Do Review Feedbacks Influence to a Contributor's Time Spent on OSS Projects?
Takuto Norikane, Akinori Ihara, Kenichi Matsumoto · 2018
Open Source Software (OSS) does not work without contributions from the community. In particular, long-term contributors (LTCs) (e.g., committer), defined as contributors who spend at least one year on OSS projects, play a crucial role in a project success because they would have permission to add (commit) code changes to a project's version control system, and to become a mentor for a beginner in OSS projects. However, contributors often leave a project before becoming a LTC because most contributors are volunteers. If contributors are motivated in their work in OSS projects, they might not leave the projects. In this study, we examine the phenomena involved in becoming a LTC in terms of motivation to continue in OSS projects. In particular, our target motivation is to understand what is involved in long-term contribution with other expert contributors. We study classifier to identify a LTC who will contribute patch submissions for more than one year based on collaboration in terms of the code review process. In detail, we analyze what review feedbacks encourage a contributor to continue with OSS project. Using a Qt project dataset, we build a prediction model to identify a LTC. We find that not only contributor's activities, but also a reviewer feedbacks, useful in identifying LTCs.