Magnet or sticky? An OSS project-by-project typology

Kazuhiro Yamashita, Shane McIntosh, Yasutaka Kamei, Naoyasu Ubayashi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

For Open Source Software (OSS) projects, retaining existing contributors and attracting new ones is a major concern. In this paper, we expand and adapt a pair of population migration metrics to analyze migration trends in a collection of open source projects. Namely, we study: (1) project stickiness, i.e., its tendency to retain existing contributors and (2) project magnetism, i.e., its tendency to attract new contributors. Using quadrant plots, we classify projects as attractive (highly magnetic and sticky), stagnant (highly sticky, weakly magnetic), fluctuating (highly magnetic, weakly sticky), or terminal (weakly magnetic and sticky). Through analysis of the MSR challenge dataset, we find that: (1) quadrant plots can effectively identify at-risk projects, (2) stickiness is often motivated by professional activity and (3) transitions among quadrants as a project ages often coincides with interesting events in the evolution history of a project.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Proceedings
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages344-347
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450328630
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 31 2014
Event11th International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Hyderabad, India
Duration: May 31 2014Jun 1 2014

Publication series

Name11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Proceedings

Other

Other11th International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014
Country/TerritoryIndia
CityHyderabad
Period5/31/146/1/14

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Software

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