Herding in open source software development: an exploratory study

Authors:
Joohee Choi;Junghong Choi;Jae Yun Moon;Jungpil Hahn;Jinwoo Kim
Affiliations:
Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea;Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea;Korea University, Seoul, South Korea;National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore;Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work companion
Year:
2013

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Abstract

In spite of the lack of organizational control, a large number of these self-organized groups have successfully developed high quality software in open source software projects. We examined the process through which coordinated action emerges from the collection of individual developers' choices, i.e., how bottom-up coordination occurs and argue that developer herding on a social coding platform may have a positive impact on OSSD outcomes. As an exploratory study, we analyzed the participation patterns in 10 randomly sampled OSSD projects on a social open source code foundry, Github. Based on the findings we generate theoretical propositions regarding developer herding behavior in OSSD.