GCR: Collaborative Research: Jumpstarting Successful Open-Source Software Projects With Evidence-Based Rules and Structures

开源软件（OSS）是一个价值数十亿美元的产业。超过80%的企业，包括所有主要的科技公司，都依赖OSS。事实上，这样的软件被用于数字生活的许多方面，例如，浏览社交网站，文档编辑，银行业务，网站托管等。尽管开源的流行吸引了许多程序员，但超过90%的OSS项目被放弃了，尤其是较小和较年轻的项目。之前的研究从两个截然不同的领域研究了这一现象的原因。在软件工程中，重点是从社会技术的角度来理解成功和可持续性：OSS程序员的日常活动和他们创建的工件。另一方面，在组织管理/政策文献中，重点是结构治理的制度设计（例如，政策、规则和规范）。但两者之间的联系和相互作用却很少被探索。在这个项目中，一个由经验数据科学和软件工程、认知科学、政治学和公共政策方面的专家组成的聚合研究团队将开发一个聚合分析框架，该框架将OSS项目的社会技术任务结构与它们的治理和制度设计结合起来，以便了解项目，特别是新生项目，是否有可能成功和自我维持。该团队将专注于非营利组织支持的项目，如Apache软件基金会下的项目，并将在整个项目中积极参与开源社区，以告知研究并探索应用程序和结果。拟议的工作将推进软件工程的理论和实践，特别是因为它涉及到理解OSS项目的成功和有效性，这些目标对国家竞争力至关重要。该项目主要的广泛影响在于它有可能加强一项已经融入社会结构的技术。在这个项目中，融合视角是一个统一的框架，融合了社会技术结构和项目治理。该团队假定，通过已经成功或被放弃的类似项目所提供的上下文，可以在该框架中理解单个OSS项目的轨迹。这项研究将结合已建立的和新颖的定性和定量技术来辨别社会技术结构和治理条件，在这些条件下，OSS项目是最有效的（和最不有效的），并为开发人员提供可操作的知识，为他们的环境定制有效的项目实践。智力上的挑战既存在于这些领域，也存在于这些领域与来自软件工程、管理和政策的零散文献的整合中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Open Source Software (OSS) is a multi-billion dollar industry. Over 80% of businesses, including all major tech companies, rely on OSS. In fact, such software is used in many aspects of digital life, e.g., browsing the social web, document editing, banking, website hosting, etc. Even though this popularity attracts many programmers to open source, more than 90% of OSS projects are abandoned, especially the smaller and younger projects. Prior work has looked at the reasons for this in two very different fields. In software engineering, the focus has been on understanding success and sustainability from the socio-technical perspective: the OSS programmers’ day to day activities and the artifacts they create. In the organizational management/policy literature, on the other hand, emphasis has been on institutional designs (e.g., policies, rules, and norms) that structure governance. But the connection and interaction between the two has been barely explored. In this project, a convergent research team comprised of experts in empirical data science and software engineering, cognitive science, political science, and public policy will develop a convergent analysis framework that unifies the socio-technical task structure of OSS projects with their governance and institutional design, in order to understand if projects, especially nascent ones, are likely to be successful and self-sustaining. The team will focus on nonprofit-supported projects, like those under the Apache Software Foundation, and will actively engage the open-source communities throughout the project, both to inform the research and to explore applications and results. The proposed work will advance the theory and practice of software engineering, especially as it relates to understanding success and effectiveness of OSS projects, goals that are critical to national competitiveness. The primary broader impact of the project lies in its potential to strengthen a technology that has become woven into the fabric of society. In this project, the convergence perspective is a unified framework, fusing the socio-technical structure and project governance. The team posits that trajectories of individual OSS projects can be understood in that framework through the context provided by similar projects that already have succeeded or been abandoned. This research will combine established and novel qualitative and quantitative techniques to discern the socio-technical structural and governance conditions under which OSS projects are most (and least) effective, and provide actionable knowledge to developers, to customize efficient project practices to their environment. The intellectual challenges lie both in these areas as well as in the integration of these with the scattered literature from software engineering, management and policy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.