skip to main content
10.1145/2889160.2889248acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

How do free/open source developers pick their tools?: a Delphi study of the Debian project

Published: 14 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has come to play a critical role in the global software industry. Organizations are widely adopting FOSS and interacting with open source communities, and hence organizations have a considerable interest in seeing these communities flourishing. Little research has focused on the tools used to develop that software. Given the absence of formal mandate that would appear in traditional organizations, an open question is what influences a FOSS contributor's decision to adopt a tool and how workflows get established in FOSS teams. In this paper we report on a Delphi study conducted in the Debian Project, one of the largest FOSS projects. Drawing from data collected in three phases from a panel of 21 carefully selected and well-informed participants, we identified 15 factors that affect decisions to adopt tools and relate those to existing models of innovation and diffusion.

References

[1]
Amor-Iglesias, J.-J., Gonzalez-Barahona, J. M., Robles, G. and Herraiz, I. 2005. Measuring libre software using Debian 3.1 (Sarge) as a case study. UPGRADE, 6, 3.
[2]
Bagozzi, R. P. 2007. The Legacy of the Technology Acceptance Model and a proposal for a paradigm shift. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 8, 4.
[3]
Barth, A., Carlo, A. D., Hertzog, R., Nussbaum, L., Schwarz, C. and Jackson, I. 2014. Debian Developer's Ref. v3.4.14.
[4]
Bruckhaus, T., Madhavji, N. H., Janssen, I. and Henshaw, J. 1996. The Impact of Tools on Software Productivity. IEEE Software, 13, 5.
[5]
Crowston, K., Wei, K., Howison, J. and Wiggins, A. 2012. Free/Libre Open Source Software Development: What We Know and What We Do Not Know. ACM Comput. Surv., 44.
[6]
Dalkey, N. and Helmer, O. 1963. An experimental application of the Delphi method to the use of experts. Management Science, 9, 3.
[7]
Dalkey, N. C. 1972. The Delphi method: an experimental study of group opinion. Lexington Books.
[8]
Davis, F. D., Bagozzi, R. P. and Warshaw, P. R. 1989. User acceptance of computer technology: a comparison of two theoretical models. Management Science, 35, 8.
[9]
Debian Community. 2004. Debian Social Contract v. 1.1.
[10]
Dishaw, M. T. and Strong, D. M. 1998. Supporting software maintenance with software engineering tools: A Computed task-technology fit analysis. J. Sys. Soft., 44, 2.
[11]
Dunn, W. N. 1994. Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
[12]
Eckhardt, A., Laumer, S. and Weitzel, T. 2009. Who influences whom? Analyzing workplace referents' social influence on IT adoption and non-adoption. J Inf Tech 24, 1
[13]
Fitzgerald, B. 2006. The Transformation of Open Source Software. MIS Quart., 30, 3.
[14]
Fitzgerald, B., Kesan, J. P., Russo, B., Shaikh, M. and Succi, G. 2011. Adopting Open Source Software. MIT Press.
[15]
Fraser, S., Cooper, K., Coplien, J., Lennon, R., Ravichandar, R., Spinellis, D. and Succi, G. 2012. Software Tools Research: A Matter of Scale and Scope - or Commoditization? In Proc. 3rd Conf. SPLASH. ACM.
[16]
Goodhue, D. L. and Thompson, R. L. 1995. Task-technology fit and individual performance. MIS Quart., 19, 2.
[17]
Guba, E. G. 1981. Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries. Edu. Commun. Technol., 29, 2.
[18]
Harrison, W., Ossher, H. and Tarr, P. 2000. Software Engineering Tools and Environments: A Roadmap. In Proc. Future of Software Engineering.
[19]
Hauge, Ø., Ayala, C. and Conradi, R. 2010. Adoption of open source software in software-intensive organizations-A systematic literature review. Inf. Softw. Technol., 52, 11.
[20]
Iivari, J. 1996. Why are CASE Tools not used? CACM, 39.
[21]
Judd, R. C. 1972. Use of Delphi methods in higher education. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 4, 2.
[22]
Keeney, S., Hasson, F. and McKenna, H. 2011. The Delphi Technique in Nursing and Health Research. Wiley.
[23]
Krafft, M. F. 2006. The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques. No Starch Press.
[24]
Krafft, M. F. 2010. A Delphi study of the influences on innovation adoption and process evolution in a large open-source project: The case of Debian. University of Limerick.
[25]
Kwon, T. H. and Zmud, R. W. 1987. Unifying the fragmented models of information systems implementation. John Wiley.
[26]
Laurie, B. 2008. Debian and OpenSSL: The Aftermath. http://www.links.org/?p=328.
[27]
Lee, Y., Kozar, K. A. and Larsen, K. R. 2003. The Technology Acceptance Model: Past, Present, and Future. Comm. Assoc. Inform. Syst., 12.
[28]
Linstone, H. A. and Turoff, M. 2002. The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications. Information Systems Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology.
[29]
Loo, R. 2002. The Delphi method: a powerful tool for strategic management. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 25, 4.
[30]
Mosley, V. 1992. How to Assess Tools Efficiently and Quantitatively. IEEE Softw., 9, 3.
[31]
