Abstract
Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) repositories contain valuable data and their usefulness in studying software development and community activities continues to attract a lot of research attention. A trend in F/OSS studies is the use of metadata stored in a repository of repositories or RoRs. This paper utilizes data obtained from such RoRs -FLOSSmole- to study the types of projects being developed by the F/OSS community. We downloaded projects by topics data in five areas (Database, Internet, Software Development, Communications, and Games/Entertainment) from Flossmole’s raw and summary data of the sourceforge repository. Time series analysis show the numbers of projects in the five topics are growing linearly. Further analysis supports our hypothesis that F/OSS development is moving “up the stack” from developer tools and infrastructure support to end-user applications such as Databases. The findings have implications for the interpretation of the F/OSS landscape, the utilization and adoption of open source databases, and problems researchers might face in obtaining and using data from RoRs.
Key words
Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hahsler M, Koch S., Discussion of a Large-Scale Open Source Data Collection Methodology, Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (IEEE, HICSS’ 05-Track 7), Jan 03–06, Big Island, Hawaii, 2005, page 197b.
Barahona, J. et al., Analysing the Anatomy of GNU/Linux Distributions: Methodology and Case Studies (Red Hat and Debian), In Koch, S. (Ed.), Free/Open Source Software Development, Idea Group Inc., 2005, pp: 27–58.
govtech.net, SourceForge.net Surpasses 100,000 Open Source Projects, http:// www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=94043, May, 2005.
Nikolai Bezroukov, Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research (Critique of Vulgar Raymondism), Firstmonday, 1999, vol. 4(10).
Scott Christley and Greg Madey, Collection of Activity Data for SourceForge Projects, Technical Report: TR-2005-15, University of Notre Dame, 2005.
Megan S Conklin, Beyond Low-Hanging Fruit: Seeking the Next Generation in FLOSS Data Mining, In Damiani, E., Fitzerald, B., Scacchi, W., Scott, M., Succi, G (Eds.), IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Open Source Systems, Boston: Springer, Vol. 203, 2006, pp: 261–266.
Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, and James Howison, Defining Open Source Software Project Success, Proc. of International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2003, 2003.
G. Madey, V. Freeh, and R. Tynan, The open source software development phenomenon: An analysis based on social network theory, In Americas conf. on Information Systems (AMCIS2002), 2002, pp: 18061813.
German, D. and Mockus, A., Automating the Measurement of Open Source Projects, ICSE’ 03 Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering, Portland, Oregon, May 3–10, 2003.
Ghosh, A.R., Clustering and dependencies in free/open source software development: Methodology and tools, Firstmonday, Vol. 8(4), 2004.
Howison, J., Conklin, M., and Crowston, K., FLOSSmole: A collaborative repository for FLOSS research data and analyses, International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering, Vol. 1(3), 2006, pp: 17–26.
J. Howison, and K. Crowston, The Perils and pitfalls of mining SourceForge, 26th International Conference on Software Engineering, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2004.
Koch S, Schneider G., Effort, cooperation and coordination in an open source software project: Gnome., Information Systems Journal, Vol. 12(1), 2002, pp: 27–42.
Krogh G, Spaeth S, and Lakhani, K., Community, joining, and specialisation in open source software innovation: a case study, Research Policy, Vol. 32, 2003, pp: 1217–1241.
Lakhani K, Hippel von E., How open source software works: “free” user-to-user assistance, Research Policy, Vol. 32, 2003, pp: 923–943.
David M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale, Usability processes in open source projects, Software Process: Improvement and Practice, Vol. 11(2), 2006, pp: 149–162.
Masao Ohira, Naoki Ohsugi, Tetsuya Ohoka, and Ken-ichi Matsumoto, Accelerating cross-project knowledge collaboration using collaborative filtering and social networks, MSR’ 05: Proceedings of the 2005 international workshop on Mining software repositories, ACM Press, 2005, pp: 1–5.
FLOSSmole Project, FLOSSmole Project (2004–2006) Sourceforge, http://ossmole.Sourceforge.net.
Raymond, E.S., The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, OReilly, Sebastopol, USA., 1999.
Gregorio Robles and Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Geographic location of developers at SourceForge, In MSR’ 06: Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories, ACM Press, 2006, pp: 144–150.
Sulayman K. Sowe and Ioannis. Stamelos, Identification of Knowledge Brokers in F/OSS Projects through Social and Collaborative Networks, In Proc. of 10th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics, Volos, Greece, 2005, pp.285–303.
Sulayman K. Sowe, Ioannis Samoladas, and Ioannis Stamelos, Trends in Open Source Database Management Systems. In Laura C. Rivero, Jorge H. Doorn, and Viviana E. Ferraggine (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Database Technologies and Applications, Idea Group, Inc., 2005, pp: 457–462.
David J. Sheskin, Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures, Chapman and Halucrc, 2004.
Sulayman K. Sowe, Ioannis Stamelos, and Karoulis, Anastesiou, A constructivist View on Knowledge Management in Open Source Virtual Communities. In Figueiredo, D. A, and Paula, A. (Eds.), Managing Learning in Virtual Settings: The Role of Context, Idea Group, Inc., 2005, pp: 290–308.
Sulayman K. Sowe, Ioannis Stamelos, Lefteris Angelis, Identifying knowledge brokers that yield software engineering knowledge in OSS projects, Information and Software Technology, 2006, vol. 48, pp: 1025–1033.
Katherine J. Stewart, David P. Darcy, and Sherae L. Daniel, Observations on patterns of development in open source software projects, 5-WOSSE: Proceedings of the fifth workshop on Open source software engineering, St. Louis, Missouri, ACM Press, 2005, pp: 1–5.
Walt Scacchi, Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, and Karim Lakhani, Understanding Free/Open Source Software Development Processes, Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 2006, vol. 11(2), pp: 95–105.
Xu J, Gao Y, Christley, S, Madey S., A topological Analysis of the Open Source Software Development Community, IEEE Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, (IEEE, HICSS’ 05-Track 7), Jan 03–06, Big Island, Hawaii., 2005, page 198a.
Valverde, S., Theraulaz, G., Gautrais, J., Fourcassie, V., and Sole, R. V. Self-Organization Patterns in Wasp and Open Source Communities. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2006; 21(2): 36–40.
N. Bassiliades, I. Vlahavas, A. Elmagarmid, E. Houstis, Interbase-KB: A Knowledge-based Multidatabase Sustem for Data Warehousing, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 1188–1205, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sowe, S.K., Angelis, L., Stamelos, I., Manolopoulos, Y. (2007). Using Repository of Repositories (RoRs) to Study the Growth of F/OSS Projects: A Meta-Analysis Research Approach. In: Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B., Scacchi, W., Sillitti, A. (eds) Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation. OSS 2007. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 234. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-72485-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-72486-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)