Let’s Talk Open-Source — An Analysis of Conference Talks and Community Dynamics

kaestner@cs.cmu.edu (K. Truong)
Tue, 31 May 2022 12:28:28 GMT

Kimberly Truong. Let’s Talk Open-Source — An Analysis of Conference Talks and Community Dynamics. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering (Companion) (ICSE-SRC), pages 322--324, New York, NY: ACM Press, 2022. ICSE student research competition, first place.

Open-source software has integrated itself into our daily lives, impacting 78% of US companies in 2015. Past studies of open-source community dynamics have found motivations behind contributions and the significance of community engagement, but there are still many aspects not well understood. There’s a direct correlation between the success of an open-source project and the social interactions within its community. Most projects depend on a small group. A study by Avelino et al. on the 133 most popular GitHub projects found that 86% will fail if one or two of its core contributors leave. To sustain open-source, we need to better understand how contributors interact, what infor- mation is shared, and what concerns practitioners have. We study common topics, how these have changed over time (2011 - 2021), and what social issues have appeared within open-source commu- nities. Our research is guided by the following questions: (1) How is open-source changing/evolving? (2) What changes do practitioners believe are necessary for open-source to be sustainable? ...