Discussions is a new feature of GitHub for asking questions or discussing topics outside of specific Issues or Pull Requests. Before being available to all projects in December 2020, it had been tested on selected open source software projects. To understand how developers use this novel feature, how they perceive it, and how it impacts the development processes, we conducted a mixed-methods study based on early adopters of GitHub discussions from January until July 2020. We found that: (1) errors, unexpected behavior, and code reviews are prevalent discussion categories; (2) there is a positive relationship between project member involvement and discussion frequency; (3) developers consider GitHub Discussions useful but face the problem of topic duplication between Discussions and Issues; (4) Discussions play a crucial role in advancing the development of projects; and (5) positive sentiment in Discussions is more frequent than in Stack Overflow posts. Our findings are a first step towards data-informed guidance for using GitHub Discussions, opening up avenues for future work on this novel communication channel.

/pdf/github-discussions-an-exploratory-study-of-early-adoption-cqj0tik8q6.pdf

GitHub Discussions: An exploratory study of early adoption

The development of open source software (OSS) is a broad field which requires diverse skill sets. For example, maintainers help lead the project and promote its longevity, technical writers assist with documentation, bug reporters identify defects in software, and developers program the software. However, it is unknown which skills are used in OSS development as well as OSS contributors' general attitudes towards skills in OSS. In this paper, we address this gap by administering a survey to a diverse set of 455 OSS contributors. Guided by these responses as well as prior literature on software development expertise and social factors of OSS, we develop a model of skills in OSS that considers the many contexts OSS contributors work in. This model has 45 skills in the following 9 categories: technical skills, working styles, problem solving, contribution types, project-specific skills, interpersonal skills, external relations, management, and characteristics. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses, we find that OSS contributors are actively motivated to improve skills and perceive many benefits in sharing their skills with others. We then use this analysis to derive a set of design implications and best practices for those who incorporate skills into OSS tools and platforms, such as GitHub.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3540250.3549082

Understanding skills for OSS communities on GitHub

Reliance on third-party libraries is now commonplace in contemporary software engineering. Being open source in nature, these libraries should advocate for a world where the freedoms and opportunities of open source software can be enjoyed by all. Yet, there is a growing concern related to maintainers using their influence to make political stances (i.e., referred to as protestware). In this paper, we reflect on the impact of world politics on software ecosystems, especially in the context of the ongoing War in Ukraine. We show three cases where world politics has had an impact on a software ecosystem, and how these incidents may result in either benign or malignant consequences. We further point to specific opportunities for research, and conclude with a research agenda with ten research questions to guide future research directions.

/pdf/in-war-and-peace-the-impact-of-world-politics-on-software-1atg7grt.pdf

In war and peace: the impact of world politics on software ecosystems

Diversity and inclusion are necessary prerequisites for shaping technological innovation that benefits society as a whole. A common indicator of diversity consideration is the representation of different social groups among software engineering (SE) researchers, developers, and students. However, this does not necessarily entail that diversity is considered in the SE research itself.In our study, we examine how diversity is embedded in SE research, particularly research that involves participant studies. To this end, we have selected 79 research papers containing 105 participant studies spanning three years of ICSE technical tracks. Using a content analytical approach, we identified how SE researchers report the various diversity categories of their study participants and investigated: 1) the extent to which participants are described, 2) what diversity categories are commonly reported, and 3) the function diversity serves in the SE studies.We identified 12 different diversity categories reported in SE participant studies. Our results demonstrate that even though most SE studies report on the diversity of participants, SE research often emphasizes professional diversity data, such as occupation and work experience, over social diversity data, such as gender or location of the participants. Furthermore, our results show that participant diversity is seldom analyzed or reflected upon when SE researchers discuss their study results, outcome or limitations.To help researchers self-assess their study diversity awareness, we propose a diversity awareness model and guidelines that SE researchers can apply to their research. With this study, we hope to shed light on a new approach to tackling the diversity and inclusion crisis in the SE field. 

pdf/diversity-awareness-in-software-engineering-participant-33aawhfw7c.pdf

Diversity Awareness in Software Engineering Participant Research

Apart from being a code hosting platform, GitHub is the place where large-scale open collaborations and contributions happen. Every minute, thousands of developers are submitting code, having discussions of issues or pull requests, with all user behaviors recorded in the GitHub Event Stream (GES). Exploration of the activities in the GES could help understand who is active, the way they work, the time when they are active and even their location. To this end, a large-scale analysis was initially performed based on the 0.86 billion event records generated in 2020. We extracted 902K active contributors out of 14 million GitHub accounts by observing their activity distribution, then explored their behavior distribution, active time in the day and week, and estimated time zone distributions on the basis of their circadian activity rhythm. To go deeper, a case study of 79 projects in CNCF and contrast analyses of different project maturity levels were conducted. Our results showed that from a macro perspective, bots are increasingly more active and can serve numerous projects. Contributors work on weekdays, and are globally more inclined toward the daytime working hours in the Americas and Europe. The time zone distribution also reveals that UTC+2 and UTC-4 have the most active contributors. A critical discovery was the validation and quantification of a high bus factor risk exists in the OSS ecosystem. Whether from a large group point of view or within specific projects, a rather small group of OSS contributors (less than 20%) undertook the majority of the work. The GES can provide a wealth of information about open source software (OSS). Our findings provide insights into global GitHub collaboration behaviors and may be of help for researchers and practitioners to further understand modern OSS ecosystem. 

Exploring Activity and Contributors on GitHub: Who, What, When, and Where

Although Open Source Software (OSS) maintainers devote a significant proportion of their work to coding tasks, great maintainers must excel in many other activities beyond coding. Maintainers should care about fostering a community, helping new members to find their place, while also saying "no" to patches that although are well-coded and well-tested, do not contribute to the goal of the project. To perform all these activities masterfully, maintainers should exercise attributes that software engineers (working on closed source projects) do not always need to master. This paper aims to uncover, relate, and prioritize the unique attributes that great OSS maintainers might have. To achieve this goal, we conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with well-experienced maintainers that are the gatekeepers of notable projects such as the Linux Kernel, the Debian operating system, and the GitLab coding platform. After we analyzed the interviews and curated a list of attributes, we created a conceptual framework to explain how these attributes are connected. We then conducted a rating survey with 90 OSS contributors. We noted that "technical excellence" and "communication" are the most recurring attributes. When grouped, these attributes fit into four broad categories: management, social, technical, and personality. While we noted that "sustain a long term vision of the project" and being "extremely careful" seem to form the basis of our framework, we noted through our survey that the communication attribute was perceived as the most essential one.

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