Open source is experiencing a renaissance period, due to the appearance of modern platforms and workflows for developing and maintaining public code. As a result, developers are creating open source software at speeds never seen before. Consequently, these projects are also facing unprecedented mortality rates. To better understand the reasons for the failure of modern open source projects, this paper describes the results of a survey with the maintainers of 104 popular GitHub systems that have been deprecated. We provide a set of nine reasons for the failure of these open source projects. We also show that some maintenance practices---specifically the adoption of contributing guidelines and continuous integration---have an important association with a project failure or success. Finally, we discuss and reveal the principal strategies developers have tried to overcome the failure of the studied projects.
Ye and Kishida @cite_3 describe a study to understand what motivates developers to engage in open source development. Using as case study the GIMP project (GNU Image Manipulation Program) they argue that learning is the major driving force that motivates people to get involved in open source projects. However, we do not known if this find applies to the new generation of open source systems, developed using platforms as GitHub. Eghbal @cite_11 reports on the risks and challenges to maintain modern open source projects. She argues that open source plays a key role in the digital infrastructure that sustain our society today. But unlike physical infrastructure, like bridges and roads, open source still lacks a reliable and sustainable source of funding. concluded that nearly two-thirds of a sample of 133 popular GitHub projects depend on one or two developers to survive @cite_17 .
@cite_17 @cite_3 @cite_11
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Open source is experiencing a renaissance period, due to the appearance of modern platforms and workflows for developing and maintaining public code. As a result, developers are creating open source software at speeds never seen before. Consequently, these projects are also facing unprecedented mortality rates. To better understand the reasons for the failure of modern open source projects, this paper describes the results of a survey with the maintainers of 104 popular GitHub systems that have been deprecated. We provide a set of nine reasons for the failure of these open source projects. We also show that some maintenance practices---specifically the adoption of contributing guidelines and continuous integration---have an important association with a project failure or success. Finally, we discuss and reveal the principal strategies developers have tried to overcome the failure of the studied projects. The success of the Linux operating system has demonstrated the viability of an alternative form of software development: open source software, which challenges traditional assumptions about software markets. Understanding what drives open source developers to participate in open source projects is crucial for assessing the impact of open source software. The article identifies two broad types of motivations that account for their participation in open source projects. The first category includes internal factors such as intrinsic motivation and altruism, and the second category focuses on external rewards such as expected future returns and personal needs. The article also reports the results of a survey administered to open source programmers. Display Omitted ContextNumerous open source software projects are based on volunteers collaboration and require a continuous influx of newcomers for their continuity. Newcomers face barriers that can lead them to give up. These barriers hinder both developers willing to make a single contribution and those willing to become a project member. ObjectiveThis study aims to identify and classify the barriers that newcomers face when contributing to open source software projects. MethodWe conducted a systematic literature review of papers reporting empirical evidence regarding the barriers that newcomers face when contributing to open source software (OSS) projects. We retrieved 291 studies by querying 4 digital libraries. Twenty studies were identified as primary. We performed a backward snowballing approach, and searched for other papers published by the authors of the selected papers to identify potential studies. Then, we used a coding approach inspired by open coding and axial coding procedures from Grounded Theory to categorize the barriers reported by the selected studies. ResultsWe identified 20 studies providing empirical evidence of barriers faced by newcomers to OSS projects while making a contribution. From the analysis, we identified 15 different barriers, which we grouped into five categories: social interaction, newcomers' previous knowledge, finding a way to start, documentation, and technical hurdles. We also classified the problems with regard to their origin: newcomers, community, or product. ConclusionThe results are useful to researchers and OSS practitioners willing to investigate or to implement tools to support newcomers. We mapped technical and non-technical barriers that hinder newcomers' first contributions. The most evidenced barriers are related to socialization, appearing in 75 (15 out of 20) of the studies analyzed, with a high focus on interactions in mailing lists (receiving answers and socialization with other members). There is a lack of in-depth studies on technical issues, such as code issues. We also noticed that the majority of the studies relied on historical data gathered from software repositories and that there was a lack of experiments and qualitative studies in this area. The success of the Linux operating system has demonstrated the viability of open-source software, an alternative form of software development that challenges traditional assumptions about software markets. Understanding why developers participate in open-source projects is crucial for assessing the impact of open-source software. Their motivations fall into two broad categories: internal factors (e.g., intrinsic motivation, altruism) and external rewards (e.g., expected future returns, personal needs). The results of a survey administered to open-source programmers are summarized.