14 posts tagged with "blog"

Jierui Zhang，Ying Li，Liang Wang，Xianping Tao

Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology OSS Compass

Abstract​

In this study, we study the community evolution behavior in developer social networks around open source software projects, in response to the limitation of traditional community evolution analysis techniques being biased towards qualitative rather than quantitative analysis. We propose a set of community split, shrink, merge, and expand indices based on information entropy to measure the evolutionary behavior of open source developer social networks. Empirical studies demonstrate that these indices effectively characterize the evolution of open source communities, by achieving a 94.1% accuracy in drawing conclusions consistent with existing qualitative work through simple rules. Furthermore, additional research indicates a significant correlation between the proposed community evolution indices and the productivity of open source projects, represented by the number of commits. The information entropy-based measurement indices presented in this study provide quantitative support for understanding and analyzing the evolutionary behavior of open source communities.

Zheng Liu，Xiaolan Zu，Xingyu Luo，Zihang Wang，Jierui zhang，Yehui wang， Liang Wang, Xianping Tao Department of Computer Science and Technology, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University Huawei Technologies Co, Ltd. OSS Compass

Abstract​

This study proposes a method to predict the future activeness of open source projects using OSS Compass indicators. It employs a feature-based time series classification approach, extracting statistical features from OSS Compass indicator series and using machine learning algorithms for prediction. The method demonstrated an accuracy of nearly 90% in cross-validation on a dataset of around 600 projects and about 80% accuracy on a larger set of over 10,000 repositories, indicating its practical applicability. The results partially reflect the future health status of open source projects, demonstrating the effectiveness of the OSS Compass indicator system in measuring the health of open source software. The method could provide valuable insights for users, developers, investors, and managers of open source software.

Liang Wang$^{1,2}$，Zhiwen Zheng$^{1,2}$，Xiangchen Wu$^{1,2}$，Baihui Sang$^{1,2}$，Jierui Zhang$^{1,2}$，Xianping Tao$^{1,2}$

$^1$Department of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University, State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology $^2$OSS Compass

Abstract​

This research focuses on project forks on open-source software (OSS) platforms, revolving around measuring and understanding the diversity of forks in open-source software projects. The paper accomplishes this by constructing a novel fork entropy based on Rao's second entropy and assessing this diversity based on modifications to project files. Empirical studies indicate a significant correlation between fork entropy in open-source projects and various key outcomes, including external productivity of the project (measured by the number of contributions from external contributors), acceptance rate of external contributors' pull requests, and the reported number of bugs. Additionally, we observe significant interactions between fork entropy and other factors, such as the quantity of forks. These findings suggest that fork entropy, as an effective metric, not only enhances the current available measurements of forks in open-source software projects but also deepens our understanding of the development process based on forked repositories. It holds the potential to support further research and applications.