Why Do People Give Up FLOSSing? A Study of Contributor Disengagement in Open Source
Established contributors are the backbone of many free/libre open source software (FLOSS) projects. Previous research has shown that it is critically important for projects to retain contributors and it has also revealed the motivations behind why contributors choose to participate in FLOSS in the fi rst place. However, there has been limited research done on the reasons why established contributors disengage, and factors (on an individual and project level) that predict their disengagement. In this paper, we conduct a mixed-methods empirical study, combining surveys and survival modeling, to identify the reasons and predictive factors behind established contributor disengagement. We fi nd that different groups of established contributors tend to disengage for different reasons, however, overall contributors most commonly cite some kind of transition (e.g., switching jobs or leaving academia). We also fi nd that factors such as the popularity of the projects a contributor works on, whether they have experienced a transition, when they work, and how much they work are all factors that can be used to predict their disengagement from open source.
Sun 26 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | |||
11:00 30mResearch paper | Why Do Developers Adopt Open Source Software? Past, Present and Future OSS 2019 Papers Valentina Lenarduzzi LUT University, Davide Tosi Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Luigi Lavazza Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Sandro Morasca Università degli Studi dell'Insubria | ||
11:30 30mResearch paper | What Attracts Newcomers to Onboard on OSS Projects? TL;DR:Popularity OSS 2019 Papers Felipe Fronchetti University of São Paulo, Brazil, Igor Wiese Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR), Gustavo Pinto UFPA, Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University Pre-print | ||
12:00 30mResearch paper | Why Do People Give Up FLOSSing? A Study of Contributor Disengagement in Open Source OSS 2019 Papers Courtney Miller New College of Florida, David Widder Carnegie Mellon University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University, Bogdan Vasilescu Carnegie Mellon University Pre-print |