Will you come back to contribute? Investigating the inactivity of OSS core developers in GitHub
Will you come back to contribute? Investigating the inactivity of OSS core developers in GitHub
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你会回来贡献吗?
DOI:
10.1007/s10664-021-10012-6
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发表时间:
2022
影响因子:
4.1
通讯作者:
Steinmacher, Igor
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
Calefato, Fabio;Gerosa, Marco Aurélio;Iaffaldano, Giuseppe;Lanubile, Filippo;Steinmacher, Igor
Several Open-Source Software (OSS) projects depend on the continuity of their development communities to remain sustainable. Understanding how developers become inactive or why they take breaks can help communities prevent abandonment and incentivize developers to come back. In this paper, we propose a novel method to identify developers’ inactive periods by analyzing the individual rhythm of contributions to the projects. Using this method, we quantitatively analyze the inactivity of core developers in 18 OSS organizations hosted on GitHub. We also survey core developers to receive their feedback about the identified breaks and transitions. Our results show that our method was effective for identifying developers’ breaks. About 94% of the surveyed core developers agreed with our state model of inactivity; 71% and 79% of them acknowledged their breaks and state transition, respectively. We also show that all core developers take breaks (at least once) and about a half of them (~45%) have completely disengaged from a project for at least one year. We also analyzed the probability of transitions to/from inactivity and found that developers who pause their activity have a ~35 to ~55% chance to return to an active state; yet, if the break lasts for a year or longer, then the probability of resuming activities drops to ~21–26%, with a ~54% chance of complete disengagement. These results may support the creation of policies and mechanisms to make OSS community managers aware of breaks and potential project abandonment.
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DOI:
10.1145/1355238.1355245
发表时间:
2008-04
期刊:
--
影响因子:
--
作者:
T. Hall;Sarah Beecham;J. Verner;David N. Wilson
通讯作者:
T. Hall;Sarah Beecham;J. Verner;David N. Wilson
DOI:
--
发表时间:
2019
期刊:
International Conference on Open Source Systems
影响因子:
--
作者:
Felipe Fronchetti;I. Wiese;G. Pinto;Igor Steinmacher
通讯作者:
Igor Steinmacher
DOI:
--
发表时间:
2018
期刊:
International Conference on Global Software Engineering
影响因子:
--
作者:
J. Bass;Sarah Beecham;M. Razzak;J. Noll
通讯作者:
J. Noll
DOI:
--
发表时间:
2017
期刊:
IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension
影响因子:
--
作者:
Mívian M. Ferreira;M. T. Valente;K. Ferreira
通讯作者:
K. Ferreira
影响因子:
--
作者:
Bianca Trinkenreich;M. Guizani;I. Wiese;A. Sarma;Igor Steinmacher
通讯作者:
Bianca Trinkenreich;M. Guizani;I. Wiese;A. Sarma;Igor Steinmacher