How commercial involvement affects open source projects:three case studies on issue reporting  

作　　者：MA XiuJuan ZHOU MingHui RIEHLE Dirk 

机构地区：[1]School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science,Peking University [2]Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies,Ministry of Education [3]Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nurnberg

出　　处：《Science China(Information Sciences)》2013年第8期149-161,共13页中国科学（信息科学）（英文版）

基　　金：supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2009CB320703);Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61073016,61121063)

摘　　要：Whereas most research on Internetware has focused on new technologies for keeping track of a changing Internet, little attention has been paid to the software development process. A large portion of the software running the Internet is open source software. Open source software is developed both by volunteers and commercial companies, often jointly. Companies get involved in open source projects for commercial reasons, and bring with them a commercial software development process. Thus, it is important to understand how commercial involvement affects the software development process of open source projects. This article presents case studies of three open source application servers that are being developed jointly by a volunteer community and one primary software company. We are interested in better understanding developer behavior, specifically task distribution and performance, based on whether the developer is an external contributor, e.g., a volunteer working in their spare time, or a commercial developer from inside the primary backing company who is being paid for their time. To achieve this, we look at issue reporting as an example of commercial involvement in open source projects. In particular, we investigate the distribution of tasks among volunteers and commercial developers by studying the source of reported issues and quantify the task performance on user experience via the issue resolution speed. We construct measures based on historical records in issue tracking repositories. Our results show that, with intensified commercial involvement, the majority of issue reporting tasks would be undertaken by commercial developers, and issue resolution time would be reduced, implying a better user expe- rience. We hope our methods and results provide practical insights for designing an efficient hybrid development process in the Internetware environment.Whereas most research on Internetware has focused on new technologies for keeping track of a changing Internet, little attention has been paid to the software development process. A large portion of the software running the Internet is open source software. Open source software is developed both by volunteers and commercial companies, often jointly. Companies get involved in open source projects for commercial reasons, and bring with them a commercial software development process. Thus, it is important to understand how commercial involvement affects the software development process of open source projects. This article presents case studies of three open source application servers that are being developed jointly by a volunteer community and one primary software company. We are interested in better understanding developer behavior, specifically task distribution and performance, based on whether the developer is an external contributor, e.g., a volunteer working in their spare time, or a commercial developer from inside the primary backing company who is being paid for their time. To achieve this, we look at issue reporting as an example of commercial involvement in open source projects. In particular, we investigate the distribution of tasks among volunteers and commercial developers by studying the source of reported issues and quantify the task performance on user experience via the issue resolution speed. We construct measures based on historical records in issue tracking repositories. Our results show that, with intensified commercial involvement, the majority of issue reporting tasks would be undertaken by commercial developers, and issue resolution time would be reduced, implying a better user expe- rience. We hope our methods and results provide practical insights for designing an efficient hybrid development process in the Internetware environment.

关 键 词：open source software development commercial involvement hybrid development contributorparticipation issue reporting 

分 类 号：TP393.09[自动化与计算机技术—计算机应用技术]