Rules of Engagement: Why and How Companies Participate in OSS
Company engagement in open source (OSS) is now the new norm. From large technology companies to startups, companies are participating in the OSS ecosystem by open-sourcing their technology, sponsoring projects through funding or paid developer time. However, our understanding of the OSS ecosystem is rooted in the “old world” model where individual contributors sustain OSS projects. In this work, we create a more comprehensive understanding of the hybrid OSS landscape by investigating what motivates companies to contribute and how they contribute to OSS. We conducted interviews with 20 participants who have different roles (e.g., CEO, OSPO Lead, Ecosystem Strategist) at 17 different companies of different sizes from large companies (e.g., Microsoft, RedHat, Google, Spotify) to startups. Data from semi-structured interviews reveal that company motivations can be categorized into four levels (Founders’ Vision, Reputation, Business Advantage, and Reciprocity) and companies participate through different mechanisms (e.g., Developers’ Time, Mentoring Time, Advocacy & Promotion Time), each of which tie to the different types of motivations. We hope our findings nudge more companies to participate in the OSS ecosystem, helping make it robust, diverse, and sustainable.
Fri 19 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
15:45 - 17:15 | Software ecosystemsSEET - Software Engineering Education and Training / Technical Track / DEMO - Demonstrations / Journal-First Papers / SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice / SEIS - Software Engineering in Society at Meeting Room 110 Chair(s): Sebastian Baltes SAP SE & University of Adelaide | ||
15:45 7mTalk | Upstream Bug Management in Linux Distributions - An Empirical Study of Debian and Fedora Practices Journal-First Papers Jiahuei Lin Queen’s University Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL), Canada, Haoxiang Zhang Centre for Software Excellence at Huawei Canada, Bram Adams Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Ahmed E. Hassan Queen’s University | ||
15:52 7mVision and Emerging Results | Treat societally impactful scientific insights as open-source software artifacts SEIS - Software Engineering in Society Cynthia C. S. Liem Delft University of Technology, Andrew M. Demetriou Delft University of Technology Pre-print | ||
16:00 15mTalk | Rules of Engagement: Why and How Companies Participate in OSS Technical Track Mariam Guizani Oregon State University, Aileen Abril Castro-Guzman Oregon State University, Anita Sarma Oregon State University, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University Pre-print | ||
16:15 15mPaper | An Empirical Study on Software Bill of Materials: Where We Stand and the Road Ahead Technical Track Boming Xia CSIRO's Data61 & University of New South Wales, Tingting Bi Data61, CSIRO, Zhenchang Xing , Qinghua Lu CSIRO’s Data61, Liming Zhu CSIRO’s Data61 Pre-print | ||
16:30 15mTalk | Open Source Software Onboarding as a University Course: An Experience Report SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Hao He Peking University, Minghui Zhou Peking University, Qingye Wang Peking University, China, Jingyue Li Norwegian University of Science and Technology Pre-print | ||
16:45 15mTalk | An Empirical Study of License Conflict in Free and Open Source Software SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice Xing Cui Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jingzheng Wu Institute of Software, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yanjun Wu Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xu Wang Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianyue Luo , Sheng Qu Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiang Ling Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mutian Yang | ||
17:00 7mTalk | LicenseRec: Knowledge based Open Source License Recommendation for OSS Projects DEMO - Demonstrations Weiwei Xu Peking University, Xin Wu Peking University, Runzhi He Peking University, Minghui Zhou Peking University Pre-print | ||
17:07 7mTalk | Will you come back to contribute? Investigating the inactivity of OSS core developers in GitHub Journal-First Papers Fabio Calefato University of Bari, Marco Gerosa Northern Arizona University, Giuseppe Iaffaldano University of Bari, Filippo Lanubile University of Bari, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University Link to publication DOI Pre-print |