IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/acsxxx/v17y2014i07n08ns0219525915500083.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Do Oss Projects Change In Number And Size? A Large-Scale Analysis To Test A Model Of Project Growth

Author

Listed:
  • FRANK SCHWEITZER

    (Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 58, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland)

  • VAHAN NANUMYAN

    (Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 58, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland)

  • CLAUDIO J. TESSONE

    (Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 58, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland)

  • XI XIA

    (Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Weinbergstrasse 58, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland)

Abstract

Established open source software (OSS) projects can grow in size if new developers join, but also the number of OSS projects can grow if developers choose to found new projects. We discuss to what extent an established model for firm growth can be applied to the dynamics of OSS projects. Our analysis is based on a large-scale data set from SourceForge (SF) consisting of monthly data for 10 years, for up to 360,000 OSS projects and up to 340,000 developers. Over this time period, we find an exponential growth both in the number of projects and developers, with a remarkable increase of single-developer projects after 2009. We analyze the monthly entry and exit rates for both projects and developers, the growth rate of established projects and the monthly project size distribution. To derive a prediction for the latter, we use modeling assumptions of how newly entering developers choose to either found a new project or to join existing ones. Our model applies only to collaborative projects that are deemed to grow in size by attracting new developers. We verify, by a thorough statistical analysis, that the Yule–Simon distribution is a valid candidate for the size distribution of collaborative projects except for certain time periods where the modeling assumptions no longer hold. We detect and empirically test the reason for this limitation, i.e., the fact that an increasing number of established developers found additional new projects after 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank Schweitzer & Vahan Nanumyan & Claudio J. Tessone & Xi Xia, 2014. "How Do Oss Projects Change In Number And Size? A Large-Scale Analysis To Test A Model Of Project Growth," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(07n08), pages 1-24.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:17:y:2014:i:07n08:n:s0219525915500083
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219525915500083
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525915500083
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219525915500083?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhong, Li-Xin & Xu, Wen-Juan & He, Yun-Xin & Zhong, Chen-Yang & Chen, Rong-Da & Qiu, Tian & Shi, Yong-Dong & Ren, Fei, 2017. "A generalized public goods game with coupling of individual ability and project benefit," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 73-80.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:17:y:2014:i:07n08:n:s0219525915500083. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/acs.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.