Evaluating an assistant for creating bug report assignment recommenders

Software development projects receive many change requests each day and each report must be examined to decide how the request will be handled by the project. One decision that is frequently made is to which software developer to assign the change request. Efforts have been made toward semi automating this decision,with most approaches using machine learning algorithms. However, using machine learning to create an assignment recommender is a complex process that must be tailored to each individual software development project. The Creation Assistant for Easy Assignment (CASEA) tool leverages a project member’s knowledge for creating an assignment recommender. This paper presents the results of a user study using CASEA. The user study shows that users with limited project knowledge can quickly create accurate bug report assignment recommenders.Ye

Evolutionary success of open source software: an investigation into exogenous drivers

The “success” of a Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) project has often been evaluated through the number of commits made to its configuration management system, number of developers and number of users. Based on SourceForge, most studies have concluded that the vast majority of projects are failures. This paper argues that the relative success of a FLOSS project can depend also on the chosen forge and distribution. Given a random sample of 50 projects contained within a popular FLOSS forge (Debian, which is the basis of the successful Debian distribution), we compare these with a similar sample from SourceForge, using product and process metrics, such as size achieved and number of developers involved. The results show firstly that, depending on the forge of FLOSS projects, researchers can draw different conclusions regarding what constitutes a successful FLOSS project. Secondly, the projects included in the Debian distribution benefit, on average, from more evolutionary activity and more developers than the comparable projects on SourceForge. Finally, the Debian projects start to benefit from more activity and more developers from the point at which they join this distribution

A feedback based quality assessment to support open source software evolution: the GRASS case study

Abstrac

Sustainable assessment of learning experiences based on projects

In a project-based learning experience, the detailed monitoring of the activities in which team members participate can be useful to evaluate their work. Using learning-oriented assessment procedures, supervisors can assess the teamwork abilities with a formative purpose. Evaluation strategies such as self-assessment, peer assessment and co-assessment are often used to make evaluation formative and sustainable. Conducting an assessment strategy is not easy for team members, since they need before to have a reasonable understanding of the evaluation process and criteria. This paper describes a learning-oriented evaluation methodology and an open data framework that can be applied to collaborative project settings. An evaluation rubric and a series of indicators that provide evidences about the developed skills have been elaborated and applied in a small-scale project-based course. Projects were managed and developed with the help of an open source software forge that contains a ticketing tool for planning and tracking of tasks, a version control repository to save the software outcomes, and using a wiki to host text deliverables. The experience provides evidences in favor of using the assessment method and open data framework to make teamwork evaluation more sustainable.En las experiencias de aprendizaje basadas en proyectos, la monitorización detallada de las actividades de los miembros de cada equipo puede resultar de utilidad para la evaluación de su trabajo. Mediante procedimientos de evaluación, los supervisores pueden evaluar las capacidades de trabajo en equipo con una finalidad formativa. Suelen aplicarse estrategias como la auto-evaluación, la evaluación entre iguales y la co-evaluación para hacer que la evaluación formativa sea sostenible. Seguir una estrategia de evaluación no es siempre sencillo para los miembros de los equipos, pues necesitan un conocimiento razonable del proceso y los criterios de evaluación. Este artículo describe una metodología de evaluación orientada al aprendizaje y un framework software de datos abiertos aplicable a la evaluación de proyectos de desarrollo colaborativo. Se han elaborado una rúbrica y una serie de indicadores que proporcionan evidencias sobre las habilidades y, posteriormente, se han aplicado a un curso basado en proyectos de pequeña escala. Los proyectos se gestionaron y ejecutaron con la ayuda de una forja de software libre que incluye una herramienta de gestión de tareas para la planificación y el seguimiento, un repositorio de control de versiones para almacenar el software entregable y una wiki para almacenar los entregables textuales. La experiencia ha proporcionado evidencias a favor del método de evaluación y el framework de datos abiertos para hacer la evaluación del trabajo en equipo más sostenible

Actas de las IV Jornadas Andaluzas de Software Libre

Actas de las IV Jornadas Andaluzas en Software Libre. Escuela Politécnica Superior de Algeciras, 200

Three essays on problem-solving in collaborative open productions

The term “open production” is frequently used to describe production systems that rely on volunteer participants who are willing to participate, produce, and bear private costs in order to provide a public good. Examples of open production are becoming increasingly common in many industries. What make these productions possible? How may they be sustained in a world of organizations in which the evolutionary products of economic selection are elaborate hierarchical forms of organization? One way to address these questions is to look at how open productions solve problems that are common to all production organizations such as, for example, problems in the division of labor, allocation of tasks, collaboration, coordination, and maintaining balance between inducement and contributions. Under the conditions of extreme decentralization that are the defining feature of open productions, this approach implies a detailed observation of individual problem solving practices. This is the approach I develop in my dissertation. Unlike much of the prior literature on open productions, I deemphasize motivational elements, status-seeking motives, and allocation of property rights issues. I focus instead on actual work practices as revealed by the day-by-day problem solving activities that qualify open productions projects as production organizations despite the absence of formal contractual arrangements to regulate principal-agent relations. What my work adds to the extensive, informative, and well-developed discipline-based explanations that are currently available, is a focus on the emergence of micro-organizational mechanisms through which problem assignment (Chapter 2), problem resolution (Chapter 3), and sustained participation (Chapter 4) are obtained in open productions. In my essays, I draw from organizational sociology and the behavioral theory of the firm to specify models that relate individual problem-solving activities to structured patterns of action through emergent work practices. In the models that I specify and test, I emphasize processes of attention allocation (Chapter 2), repeated collaboration and group diversity (Chapter 3) and identity construction (Chapter 4) as central to our understanding of the dynamics of problem-solving in organizations. One element of novelty in my study is that my research design makes these work practices directly observable at a level of detail, completeness, and precision that was inaccessible in the past. To illustrate the empirical value of the view that I develop I examine problem-solving activities – i.e., bug fixing and code production – within two Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) projects during their entire life span. Readers of my work will know more about how organizational micro-mechanisms emerge in open productions