Open Source Software (OSS) is a major component of our digital infrastructure, yet more than 80% of such projects fail. Seeking less uncertainty, many OSS projects join established software communi- ties, e.g., the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), with established rules and community support to guide projects toward sustainabil- ity. In their nascent stage, ASF projects are incubated in the ASF incubator (ASFI), which provides systematic mentorship toward long-term sustainability. Projects in ASFI eventually conclude their incubation by either graduating, if successful, or retiring, if not.
Time-stamped traces of developer activities are publicly avail- able from ASF, and can be used for monitoring project trajectories toward sustainability. Here we present a web app dashboard tool, APEX, that allows internal and external stakeholders to monitor and explore ASFI project sustainability trajectories, including social and technical networks.
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Cui Bono: Do Open Source Software Incubator Policies and Procedures Benefit the Projects or the Incubator?
Open source software (OSS), a form of Digital or Knowledge Commons, underlies much of the technology that we use in our daily lives. The existence and continuation of OSS relies on the contribution of private resources – personal time, volunteer energy, and effort of numerous actors (e.g., software developers’ time as a common-pool resource) – to public goods, the benefits of which are enjoyed by everyone. Nonprofit organizations such as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) attempt to aid this process by providing various collective services to OSS projects, acting as a second-order actor in the production of the public good. To this end, the ASF Incubator has created policies – essentially rules or norms – that serve to protect its interests and, as they say, increase the sustainability of the projects. Each policy requires investment by ASF (in terms of money or the use of volunteer time) or an incubating project (in terms of taking project personnel time), the benefits of which can accrue to either party. Such policies may impose additional costs on incubating projects, leading to a decreased production of the OSS public good. Using the ASF Incubator policy documents, we construct a dataset that records who – ASF or an incubating project – bears the cost and who enjoys the benefit of each policy and procedure. We can code most policy statements as costing one party and benefiting one party. The distribution of costs and benefits according to party indicates whether the second-order actor is contributing to an increase in the public good and if they are doing so sustainably. Through a two-way ANOVA, we characterize the impact of ASF policies on the production of public goods (OSS). Being a part of ASF imposes some costs on projects, but these costs may make projects more sustainable. Our analysis shows that the distribution of costs and benefits is fairly symmetric between the ASF and incubating projects. Thus, the configuration of policies or the “institutional design” of the ASF could aid in producing the OSS public good by providing services that projects require.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2020900
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10351317
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The international journal of the commons
- Volume:
- 16
- ISSN:
- 1875-0281
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Mentoring has been a subject of study for 50 years. Most studies of mentoring programs evaluate the effect of the program on the participants but do not evaluate if different mentors have different effects on mentees. Open-source software (OSS) is software with a license that allows it to be freely used by other people. Such software has become foundational to the world economy. However, many OSS projects get abandoned by their creators. Various nonprofit organizations have arisen to help OSS projects become sustainable. One of the key services offered by many of these nonprofit organizations is a mentorship program where experienced OSS developers advise nascent projects on how to achieve sustainability. We use data from the Apache Software Foundation Incubator program where 303 mentors have mentored 286 projects, with most mentoring more than one project, to address this question: Is who a project has as a mentor associated with variation in project success? Who a project has as a mentor accounts for 45% of the variation in project outcomes, with some mentors being associated with positive and some with negative outcomes. These mentors could offer insights into how to improve the mentoring program. This result also demonstrates, more broadly, that the nature of specific mentoring relationships may be important to understanding how mentors impact outcomes in other mentoring programs.more » « less
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Open Source Software (OSS) Foundations and projects are investing in creating Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) initiatives. However, little is known about contributors‘ perceptions about the usefulness and success of such initiatives. We aim to close this gap by investigating how contributors perceive the state of D&I in their community. In collaboration with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), we surveyed 600+ OSS contributors and conducted 11 follow-up interviews. We used mixed methods to analyze our data-quantitative analysis of Likert-scale questions and qualitative analysis of open-ended survey question and the interviews to understand contributors‘ perceptions and critiques of the D&I initiative and how to improve it. Our results indicate that the ASF contributors felt that the state of D&I was still lacking, especially regarding gender, seniority, and English proficiency. Regarding the D&I initiative, some participants felt that the effort was unnecessary, while others agreed with the effort but critiqued its implementation. These findings show that D&I initiatives in OSS communities are a good start, but there is room for improvements. Our results can inspire the creation of new and the refinement of current initiatives. Open Source Software (OSS) is widely used in society (e.g., Linux, Chrome, and Firefox), and contributing to these projects helps individuals learn and showcase their skills, so much so that the history of contributions are increasingly being analyzed by hirers. However, the people who contribute to OSS are predominately men (about 90%). This means that women and other minorities lose out on job opportunities and OSS projects lose out on diversity of thought. OSS organizations such as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) promote a variety of initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion (D&I) in their projects, but they are piecemeal and little is known about contributors‘ perceptions about the usefulness and success of these initiatives. Here, we surveyed and interviewed ASF contributors to understand their perceptions about the state of D&I in the ASF and the effectiveness of existing D&I initiatives. Our findings show that individuals who are in the minority face challenges (e.g., stereotyping, lack of peer-network, and representation in decision making) and contributors‘ perceptions of the D&I initiative are a mixed bag, ranging from commending the current efforts to considering them to be “lip service”. These findings suggest that current D&I initiatives in OSS communities are a good start, but much needs be done in terms of creating new successful initiatives and refining current ones.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1176
