TY - GEN
T1 - Why do developers take breaks from contributing to OSS projects? A preliminary analysis
AU - Iaffaldano, Giuseppe
AU - Steinmacher, Igor
AU - Calefato, Fabio
AU - Gerosa, Marco
AU - Lanubile, Filippo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Creating a successful and sustainable Open Source Software (OSS) project often depends on the strength and the health of the community behind it. Current literature explains the contributors’ lifecycle, starting with the motivations that drive people to contribute and barriers to joining OSS projects, covering developers’ evolution until they become core members. However, the stages when developers leave the projects are still weakly explored and are not well-defined in existing developers’ lifecycle models. In this position paper, we enrich the knowledge about the leaving stage by identifying sleeping and dead states, representing temporary and permanent brakes that developers take from contributing. We conducted a preliminary set of semi-structured interviews with active developers. We analyzed the answers by focusing on defining and understanding the reasons for the transitions to/from sleeping and dead states. This paper raises new questions that may guide further discussions and research, which may ultimately benefit OSS communities.
AB - Creating a successful and sustainable Open Source Software (OSS) project often depends on the strength and the health of the community behind it. Current literature explains the contributors’ lifecycle, starting with the motivations that drive people to contribute and barriers to joining OSS projects, covering developers’ evolution until they become core members. However, the stages when developers leave the projects are still weakly explored and are not well-defined in existing developers’ lifecycle models. In this position paper, we enrich the knowledge about the leaving stage by identifying sleeping and dead states, representing temporary and permanent brakes that developers take from contributing. We conducted a preliminary set of semi-structured interviews with active developers. We analyzed the answers by focusing on defining and understanding the reasons for the transitions to/from sleeping and dead states. This paper raises new questions that may guide further discussions and research, which may ultimately benefit OSS communities.
KW - Communities
KW - Developers turnover
KW - Open source
KW - Project abandonment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083592142&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/SoHeal.2019.00009
DO - 10.1109/SoHeal.2019.00009
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85083592142
T3 - Proceedings - 2019 IEEE/ACM 2nd International Workshop on Software Health, SoHeal 2019
SP - 9
EP - 16
BT - Proceedings - 2019 IEEE/ACM 2nd International Workshop on Software Health, SoHeal 2019
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 2nd IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Software Health, SoHeal 2019
Y2 - 28 May 2019 through 28 May 2019
ER -