JSW 2014 Vol.9(11): 2895-2909 ISSN: 1796-217X
doi: 10.4304/jsw.9.11.2895-2909
doi: 10.4304/jsw.9.11.2895-2909
Socio-Technical Dependencies in Forked OSS Projects: Evidence from the BSD Family
M.M. Mahbubul Syeed1, Imed Hammouda2
1Department of of Pervasive Computing, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
2Chalmers and University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract—Existing studies show that open source projects may enjoy high level of socio-technical congruence despite their open and distributed character. Such observation is yet to be confirmed in the case of forking, where projects originating from the same root evolve in parallel and are typically lead by different development teams. In this paper, we empirically investigate the endogenous and exogenous characteristics of BSD family projects related to sociotechnical congruence. Our motivation is that BSD family, as a representative example of forked projects, share a common development ground for both the code-base and the development community, which may influence their evolution from a socio-technical perspective. Our study results show that the BSD family maintain a certain level of collaboration throughout the project history, mainly due to a shared portion of the community. This partly explains the relative harmony of socio-technical congruence levels in the BSD projects.
Index Terms—Open Source Software, Evolution, Conway’s Law, Socio-Technical Congruence, Forking
2Chalmers and University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract—Existing studies show that open source projects may enjoy high level of socio-technical congruence despite their open and distributed character. Such observation is yet to be confirmed in the case of forking, where projects originating from the same root evolve in parallel and are typically lead by different development teams. In this paper, we empirically investigate the endogenous and exogenous characteristics of BSD family projects related to sociotechnical congruence. Our motivation is that BSD family, as a representative example of forked projects, share a common development ground for both the code-base and the development community, which may influence their evolution from a socio-technical perspective. Our study results show that the BSD family maintain a certain level of collaboration throughout the project history, mainly due to a shared portion of the community. This partly explains the relative harmony of socio-technical congruence levels in the BSD projects.
Index Terms—Open Source Software, Evolution, Conway’s Law, Socio-Technical Congruence, Forking
Cite: M.M. Mahbubul Syeed, Imed Hammouda, "Socio-Technical Dependencies in Forked OSS Projects: Evidence from the BSD Family," Journal of Software vol. 9, no. 11, pp. 2895-2909, 2014.
General Information
ISSN: 1796-217X (Online)
Frequency: Quarterly
Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Antanas Verikas
Executive Editor: Ms. Yoyo Y. Zhou
Abstracting/ Indexing: DBLP, EBSCO, CNKI, Google Scholar, ProQuest, INSPEC(IET), ULRICH's Periodicals Directory, WorldCat, etc
E-mail: jsweditorialoffice@gmail.com
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