Using software analytics to understand how companies interact in free software communities

Free, open source software development communities may become large and complex. They may also be a focus of interest for competing companies relying on their outcomes, with their employees joining the development and maintenance effort. In those cases it is specially important for both companies and communities to understand how this collaboration is working, and how it matches their policies and expectations. In this paper we show two cases (OpenStack and WebKit) which we have studied using analytics techniques on the data obtained from their software development repositories. From them, we conclude that analytics on this data can improve the factual knowledge about how development communities are performing in aspects which are of interest to companies, and fundamental to ensure transparency and fairness.