What is it about?
We examined the interaction between developers in bug reports for 122 large and active free and open source software (FLOSS) projects. We found that some OSS teams are highly centralized, meaning that just a few developers are involved in many bug reports and most are involved in just a few. Contrary to expectation, others appear not to be. Larger projects in particular appeared to be less centralized.
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Why is it important?
The paper provides clear evidence that projects are mostly quite hierarchical (on four measures of hierarchy), which is consistent with past research but contrary to the popular image of FLOSS projects as being democratic or open to all.
Perspectives
This paper in some ways hasn't stood the test of time. The main finding that many projects are centralized is still valid and important. However, a limitation of the analysis was not considering the temporal dimension, which affects the finding that some projects appear decentralized. It could be that these projects have different central players in different periods, meaning that they are centralized at any given point in time and only appear decentralized when those periods are collapsed into one network. Readers should definitely consult [1] before trying a similar analysis. [1] Howison, J., Crowston, K., & Wiggins, A.. (2011). Validity issues in the use of social network analysis with digital trace data. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 12(12). doi: 10.5281/zenodo.913303
Kevin Crowston
Syracuse University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hierarchy and centralization in free and open source software team communications, Knowledge Technology & Policy, December 2006, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s12130-006-1004-8.
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