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Choosing an Appropriate Task to Start with in Open Source Software Communities: A Hard Task

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Collaboration and Technology (CRIWG 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8658))

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Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) projects leverage the contribution of outsiders. Usually these communities do not coordinate the work of the newcomers, who go to the issue trackers and self-select a task to start with. We found that “finding a way to start” is recurrently reported both by the literature and by practitioners as a barrier to onboard to an OSS project. We conducted a qualitative analysis with data obtained from semi-structured interviews with 36 subjects from 14 different projects. We used procedures of Grounded Theory – open and axial coding – to analyze the data. We found that newcomers are not enough confident to choose their initial task and they need information about the tasks or direction from the community.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Computação, Federal University of Tecnology-Paraná (UTFPR), Brazil

    Igor Steinmacher

  2. Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil

    Marco Aurélio Gerosa

Authors
  1. Igor Steinmacher
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  2. Marco Aurélio Gerosa
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Chile, Blanco Encalada, 2120, Santiago, Chile

    Nelson Baloian

  2. Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 3145, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Frada Burstein

  3. Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, 744, Motooa, 819-0395, Nhishi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Hiroaki Ogata

  4. Centro de Ciências Exatas e da Terra, Departamento de Informática Aplicada, Universidade Federal do Estado, Avenida Pasteur, 758, Urca, 22245-040, Rio lde Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

    Flavia Santoro

  5. Diagonal Paraquay 257, 8330015, Santiago, Chile

    Gustavo Zurita

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Steinmacher, I., Gerosa, M.A. (2014). Choosing an Appropriate Task to Start with in Open Source Software Communities: A Hard Task. In: Baloian, N., Burstein, F., Ogata, H., Santoro, F., Zurita, G. (eds) Collaboration and Technology. CRIWG 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8658. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10166-8_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10166-8_31

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-10165-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-10166-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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