Understanding the popularity of reporters and assignees in the Github
Joicymara Santos Xavier, Autran Macêdo, Marcelo de Almeida Maia · Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering · 2014
Github has evolved from traditional version control systems to incorporate the wave of the Web 2.0. Intensive collaboration among developers is one of the main goals of Github beyond traditional version control. Understanding how those developers collaborate is a key issue to enhance the outcomes of individuals and of the ecosystem as a whole, as well. Developers activity during the collaboration may be partially registered in the Github database. The analysis of this database can help to answer important questions about different facets of collaboration. In this work, our interest is to understand which factors can influence developers' popularity and provide insights for individuals to enhance their own popularity. We measure popularity with the number of developer followers. We have analyzed a subset of the Github database in order to explain the high popularity phenomenon. Although, we have found that commit activity is an important factor for high popularity, we also have observed developers with low activity (reports and assigns) but with a high number of followers. We present external factors that can explain this dichotomy and they should be considered as key factors in the ecosystem of open-source development.