Developer Management in FLOSS Projects - Theoretical Concepts and Empirical Evidence

This dissertation derives new ways and methods on how to integrate and bind developers in Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. It examines how sustainable commitment of new contributors can be identified at an early stage, how developers’ geographic dispersion affects their collaboration productivity, if the presence of reputable developers increases teamwork productivity and if mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projects. To address these research questions, the thesis builds on established theories and concepts from organizational and social science such as Person-Job (P-J) and Person-Team (P-T) fit, the social practice view and self-determination theory. The results of the performed empirical evaluations suggest that: (i) the derived criteria for P-J and P-T fit are suitable to identify sustained commitment early on, (ii) developers’ offline relationships determine if their spatial and cultural distance becomes a gain or a burden for their collaboration, (iii) the presence of reputable developers increases productivity in FLOSS projects only marginally, (iv) mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projectsDiese Dissertation erarbeitet neue Strategien und Methoden, um Entwickler in Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Projekte zu integrieren und langfristig zu binden. Hierzu untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit wie sich die Eignung neuer Entwickler frühzeitig vorhersehen lässt, was für einen Einfluss geographische Distanzen bei der Zusammenarbeit von FLOSS Entwickler haben, ob durch die Anwesenheit namhafter Entwickler die Teamproduktivität steigt und ob Mentoring hilft Entwickler langfristig an FLOSS Projekte zu binden. Für die Bearbeitung dieser Fragen baut die Arbeit auf etablierten Theorien und Konzepten aus der Organisations- und Sozialforschung auf, wie unter anderem dem Person-Job (P-J) und Person-Team (P-T) Fit, der Theorie der sozialen Praxis und der Selbstbestimmungstheorie. Die Ergebnisse der durchgeführten empirischen Untersuchungen zeigen, dass (i) die abgeleiteten Indikatoren zur Bestimmung des P-J und P-T Fit ein geeignetes Kriterium sind, um das langfristige Engagement von Entwicklern zu prognostizieren, (ii) die offline Beziehungen der Entwickler darüber entscheiden ob räumliche und kulturelle Distanz die Zusammenarbeit behindert oder fördert, (iii) die Anwesenheit namhafter Entwickler nur geringfügig die Teamproduktivität erhöht, (iv) Mentoring ein geeignetes Instrument zur Bindung von Entwicklern im Projekt ist

A systematic examination of knowledge loss in open source software projects

Context Open Source Software (OSS) development is a knowledge focused activity which relies heavily on contributors who can be volunteers or paid workers and are geographically distributed. While working on OSS projects contributors acquire project related individualistic knowledge and gain experience and skills, which often remains unshared with others and is usually lost once contributors leave a project. All software development organisations face the problem of knowledge loss as employees leave, but this situation is exasperated in OSS projects where most contributors are volunteers with largely unpredictable engagement durations. Contributor turnover is inevitable due to the transient nature of OSS project workforces causing knowledge loss, which threatens the overall sustainability of OSS projects and impacts negatively on software quality and contributor productivity. Objective The objective of this work is to deeply and systematically investigate the phenomenon of knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects as presented in the state-of-the-art literature and to synthesise the information presented on the topic. Furthermore, based on the learning arising from our investigation it is our intention to identify mechanisms to reduce the overall effects of knowledge loss in OSS projects. Methodology We use the snowballing methodology to identify the relevant literature on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects. This robust methodology for a literature review includes research question, search strategy, inclusion, exclusion, quality criteria, and data synthesis. The search strategy, and inclusion, exclusions and quality criteria are applied as a part of snowballing procedure. Snowballing is considered an efficient and reliable way to conduct a systematic literature review, providing a robust alternative to mechanically searching individual databases for given topics. Result Knowledge sharing in OSS projects is abundant but there is no evidence of a formal strategy or practice to manage knowledge. Due to the dynamic and diverse nature of OSS projects, knowledge management is considered a challenging task and there is a need for a proactive mechanism to share knowledge in the OSS community for knowledge to be reused in the future by the OSS project contributors. From the collection of papers found using snowballing, we consolidated various themes on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects and identified 11 impacts due to knowledge loss in OSS projects, and 10 mitigations to manage with knowledge loss in OSS projects. Conclusion In this paper, we propose future research directions to investigate integration of proactive knowledge retention practices with the existing OSS practices to reduce the current knowledge loss problem. We suggest that there is insufficient attention paid to KM in general in OSS, in particular there would appear to an absence of proactive measures to reduce the potential impact of knowledge loss. We also propose the need for a KM evaluation metric in OSS projects, similar to the ones that evaluate health of online communities, which should help to inform potential consumers of the OSS of the KM status on a project, something that is not existent today

