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Master on Free Software
Contributors turnover
Dynamics of the libre software community
Israel Herraiz<[email protected]>
A Coruña, November 17th 2007
Master on Free Software
Summary
● How sensible is a project to the turnover of its main contributors?
● What would happen to Linux if Linus Torvalds is hit by a bus?
● What if the most important developers of Debian abandon the project and go for Ubuntu?
Master on Free Software
Main contributors
● 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people
Master on Free Software
Top contributors go away
● What would happen?● Are they “code gods”?
Master on Free Software
Methodology
● Divide the history in 10 intervals● Identify the top contributors in each
period● Track the history of those contributors in
all the history of the project
Master on Free Software
Methodology
● Results are given as plots and indexes
Master on Free Software
Generations index
Group 1 10 7 6 5 4Group 2 4 9 5 2 1Group 3 2 8 14 3 2Group 4 0 1 1 9 4Group 5 0 0 0 8 20
Period 1Period 2Period 3Period 4Period 5
● Absolute Matrix
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Generations index
Master on Free Software
Kind of projects: code gods
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Code gods. Heatmap of the matrix
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Code gods. 3D Maps. Relative.
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Code gods. 3D Map. Absolute
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Kind of projects: generational relay
Master on Free Software
Generations. Heatmap
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Generations. 3D Map. Relative
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Generations. 3D Map. Absolute
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Kind of projects: mixed behaviour
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Mixed behaviour. Heatmap
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Mixed behaviour. 3D Map. Relative
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Mixed behaviour. 3D Map. Absolute
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Summarising
● Three kind of projects:– Code gods
● Index ~ 100 %
– Generational relay● 0 % < Index < 100 %
– Mixed behaviour● Index ~ 0 %
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Age vs. Index
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Index distribution
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Conclusions
● Detection of events in projects. Reverse engineering of the history of the project.
● Index gives us the kind of project● Most of the projects show a generational
relay● So most of the projects are not sensible to
contributor turnovers
