Title: The Many Hats and the Broken Binoculars: State of the Practice in Developer Community Management

Authors: Hanna Maenpaa:Helsinki University; Fabian Fagerholm:Helsinki University;
Myriam Munezero:Helsinki University; Tommi Mikkonen:Helsinki University

Abstract: Open Source Software developer communities are susceptible to challenges related to volatility, distributed coordination and the interplay between commercial and ideological interests. Here, community managers play a vital role in growing, shepherding, and coordinating the developers’ work. This study investigates the varied tasks that community managers perform to ensure the health and vitality of their communities. We describe the challenges managers face while directing the community and seeking support for their work from the analysis tools provided by state-of-the-art software platforms. Our results describe seven roles that community managers may play, highlighting the versatile and people-centric nature of the community manager’s work. Managers experience hardship of connecting their goals, questions and metrics that define a community’s health and effects of their actions. Our results voice common concerns among community managers, and can be used to help them structure the management activity and to find a theoretical frame for further research on how health of developer communities could be understood.

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Title: Understanding Organization and Open Source Community Relations through the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Model

Authors: Georg J.P.Link:University of Nebraska at Omaha; Debora Jeske:University College Cork

Abstract: Organizations increasingly engage with open source communities. Extant research identified the benefits to organizations for engaging with open source and documented how open source communities operate to accommodate organizational engagement. The complexities involved in what attracts organizations to specific communities, how they choose to engage, and how subsequently the organizational-communal engagement shapes the community and organization are not yet well understood. In this paper, we explore how the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Model supports the study of how communities attract, retain, and lose members, and how these aspects relate to organizational-communal engagement between organizations and open source communities. This conceptual paper provides an introduction to the ASA model, having briefly outlined the lack of research connecting ASA and open source communities. Following this, the paper outlines how existing research related to the ASA model may be effectively related to existing open source research, resulting in several questions for future research.

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Title: Brazilian Public Software Portal: An Integrated Platform for Collaborative Development

Authors: Paulo Meirelles:University of Brasilia; Hilmer Rodrigues Neri:Universidade de Brasilia; Antonio Terceiro:Colivre; Melissa Wen:Colivre; Rodrigo Siqueira:University of San Paulo; Lucas Kanashiro:University of San Paulo

Abstract: The Brazilian Public Software (SPB) is a program promoted by the Brazilian Federal Government to foster sharing and collaboration on Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) solutions for the public administration. In this context, a public software is considered a public good and the Federal Government assumes some responsibilities related to its use. Once its development principles is the same of the FLOSS projects, we have designed the SPB Portal, a platform based on the integration and evolution of existing FLOSS tools. It provides several modern features for software collaborative development, helping the Brazilian public administration in sharing its solutions. In this paper, we present this integrated software development platform that was developed for the SPB program by a heterogeneous team composed by professors, master students and undergraduate students, as well as by professionals from FLOSS communities. The development of this platform used several FLOSS projects, providing a non-trivial integration among them. This effort has also produced several new features that were contributed back to these projects. Alongside the architectural challenges, we also discuss in this paper our work process, based on agile and free software development practices, and the lessons learned during 30 months of work on the SPB project.

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Title: The Lives and Deaths of Open Source Code Forges

Author: Megan Squire:Elon University

Abstract: Code forges are third party software repositories that also provide various tools and facilities for distributed software development teams to use, including source code control systems, mailing lists and communication forums, bug tracking systems, web hosting space, and so on. The main contributions of this paper are to present some new data sets relating to the technology adoption lifecycles of a group of six free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) code forges, and to compare the lifecycles of the forges to each other and to the model presented by classical Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory. We find that the observed adoption patterns of code forges rarely follow the DoI model, especially as larger code forges are beset by spam and abuse. The only forge exhibiting a DoI-like lifecycle was a smaller, community-managed, special-purpose forge whose demise was planned in advance. The results of this study will be useful in explaining adoption trajectories, both to practitioners building collaborative FLOSS ecosystems and to researchers who study the evolution and adoption of socio-technical systems.

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Title: A Glimpse into Babel: An Analysis of Multilingualism in Wikidata

Authors: Lucie-Aimee Kaffee:University of Southampton; Alessandro Piscopo:University of Southampton; Pavlos Vougiouklis:University of Southampton; Elena Simperl:University of Southampton; Leslie Carr:University of Southampton; Lydia Pintscher:Wikimedia Deutschlan

Abstract: Multilinguality is an important topic for knowledge bases, especially Wikidata, that was build to serve the multilingual requirements of an international community. Its labels are the way for humans to interact with the data. In this paper, we explore the state of languages in Wikidata as of now, especially in regard to its ontology, and the relationship to Wikipedia. Furthermore, we set the multilinguality of Wikidata in the context of the real world by comparing it to the distribution of native speakers. We find an existing language maldistribution, which is less urgent in the ontology, and promising results for future improvements.

