Title: Sentiment Analysis of Open Source Communities: An Exploratory Study

Authors: Jennifer Ferreira (National University of Ireland, Galway), Michael Glynn (Intel Shannon), David Hunt (Intel Shannon), Jaganath Babu (National University of Ireland, Galway), Denis Dennehy (National University of Ireland, Galway), Kieran Conboy (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Abstract: Open Source Software (OSS) mailing lists have become popular targets for mining sentiment and emotions, as they provide a centralized communication hub between the distributed OSS community. Sentiment and emotions within communities can provide insights into how a community responds to certain events, who are the key members and how their behaviours impact the rest of the community. Such insights can inform initiatives aimed at fostering positive interactions between OSS community members, strengthening social ties, and helping the community accomplish its tasks. This poster presents our initial results from sentiment analysis of an OSS mailing list, and answers two key questions: (1) Given that the mailing list is used for peer-review of code, is the community sentiment negative overall? (2) Is community sentiment related to the month of the release cycle?

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2019 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.