Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software

The development Open Source Software fundamentally depends on the participation and commitment of volunteer developers to progress on a particular task. Several works have presented strategies to increase the on-boarding and engagement of new contributors, but little is known on how these diverse gr...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Palazzi Nieves, Maria José, Cabot, Jordi, Canovas Izquierdo, Javier Luis, Solé-Ribalta, Albert, Borge-Holthoefer, Javier
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/122666
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10609/122666
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:open source software
open source
código abierto
software de código abierto
codi obert
programari de codi obert
Open source software
Programari lliure
Software libre
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repository_id_str
spelling Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source SoftwarePalazzi Nieves, Maria JoséCabot, JordiCanovas Izquierdo, Javier LuisSolé-Ribalta, AlbertBorge-Holthoefer, Javieropen source softwareopen sourcecódigo abiertosoftware de código abiertocodi obertprogramari de codi obertOpen source softwareProgramari lliureSoftware libreThe development Open Source Software fundamentally depends on the participation and commitment of volunteer developers to progress on a particular task. Several works have presented strategies to increase the on-boarding and engagement of new contributors, but little is known on how these diverse groups of developers self-organise to work together. To understand this, one must consider that, on one hand, platforms like GitHub provide a virtually unlimited development framework: any number of actors can potentially join to contribute in a decentralised, distributed, remote, and asynchronous manner. On the other, however, it seems reasonable that some sort of hierarchy and division of labour must be in place to meet human biological and cognitive limits, and also to achieve some level of efficiency. These latter features (hierarchy and division of labour) should translate into detectable structural arrangements when projects are represented as developer-file bipartite networks. Thus, in this paper we analyse a set of popular open source projects from GitHub, placing the accent on three key properties: nestedness, modularity and in-block nestedness -which typify the emergence of heterogeneities among contributors, the emergence of subgroups of developers working on specific subgroups of files, and a mixture of the two previous, respectively. These analyses show that indeed projects evolve into internally organised blocks. Furthermore, the distribution of sizes of such blocks is bounded, connecting our results to the celebrated Dunbar number both in off- and on-line environments. Our conclusions create a link between bio-cognitive constraints, group formation and online working environments, opening up a rich scenario for future research on (online) work team assembly (e.g. size, composition, and formation). From a complex network perspective, our results pave the way for the study of time-resolved datasets, and the design of suitable models that can mimic the growth and evolution of OSS projects.Scientific ReportsUniversitat Oberta de Catalunya. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)202020202019info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionapplication/pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/10609/122666reponame:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOCinstname:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)InglésScientific Reports, 2019, 9()https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50463-yinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/PGC2018-096999-A-I00//CC BYhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessoai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/1226662026-05-28T12:42:01Z
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
title Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
spellingShingle Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
Palazzi Nieves, Maria José
open source software
open source
código abierto
software de código abierto
codi obert
programari de codi obert
Open source software
Programari lliure
Software libre
title_short Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
title_full Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
title_fullStr Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
title_full_unstemmed Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
title_sort Online division of labour: emergent structures in Open Source Software
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Palazzi Nieves, Maria José
Cabot, Jordi
Canovas Izquierdo, Javier Luis
Solé-Ribalta, Albert
Borge-Holthoefer, Javier
author Palazzi Nieves, Maria José
author_facet Palazzi Nieves, Maria José
Cabot, Jordi
Canovas Izquierdo, Javier Luis
Solé-Ribalta, Albert
Borge-Holthoefer, Javier
author_role author
author2 Cabot, Jordi
Canovas Izquierdo, Javier Luis
Solé-Ribalta, Albert
Borge-Holthoefer, Javier
author2_role author
author
author
author
dc.contributor.none.fl_str_mv Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv open source software
open source
código abierto
software de código abierto
codi obert
programari de codi obert
Open source software
Programari lliure
Software libre
topic open source software
open source
código abierto
software de código abierto
codi obert
programari de codi obert
Open source software
Programari lliure
Software libre
description The development Open Source Software fundamentally depends on the participation and commitment of volunteer developers to progress on a particular task. Several works have presented strategies to increase the on-boarding and engagement of new contributors, but little is known on how these diverse groups of developers self-organise to work together. To understand this, one must consider that, on one hand, platforms like GitHub provide a virtually unlimited development framework: any number of actors can potentially join to contribute in a decentralised, distributed, remote, and asynchronous manner. On the other, however, it seems reasonable that some sort of hierarchy and division of labour must be in place to meet human biological and cognitive limits, and also to achieve some level of efficiency. These latter features (hierarchy and division of labour) should translate into detectable structural arrangements when projects are represented as developer-file bipartite networks. Thus, in this paper we analyse a set of popular open source projects from GitHub, placing the accent on three key properties: nestedness, modularity and in-block nestedness -which typify the emergence of heterogeneities among contributors, the emergence of subgroups of developers working on specific subgroups of files, and a mixture of the two previous, respectively. These analyses show that indeed projects evolve into internally organised blocks. Furthermore, the distribution of sizes of such blocks is bounded, connecting our results to the celebrated Dunbar number both in off- and on-line environments. Our conclusions create a link between bio-cognitive constraints, group formation and online working environments, opening up a rich scenario for future research on (online) work team assembly (e.g. size, composition, and formation). From a complex network perspective, our results pave the way for the study of time-resolved datasets, and the design of suitable models that can mimic the growth and evolution of OSS projects.
publishDate 2019
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2019
2020
2020
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
format article
status_str publishedVersion
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv http://hdl.handle.net/10609/122666
url http://hdl.handle.net/10609/122666
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv Inglés
language_invalid_str_mv Inglés
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv Scientific Reports, 2019, 9()
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50463-y
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/PGC2018-096999-A-I00//
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv CC BY
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv CC BY
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Scientific Reports
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Scientific Reports
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv reponame:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
instname:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
instname_str Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
reponame_str O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
collection O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
repository.name.fl_str_mv
repository.mail.fl_str_mv
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score 15,301629

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