Social Structure of Free Software Communities

Master on Free Software

The social structure of free software communities

Course: Dynamics of libre software communities

Israel Herraiz<[email protected]>

A Coruña, December 1st 2007

mailto:[email protected]


Summary

● Do you want to become a free software developer?

● How would you start?● How would you approach an existing

project?● Is there any typical social structure in free

software projects?


FLOSS projects

● Projects are like any other human organization

● People assume different roles● If you want to migrate from a role to

another, what do you have to do?● Do all the projects present a typical

structure?


Roles in FLOSS projects

● Users– Occasional users– Power users

● Bug reporters● Bug fixers● Developers● Core developers


Onion model


Onion model migration


Sequence

● User● Start to participate in the community● Report bugs● Fix bugs● Get a SCM account


Challenge

● Find one of the main contributors in your project

● Find that developer in the mailing list● Track her participation in the mailing lists● Track her participation in the SCM● Track her relative importance and

absolute total contributions● Who is your developer?


Challenge

● Track the number of people participating in the user lists

● Track the number of people participating in the developer lists

● Track the number of people commiting changes

● All of these over time● What is the ration among these

parameters over time?


Challenge

● Track the total amount of messages in the user and developers lists

● Track the total amount of changes● All of these over time● What are the ratios among these

parameters?● What about messages per person and

commits per person? How do they evolve?


References

● The social structure of Free and Open source software development

● The processes of joining in global distributed software projects

● Both papers included in the Moodle

Social Structure of Free Software Communities

Economy & Finance

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