Award Abstract # 2020751
GCR: Collaborative Research: Jumpstarting Successful Open-Source Software Projects With Evidence-Based Rules and Structures

NSF Org: OIA
OIA-Office of Integrative Activities
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
Initial Amendment Date: September 16, 2020
Latest Amendment Date: September 13, 2022
Award Number: 2020751
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Rebecca Morss
reellis@nsf.gov
 (703)292-7161
OIA
 OIA-Office of Integrative Activities
O/D
 Office Of The Director
Start Date: October 1, 2020
End Date: September 30, 2026 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $2,082,563.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $2,082,563.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2020 = $671,539.00
FY 2022 = $1,411,024.00
History of Investigator:
  • Vladimir Filkov (Principal Investigator)
    filkov@cs.ucdavis.edu
  • Seth Frey (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of California-Davis
1850 RESEARCH PARK DR STE 300
DAVIS
CA  US  95618-6153
(530)754-7700
Sponsor Congressional District: 04
Primary Place of Performance: University of California-Davis
1 Shields Ave
Davis
CA  US  95616-8562
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
04
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): TX2DAGQPENZ5
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): GCR-Growing Convergence Resear
Primary Program Source: 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):
Program Element Code(s): 062Y00
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.083

ABSTRACT

Open Source Software (OSS) is a multi-billion dollar industry. Over 80% of businesses, including all major tech companies, rely on OSS. In fact, such software is used in many aspects of digital life, e.g., browsing the social web, document editing, banking, website hosting, etc. Even though this popularity attracts many programmers to open source, more than 90% of OSS projects are abandoned, especially the smaller and younger projects. Prior work has looked at the reasons for this in two very different fields. In software engineering, the focus has been on understanding success and sustainability from the socio-technical perspective: the OSS programmers? day to day activities and the artifacts they create. In the organizational management/policy literature, on the other hand, emphasis has been on institutional designs (e.g., policies, rules, and norms) that structure governance. But the connection and interaction between the two has been barely explored. In this project, a convergent research team comprised of experts in empirical data science and software engineering, cognitive science, political science, and public policy will develop a convergent analysis framework that unifies the socio-technical task structure of OSS projects with their governance and institutional design, in order to understand if projects, especially nascent ones, are likely to be successful and self-sustaining. The team will focus on nonprofit-supported projects, like those under the Apache Software Foundation, and will actively engage the open-source communities throughout the project, both to inform the research and to explore applications and results. The proposed work will advance the theory and practice of software engineering, especially as it relates to understanding success and effectiveness of OSS projects, goals that are critical to national competitiveness. The primary broader impact of the project lies in its potential to strengthen a technology that has become woven into the fabric of society.

In this project, the convergence perspective is a unified framework, fusing the socio-technical structure and project governance. The team posits that trajectories of individual OSS projects can be understood in that framework through the context provided by similar projects that already have succeeded or been abandoned. This research will combine established and novel qualitative and quantitative techniques to discern the socio-technical structural and governance conditions under which OSS projects are most (and least) effective, and provide actionable knowledge to developers, to customize efficient project practices to their environment. The intellectual challenges lie both in these areas as well as in the integration of these with the scattered literature from software engineering, management and policy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

Note:  When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

Anirudh Ramchandran and Likang Yin and Vladimir Filkov "Exploring Apache Incubator Project Trajectories with APEX" 2022 IEEE/ACM 19th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1145/3524842.3528506 Citation Details
Atkisson, C. "Mentors matter: Association of mentors with project success in the Apache Software Foundation Incubator" PloS one , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272764 Citation Details
Bulat, Beril and Wang, Hannah and Fujimoto, Stephen and Frey, Seth "The psychology of volunteer moderators: Tradeoffs between participation, belonging, and norms in online community governance" New Media & Society , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241259028 Citation Details
Frey, Seth and Zhong, Qiankun and Bulat, Beril and Weisman, William D. and Liu, Caitlyn and Fujimoto, Stephen and Wang, Hannah and Schweik, Charles M. "Governing Online Goods: Maturity and Formalization in Minecraft, Reddit, and World of Warcraft Communities" Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , v.6 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1145/3555191 Citation Details
Jhaver, Shagun and Frey, Seth and Zhang, Amy X "Decentralizing Platform Power: A Design Space of Multi-Level Governance in Online Social Platforms" Social Media + Society , v.9 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231207857 Citation Details
Sen, A. and Atkisson, C. and Schweik, C "Cui Bono: Do Open Source Software Incubator Policies and Procedures Benefit the Projects or the Incubator?" The international journal of the commons , v.16 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1176 Citation Details
Stnciulescu, tefan and Yin, Likang and Filkov, Vladimir "Code, quality, and process metrics in graduated and retired ASFI projects" , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1145/3540250.3549132 Citation Details
Yan, Yibo and Frey, Seth and Zhang, Amy and Filkov, Vladimir and Yin, Likang "GitHub OSS Governance File Dataset" , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00089 Citation Details
Yin, Likang and Chakraborti, Mahasweta and Yan, Yibo and Schweik, Charles and Frey, Seth and Filkov, Vladimir "Open Source Software Sustainability: Combining Institutional Analysis and Socio-Technical Networks" Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction , v.6 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1145/3555129 Citation Details
Yin, Likang and Zhang, Xiyu and Filkov, Vladimir "On the Self-Governance and Episodic Changes in Apache Incubator Projects: An Empirical Study" , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00066 Citation Details

Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.

Print this page

Back to Top of page