TY - CHAP
T1 - Barriers faced by newcomers to open source projects
T2 - A systematic review
AU - Steinmacher, Igor
AU - Silva, Marco Aurélio Graciotto
AU - Gerosa, Marco Aurélio
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - To remain sustainable, some open source projects need a constant influx of new volunteers, or newcomers. However, the newcomers face different kinds of problems when onboarding to a project. In this paper we present the results of a systematic literature review aiming at identifying the barriers that a newcomer can face when contributing to an Open Source Software project. We identified and analyzed 21 studies that evidence this kind of problem. As a result we provide a hierarchical model that relies on five categories of barriers: finding a way to start, social interactions, code issues, documentation problems and newcomers’ knowledge. The most evidenced barriers are newcomers’ previous technical skills, receiving response from community, centrality of social contacts, and finding the appropriate way to start contributing. This classification provides a baseline for further researches related to newcomers onboarding.
AB - To remain sustainable, some open source projects need a constant influx of new volunteers, or newcomers. However, the newcomers face different kinds of problems when onboarding to a project. In this paper we present the results of a systematic literature review aiming at identifying the barriers that a newcomer can face when contributing to an Open Source Software project. We identified and analyzed 21 studies that evidence this kind of problem. As a result we provide a hierarchical model that relies on five categories of barriers: finding a way to start, social interactions, code issues, documentation problems and newcomers’ knowledge. The most evidenced barriers are newcomers’ previous technical skills, receiving response from community, centrality of social contacts, and finding the appropriate way to start contributing. This classification provides a baseline for further researches related to newcomers onboarding.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84912012579&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-55128-4_21
DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-55128-4_21
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:84912012579
T3 - IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology
SP - 153
EP - 163
BT - Open Source Software
A2 - Corral, Luis
A2 - Sillitti, Alberto
A2 - Succi, Giancarlo
A2 - Vlasenko, Jelena
A2 - Wasserman, Anthony I.
PB - Springer New York LLC
ER -