Open Source Software (OSS) ecosystems have had a tremendous impact on computing and society, while their formation and sustainability pose great challenges to both practitioners and researchers. We utilize vast collections of open data produced by distributed version control and social media to discover the mechanisms by which such large complex ecosystems form and operate, which we call OSS digital sociology. We target critical issues ranging from individual learning, group collaboration, to ecosystem sustainability, and software supply chain. We discuss the preliminary promising results and their relevance in practice.

Minghui zhou is Full Professor of School of Computer Science at Peking University. Her main interest is to mine vast data to investigate how OSS ecosystem works, and how to invent intelligent systems to help control large complex software systems. She leads several open source initiatives in China involving OSS supply chain and OSS healthcare. She serves on technical oversight committee of Mulan community and advisory expert of openEuler community. She is associate director of Open Source Development Committee of China Computer Federation. She will be Program Co-Chair of ASE 2024.