skip to main content
10.1145/2460999.2461036acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageseaseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Reflexivity, Raymond, and the success of open source software development: a SourceForge empirical study

Published: 14 April 2013 Publication History

Abstract

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.

References

[1]
B. A. Babcock. Reflexivity: Definitions and discriminations. Semiotica, 30(1-2):1--14, 1980.
[2]
R. English and C. M. Schweik. Identifying success and tragedy of FLOSS commons: A preliminary classification of Sourceforge.net projects. In Proc. Int'l Workshop Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development, 2007.
[3]
K. Healy and A. Schussman. The ecology of open-source software development. Technical report, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2003.
[4]
N. Iivari, H. Hedberg, and T. Kirves. Usability in company open source software context: Initial findings from an empirical case study. In Open Source Development, Communities and Quality, volume 275 of IFIP Int'l Federation for Information Processing, pages 359--365. Springer, 2008.
[5]
S. Krishnamurthy. Cave or community?: An empirical examination of 100 mature open source projects. First Monday, 7(6), June 2002.
[6]
D. M. Nichols and M. B. Twidale. Usability processes in open source projects. Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 11(2):149--162, 2006.
[7]
A. Rainer and S. Gale. Evaluating the quality and quantity of data on open source software projects. In Proc. Int'l Conf. Open Source Systems, pages 29--36, 2005.
[8]
E. Raymond. The cathedral and the bazaar. Knowledge, Technology, & Policy, 12(3):23--49, 1999.
[9]
D. Weiss. Quantitative analysis of open source projects on SourceForge. In Proc. Int'l Conf. Open Source Systems, pages 140--147, 2005.
[10]
Y. Ye and K. Kishida. Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers. In Proc. Int'l Conf. Software Eng., pages 419--429, 2003.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)On the suitability of hugging face hub for empirical studiesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10608-830:2Online publication date: 18-Jan-2025
  • (2017) Strategic Implications of Openness in AI Development Global Policy10.1111/1758-5899.124038:2(135-148)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2017

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
EASE '13: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
April 2013
268 pages
ISBN:9781450318488
DOI:10.1145/2460999
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Centro de Informatica - UFPE: Centro de Informatica - UFPE
  • SBC: Brazilian Computer Society
  • CNPq: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecn
  • CAPES: Brazilian Higher Education Funding Council

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 April 2013

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Eric Raymond
  2. SourceForge
  3. open source software
  4. reflexivity
  5. success factors

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

EASE '13
Sponsor:
  • Centro de Informatica - UFPE
  • SBC
  • CNPq
  • CAPES

Acceptance Rates

EASE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 31 of 94 submissions, 33%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 71 of 232 submissions, 31%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)On the suitability of hugging face hub for empirical studiesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10608-830:2Online publication date: 18-Jan-2025
  • (2017) Strategic Implications of Openness in AI Development Global Policy10.1111/1758-5899.124038:2(135-148)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2017

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media