Open Source Software and Performance: A Fit Perspective

Although Open Source Software (OSS) is popular, its continued use in organizations remains an issue, as evidenced by users reporting frequent problems, experiencing hold-ups, and running into implementation and integration issues. Often, it is argued that fit between the person’s task, values and work demands pose challenges for the successful use of OSS. In this context, this study draws on the concepts of task-technology fit and person-organization fit to develop a model to explore how different dimensions of fit interact with each other to influence OSS user’s productivity and innovation performance. Survey data was collected from OSS users to test the proposed model. Results of the analysis show that when there is fit between an individual’s OSS skills and the nature of the task to be performed (demand-ability fit), an OSS user’s productivity performance increases, whereas, his innovation performance decreases. Further, when the organization’s OSS values matches that of the individual user’s (value-based fit), his task productivity decreases. Implications of the results suggest that organizations that intend to use OSS for a long time need to recruit employees keeping in mind the nature of their OSS projects and the demands and priorities of the tasks performed in the organization

Mitigating Turnover with Code Review Recommendation: Balancing Expertise, Workload, and Knowledge Distribution

Developer turnover is inevitable on software projects and leads to knowledge loss, a reduction in productivity, and an increase in defects. Mitigation strategies to deal with turnover tend to disrupt and increase workloads for developers. In this work, we suggest that through code review recommendation we can distribute knowledge and mitigate turnover with minimal impact on the development process. We evaluate review recommenders in the context of ensuring expertise during review, Expertise, reducing the review workload of the core team, CoreWorkload, and reducing the Files at Risk to turnover, FaR. We find that prior work that assigns reviewers based on file ownership concentrates knowledge on a small group of core developers increasing risk of knowledge loss from turnover by up to 65%. We propose learning and retention aware review recommenders that when combined are effective at reducing the risk of turnover by -29% but they unacceptably reduce the overall expertise during reviews by -26%. We develop the Sophia recommender that suggest experts when none of the files under review are hoarded by developers but distributes knowledge when files are at risk. In this way, we are able to simultaneously increase expertise during review with a ΔExpertise of 6%, with a negligible impact on workload of ΔCoreWorkload of 0.09%, and reduce the files at risk by ΔFaR -28%. Sophia is integrated into GitHub pull requests allowing developers to select an appropriate expert or “learner” based on the context of the review. We release the Sophia bot as well as the code and data for replication purposes

Contribution Barriers to Open Source Projects

Contribution barriers are properties of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects that may prevent newcomers from contributing. Contribution barriers can be seen as forces that oppose the motivations of newcomers. While there is extensive research on the motivation of FLOSS developers, little is known about contribution barriers. However, a steady influx of new developers is connected to the success of a FLOSS project. The first part of this thesis adds two surveys to the existing research that target contribution barriers and motivations of newcomers. The first exploratory survey provides the indications to formulate research hypotheses for the second main survey with 117 responses from newcomers in the two FLOSS projects Mozilla and GNOME. The results lead to an assessment of the importance of the identified contribution barriers and to a new model of the joining process that allows the identification of subgroups of newcomers affected by specific contribution barriers. The second part of the thesis uses the pattern concept to externalize knowledge about techniques lowering contribution barriers. This includes a complete categorization of the existing work on FLOSS patterns and the first empirical evaluation of these FLOSS patterns and their relationships. The thesis contains six FLOSS patterns that lower specific important contribution barriers identified in the surveys. Wikis are web-based systems that allow its users to modify the wiki's contents. They found on wiki principles with which they minimize contribution barriers. The last part of the thesis explores whether a wiki, whose content is usually natural text, can also be used for software development. Such a Wiki Development Environment (WikiDE) must fulfill the requirements of both an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and a wiki. The simultaneous compliance of both sets of requirements imposes special challenges. The thesis describes an adapted contribution process supported by an architecture concept that solves these challenges. Two components of a WikiDE are discussed in detail. Each of them helps to lower a contribution barrier. A Proof of Concept (PoC) realization demonstrates the feasibility of the concept

Modeling the Effects of Diversity and Corporations on Participation Dynamics in FLOSS Ecosystems

A multitude of societal issues associated with the development of technology have emerged over the years including, but not limited to: insufficient personnel for maintenance; a lack of accessibility; the spread of harmful tools; and bias and discrimination against marginalized groups. I propose that a systems perspective is necessary to identify potential leverage points in technology production systems to influence them towards increased social good and evaluate their effectiveness for intervention. Toward this end, I conducted a mixed-methods study of a widely-adopted approach in tech production, free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) development. A survey was distributed to elicit responses from FLOSS project contributors to characterize their perceptions of diversity and corporate involvement as they relate to participation decisions and information gathering activities in online platforms. To complement this, an analysis of data from FLOSS projects on GitHub was completed to model participation dynamics. Survey results indicate that contributors attend to information that is used to infer group diversity and information about corporate decision making related to FLOSS systems. Furthermore, the influence of this information on participation decisions varies on the basis of economic needs and sociopolitical beliefs. Analyses of eighteen project ecosystems, with over 9,000 contributors, reveal that projects with no to some corporate involvement generally have broader contributor and user bases than those that are owned by a company. Taken together, these findings suggest that the internal practices of companies involved in FLOSS can be perceived as opaque and controlling which is detrimental to both the expansion of a project\u27s contributor base and for increasing diversity across FLOSS ecosystems. This research highlights the need to differentiate projects on the basis of corporate involvement and community ethos to design appropriate interventions. A set of recommendations and research propositions are offered to improve inclusivity, equity, and sustainability in tech development