Quo Vadis, Open Source? The Limits of Open Source Growth.
Michael Dorner, Maximilian Capraro, Ann Barcomb · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2020
Open source software plays a significant role in the software industry. Prior work described open source to be growing polynomially or even exponentially. However, such growth cannot be sustained infinitely given finite resources. In this study, we present the results of four accumulated measurements on size and growth of open source considering over 224,000 open source projects for the last 25 years pulled from Open Hub. For each of those projects, we measured lines of code, commits, contributors and lifecycle state over time, which reproduces and replicates the measurements of three well-cited studies. In our sample, we found the number of active open source projects has been shrinking since 2016 and the number of contributors and commits has decreased from a peak in 2013. We discuss multiple rivaling interpretations for our observations. Because the results were unexpected to us, we encourage further research using alternative data sets.