Network analysis on the coordination between developers and source code in anopen source software community

Abstract

Abstract: Because of the voluntarily participation and open service, Open Source Software (OSS) community has attracted more and more developers to make contributions, however its coordination is still a big problem. The coordination of developers and source code are studied. By the meta-network analysis, the total amount of commitment to the source code repository could be regarded as the measure to observe the success of an OSS project, and this index is highly related to the dependency network of committers and modules. The data from CVS repository in sourceforge. net is used to construct a dependency network, and the impact of coordination in a dependency network on project success is examined to align with five coordination criteria: intermediation, hierarchization, marginalization, consistency, and adjacency. It could help developers to reduce the transaction cost and efficiently manage coordination during software development in an OSS community.

Key words: coordination, meta-network analysis, social network analysis, OSS, source code repository, interaction between person and task

CLC Number:

C931

Wu Jiang, Hu Bin, Zhang Jinlong. Network analysis on the coordination between developers and source code in anopen source software community[J]. Science Research Management, 2011, 32(8): 133-141,150.

References

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