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Title: Exploring the Application of Blockchain Technology to Combat the Effects of Social Loafing in Cross Functional Group Projects

Authors: Kevin O’Leary:University College Cork; Philip O’Reilly:University College Cork;
Joseph Feller:University College Cork; Rob Gleasure:University College Cork;
Shanping Li:Zhejiang University; Jerry Cristoforo:State Street Corporation

Abstract: Today, many multi-national organisations operate in a dispersed geographical environment. Teams consisting of members from around the globe can be assembled on an as-needed basis. However, this can prove to be a complex managerial task. Individuals, who believe that their efforts are not being effectively monitored by upper management, lose their motivation to fully contribute to the best of their abilities as they do not believe there is any correlation between the effort they exert and the reward they receive. With low levels of intrinsic involvement among employees, a lack of task visibility from upper management and limited social interaction among group members, many organisations struggle to combat the issue of social loafing in cross functional working groups. Blockchain technology, widely acknowledged as enabling openness, can facilitate the development of an immutable, transparent, secure and verifiable application for capturing individuals Intellectual Property as they work. This would motivate employees to more openly contribute to group work, safe in the knowledge that their contribution will be recognised, enabling management to maintain a high level of task visibility over their employees work without requiring their physical presence.

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Title: QueryShare: Working Together to Facilitate Exploratory Multimedia Searches without Skill in Creating

Authors: Masahiro Hamasaki:National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology; Masataka Goto:National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

Abstract: This paper describes a music exploratory search interface called QueryShare, which provides query searching and recommendation functions for query sharing among users. Most people are not expert users who know how to use various music metadata that include automatically estimated musical features to represent their own information needs as a query. Therefore, it is difficult for them to enter a complex query for music content retrieval. The original feature of our proposed interface is to make users share every query as a public web page. This feature enables users to use search queries, find recommended queries, and revise existing queries. Beginners can use an applicable query, which is more complicated than they might create on their own. Experts can readily reuse a query (web page) of their own making. The interface assists users in finding results for interesting queries and in performing music exploratory search without skills to create complex queries. We developed a prototype system as a web application for music videos on the most popular Japanese video sharing service. Users can search for over 360,000 music videos using our system. Results of a preliminary user study demonstrated that users found the query creation interesting and that they were interested in seeing and using queries created by other users, although some users hesitated to share their queries.          

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Title: Social Identity and Social Media Activities in Equity Crowdfunding

Authors: Sean Nevin:University College Cork; Rob Gleasure:University College Cork;
Philip O’Reilly:University College Cork; Joseph Feller:University College Cork;
Shanping Li:Zhejiang University; Jerry Cristoforo:State Street Corporation

Abstract: The existence of crowdfunding platforms has helped creators to bring their innovative products to market. In recent years, equity crowdfunding has increased in popularity as an alternative form of finance, and has helped thousands of innovating entrepreneurs to raise money, and join a broader conversation with large numbers of potential investors. Early-stage startup investment is no longer restricted to venture capital firms and high net worth angel investors. Using Social Identity Theory (SIT) as a basis, we look at a sample of crowdfunding campaigns from the UK-based platform, Crowdcube. In this study we are trying to understand how groups of potential crowdfunding investors act in relation to the social media activities of those campaigns. We examine how different social media activities of can have an impact upon the funding of a crowdfunding campaign. This study has significant implications for fundraisers who want to utilize social media to increase their chances of a successful crowdfunding campaign. In our study we identify that by being more active on social media, and having a higher level of engagement with the crowd, this will have a positive impact on the overall funding of a crowdfunding campaign.

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Title: SMW Based VRE for Addressing Multi-Layered Data Analysis:The Use Case of Classroom Interaction Interpretation

Authors: Cornelia Veja:German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF);
Kendra Sticht:University of Munster; Christoph Schindler:German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF); Helge Kminek:Goethe University Frankfurt

Abstract: Virtual research environments (VREs) based on Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) provide researchers with more effective means of collaborative knowledge creation. The main challenge is capturing the multi-layered and iterative research process by participatory and evolutionary design using an agile framework development. The paper focuses on the development of a VRE to enhance scholarly research practices with the specific goal to enable dialogic transcript data analysis in Social Sciences and Humanities, using digital and semantic technologies. To offer a user-friendly framework with a low technological barrier, the authors used existing SMW extensions and developed a novel extension for multi-layered dialogic analysis by adopting the researcher’s theoretical model of Objective Hermeneutic. As use case of addressing dialogic qualitative data analysis, the paper presents the VRE for classroom interaction which is based on two ontological models, the Objective Hermeneutic core ontology and the classroom interaction ontology, as a result of authors’ work.

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Title: On Licensing and Other Conditions for Contributing to Widely Used Open Source Projects: An Exploratory Analysis

Authors: Jonas Gamalielsson:University of Skovde; Bjorn Lundell:University of Skovde

Abstract: Open source software (OSS) projects are provided under different open source licenses and some projects use other conditions (in addition to licensing terms) for contributors to adhere to. Licensing terms and conditions may affect community involvement and contributions, and are perceived differently by different stakeholders in different OSS projects. The study reports from an exploratory analysis of licensing terms and other conditions for 200 widely used OSS projects, and an investigation of the relationship between licensing terms and other conditions for contributing. We find that strong copyleft licenses are most common and are used in the majority of the projects. Further, a clear majority of the OSS projects use no specific other condition for contributing in addition to the license terms. However, a clear majority of the OSS projects supported by foundations use other conditions for contributing in addition to the license terms. Finally, use of no specific other conditions in addition to the license terms is more common for projects using strong copyleft licensing compared to projects using non-copyleft licensing.

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