Early Identification of Future Committers in Open Source Software Projects
Early Identification of Future Committers in Open Source Software Projects
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DOI：
10.1109/qsic.2014.30
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发表时间：
2014-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Yasutaka Kamei;M. Ohira;A. Hassan;Naoyasu Ubayashi;Ken-ichi Matsumoto
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作者：
Yasutaka Kamei;M. Ohira;A. Hassan;Naoyasu Ubayashi;Ken-ichi Matsumoto
在开源软件（OSS）项目中存在两种类型的开发人员：1）有权限将编辑后的源代码提交到版本控制系统（Version Control System，简称DRM）的提交者，2）贡献源代码但不能直接提交到DRM的开发人员。为了开发和发展高质量的OSS，项目总是在寻找新的提交者。OSS项目通常会促进强大的开发人员成为提交者。当现有的提交者找到强大的开发人员时，他们会提议将他们提升为提交者角色。延迟提交者晋升可能会导致强大的开发人员离开OSS项目，项目也会失去他们。然而，早期的提交者提升也伴随着它自己的一系列风险（例如，缺乏经验的开发人员）。因此，提交者提升决策对于OSS项目的质量和成功发展至关重要。在本文中，我们研究了两个OSS项目（Eclipse和Firefox）的提交者提升现象。我们发现，未来提交者的活动量高于没有成为提交者的开发人员的活动量。我们还发现，一些开发人员非常迅速地（在几个月内）晋升为提交者角色，而一些开发人员则需要一年多的时间才能成为提交者。最后，我们开发了一个提交者识别模型，以帮助OSS项目识别未来的提交者。
There exists two types of developers in Open Source Software (OSS) projects: 1) Committers who have permission to commit edited source code to the Version Control System (VCS), 2) Developers who contribute source code but cannot commit to the VCS directly. In order to develop and evolve high quality OSS, projects are always in search of new committers. OSS projects often promote strong developers to become committers. When existing committers find strong developers, they propose their promotion to a committer role. Delaying the committer-promotion might lead to strong developers departing from an OSS project and the project losing them. However early committer-promotion comes with its own slew of risks as well (e.g., the promotion of inexperienced developers). Hence, committer-promotion decisions are critical for the quality and successful evolution of OSS projects. In this paper, we examine the committer-promotion phenomena for two OSS projects (Eclipse and Firefox). We find that the amount of activities by future committers was higher than the amount of activities by developers who did not become committers). We also find that some developers are promoted to a committer role very rapidly (within a few month) while some of developers take over one year to become a committer. Finally, we develop a committer-identification model to assist OSS projects identifying future committers.