research. Our initial research focus is on the characterization of the process, starting from the evolution of OS projects. In traditional projects, a significant number of releases in a short time is usually considered an instability factor [7] and [8], while in the OSS community, it is an evidence of vitality, shows the commitment of the authors and the power of attraction of other programmers [9]. Is it possible to characterize the vitality of projects? And, can vitality be traced to some other characteristics of a project?}, keywords = {bugs, change log, classification, cvs, downloads, freshmeat, metadata, patches, popularity, project success, release history, sourceforge, vitality}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CapiluppiLagoMorisio.pdf}, author = {Capiluppi, Andrea and Patricia Lago and Maurizio Morisio} } @conference {stewart2002an-explorat, title = {An Exploratory Study of Factors Influencing the Level of Vitality and Popularity of Open Source Projects}, booktitle = {ICIS 2002. Proceedings of International Conference on Information Systems 2002}, year = {2002}, note = {"We are currently tracking publicly available data on 240 open source projects registered on the freshmeat Website." "First, we randomly selected a total of 120 projects from the utilities, software development, and games and entertainment areas. We then selected 120 projects from these forums that had been registered on the site during the two weeks prior to the start of our data collection effort."}, month = {2002}, pages = {1-5}, abstract = {In this research, we ask the question: What differentiates successful from unsuccessful open source software projects? Using a sample of 240 open source projects, we examine how organizational sponsorship, target audience (developer versus end user), license choice, and development status interact over time to influence the extent to which open source software projects attract user attention and developer activity.}, keywords = {activity, audience, developers, freshmeat, license analysis, licenses, organizational sponsorship, project success, roles, status, target audience, users}, author = {Stewart, Katherine J. and Ammeter, Tony} } @article {flosswp59, title = {Open Source Software Projects as Virtual Organizations: Competency Rallying for Software Development}, journal = {IEE Proceedings Software}, volume = {149}, number = {1}, year = {2002}, pages = {3{\textendash}17}, abstract = {The contribution of this paper is the identification and testing of factors important for the success of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. We present an analysis of OSS communities as virtual organizations and apply Katzy and Crowston{\textquoteright}s (2000) competency rallying (CR) theory to the case of OSS development projects. CR theory suggests that project participants must develop necessary competencies, identify and understand market opportunities, marshal competencies to meet the opportunity and manage a short-term cooperative process. Using data collected from 7477 OSS projects hosted by the SourceForge system (http://sourceforge.net/), we formulate and test a set of specific hypotheses derived from CR theory.}, keywords = {competencies, competency rallying, coordination, project success, sourceforge, virtual organizations}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/crowston.pdf}, author = {Kevin Crowston and Barbara Scozzi} } @conference {1136, title = {Configuration Management for Open Source Software}, booktitle = {1st Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering at ICSE 2001}, year = {2001}, month = {05/2001}, abstract = {Open Source Software (OSS) projects have a seemingly anarchistic way of organising projects and a set-up (many, distributed developers) that is usually considered difficult to handle within the field of configuration management. Still they manage to produce software that is of at least as high a quality as that produced by Conventional Software Development (CSD) projects. We have investigated more closely what they actually do, and why they are so successful. The goal of the study was to describe their underlying configuration management process, thereby making it explicit, so it can be followed in case others (like commercial companies) want to start an OSS project or a project having similar characteristics. We also analysed to what extent their success is due to a good process, good tools or simply to outstanding people participating in OSS projects. Based on this, lessons could be learned from OSS and possible transferred to conventional ways of developing software. We interviewed key people from three OSS projects (KDE, Mozilla and Linux) to obtain data for our study.}, keywords = {configuration management, interviews, project success}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/asklundbendix.pdf}, author = {Asklund, U. and Bendix, L.} }