Toward an understanding of the motivation Open Source Software developers
Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering
FLOSS '07 Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development
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Context: Conventional wisdom, inspired in part by Eric Raymond, suggests that open source developers should---and primarily do---develop software for developers like themselves. We refer to the production of software primarily for the benefit of developers as reflexivity, and we evaluate the applicability of this concept to open source software (OSS) by studying SourceForge projects. Objective: The goal of this research is to test Eric Raymond's assertions with respect to OSS success factors. Method: We present four criteria by which to assess project reflexivity in SourceForge. These criteria are based on three specific indicators: intended audiences, relevant topics, and supported operating systems. Results: We show in this short paper that 68% of SourceForge projects are likely reflexive (in the sense described by Raymond). Further, 76% of projects exceeding one million downloads are reflexive, 79% for projects exceeding ten million downloads, and 89% for projects exceeding one hundred million downloads. Conclusion: These results tentatively support Raymond's assertions that 1) OSS projects tend to be reflexive and 2) reflexive OSS projects tend to be more successful than irreflexive projects. Causality, however, is not addressed.