Novak, J. D. and Cañas, A. J. 2006. The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them. Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
[32]
O'Sullivan, B. 2009. Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems. Commun. ACM, 52, 9.
[33]
Okoli, C. and Pawlowski, S. D. 2004. The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications. Information & Management, 42, 1.
[34]
Paraskevas, A. and Saunders, M. N. K. 2012. Beyond consensus: an alternative use of Delphi enquiry in hospitality research. Int'l J. Contemporary Hospitality Manage, 24, 6.
[35]
Patton, M. Q. 2001. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, USA.
[36]
Pfleeger, S. L. and Menezes, W. 2000. Marketing Technology to Software Practitioners. IEEE Softw., 17, 1.
[37]
Prechelt, L. and Oezbek, C. 2011. The search for a research method for studying OSS process innovation. Empir Software Eng, 16, 4.
[38]
Raghavan, S. A. and Chand, D. R. 1989. Diffusing softwareengineering methods. IEEE Software, 6, 4.
[39]
Raymond, E. S. 2001. The Cathedral & the Bazaar. O'Reilly.
[40]
Redwine, S. T. and Riddle, W. E. 1985. Software technology maturation. In Proc. ICSE.
[41]
Rogers, E. M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press.
[42]
Rossi, B., Russo, B. and Succi, G. 2012. Adoption of free/libre open source software in public organizations: factors of impact. Information Technology & People, 25, 2.
[43]
Rugg, G. and McGeorge, P. 2005. The sorting techniques: a tutorial paper on card sorts, picture sorts and item sorts. Expert Systems, 22, 3.
[44]
Schmidt, R. C. 1997. Managing Delphi Surveys Using Nonparametric Statistical Techniques. Decision Sciences, 28.
[45]
Shaikh, M. and Cornford, T. 2003. Version Management Tools: CVS to BK in the Linux Kernel. In Proc. 3rd Workshop Open Source Softw. Eng.
[46]
Spinellis, D. 2012. Git. IEEE Softw., 29, 3.
[47]
Turoff, M. 1970. The Design of a Policy Delphi. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 2, 2.
[48]
Wicks, M. N. and Dewar, R. G. 2007. A new research agenda for tool integration. J. Syst. Softw., 80, 9.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023) How do Developers Really Feel About Bug Fixing? Directions for Automatic Program Repair IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.319418849:4(1823-1841)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Managing Episodic Volunteers in Free/Libre/Open Source Software CommunitiesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.298509348:1(260-277)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
  • (2018)The ABC of Software Engineering ResearchACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/324174327:3(1-51)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. How do free/open source developers pick their tools?: a Delphi study of the Debian project

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Conferences
      ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion
      May 2016
      946 pages
      ISBN:9781450342056
      DOI:10.1145/2889160
      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 the author(s) 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

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 14 May 2016

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. Delphi study
      2. free/open source software
      3. qualitative study
      4. tools

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article

      Funding Sources

      Conference

      ICSE '16
      Sponsor:

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

      Upcoming Conference

      ICSE 2025

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)23
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
      Reflects downloads up to 01 Mar 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2023) How do Developers Really Feel About Bug Fixing? Directions for Automatic Program Repair IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2022.319418849:4(1823-1841)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2023
      • (2022)Managing Episodic Volunteers in Free/Libre/Open Source Software CommunitiesIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.298509348:1(260-277)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
      • (2018)The ABC of Software Engineering ResearchACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/324174327:3(1-51)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
      • (2018)A Meta-Model for Information Systems QualityACM Transactions on Management Information Systems10.1145/32307139:3(1-38)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2018
      • (2018)On the use of package managers by the C++ open-source communityProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3167132.3167290(1483-1491)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2018
      • (2017)Software quality concerns in the Italian bank sectorProceedings of the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice Track10.1109/ICSE-SEIP.2017.10(63-72)Online publication date: 20-May-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