Analyzing Risks associated to FLOSS Communities (at Linux Tag 2012)

Linux Tag 2012
Berlin on the 26th May, 2012
More information: http://www.linuxtag.org/2012/de/program/program/vortragsdetails.html?no_cache=1&talkid=450

Transcript

1. Analyzing Risks associated to FLOSS Communities Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar dizquierdo@{bitergia.com/libresoft.es} GSyC/Libresoft, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Linux Tag 2012, Berlin, Germany May 26, 2012 Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing Risks associated to FLOSS Communities
2. (cc) 2012 Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar. Some rights reserved. This document is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence, available in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
3. Motivation FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) projects are more than source code Developers, translators, artists, community manager, lawyers, ... Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
4. Motivation Most of the analysis are focused on the source code But what about the community? Companies are usually not aware of the community, but they should! Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
5. Motivation: some initial questions Who are the main developers? What is their area of knowledge (C++, Java, Python?) What is their typical productivity? Are main developers still working in the project? How can I contact them? Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
6. Motivation: some more questions Are there companies working in the project? What is their typical area of work in the source code? And their general effort? What are the companies closing bugs in a fastest way? Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
7. Visualizing: Openstack case Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
8. Visualizing: Openstack case Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
9. Visualizing: Openstack case Notice that the second company in commits (Ansolabs) was bought by Rackspace in 2011! Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
10. Visualizing: Openstack case Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
11. Visualizing: Openstack case Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
12. Visualizing: Openstack case Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
13. Motivation: some more questions Are companies aware of the real structure of FLOSS communities? Openstack: more than 450 developers and more than 30 companies Are you sure you know all of the insights of the communities? Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
14. How to retrieve Data FLOSS projects provide publicly available data sources Source code management systems: e.g. CVS, SVN, Git or Mercurial Bug tracking systems: e.g. Bugzilla, Gnats, Jira or Google BTS Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
15. How to retrieve Data There are specific tools that help to understand the way communities work http://git.libresoft.es (mining tools section) Those basically retrieve data from repositories and store that in a database All open source (GPLv2 or later) Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
16. How to retrieve Data: CVSAnalY This tool supports CVS, SVN, Git and partially Bazaar Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
17. How to retrieve Data: CVSAnalY All of the previous charts obtained by CVSAnalY (except the bugs information) Number of core developers, regular or occasional (62, 144 and 170 in the Openstack case) Maintenance metrics related to community: code decay, abandoned areas of the source code, orphaning of the source code Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
18. How to retrieve Data: CVSAnalY Regeneration of developers or companies 02/01/10 03/01/10 04/01/10 05/01/10 06/01/10 07/01/10 08/01/10 09/01/10 10/01/10 11/01/10 12/01/10 01/01/11 02/01/11 03/01/11 04/01/11 05/01/11 06/01/11 07/01/11 08/01/11 09/01/11 10/01/11 11/01/11 12/01/11 01/01/12 02/01/12 03/01/12 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Stacked area chart lonocloud fathomdb nttdata HP Nebula Griddynamics linux2go Citrix Ansolabs Rackspace Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
19. How to retrieve Data: Bicho This tool retrieves information from bug tracking systems and stores the information in a database Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
20. How to retrieve Data: Bicho Typical time to fix a bug per developer or company Characterization of developers and companies based on typical activity in the BTS (closing bugs? commenting bugs? tossing bugs?) Number of bugs fixed per company Bugs opened and closed per month Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
21. Who could be interested? Companies that own a FLOSS product: They usually want to check the adoption of their products Number of new developers Changes provided by the community Other companies participating in the project General activity and maintenance process Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
22. Who could be interested? Companies that want to evaluate FLOSS projects: How lively is a community Main developers Responsiveness in the bug tracking system or mailing lists Typical maintenance activity, abandoned areas of the source code Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
23. Who could be interested? Public administrations owning a forge (or private forges) General activity of the communities Adoption of the forge by developers and general users New users and developers coming to the projects Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
24. Who could be interested? First steps of companies in FLOSS world General structure of a FLOSS community Distribution of the effort among developers General channels of communication between developers and users Dealing with general FLOSS development tools Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
25. Bitergia Bitergia is a spin-off from the research group GSyC/LibreSoft At the university Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid Large experience analyzing FLOSS communities and being part of them LibreSoft is a research group whose focus is on free software engineering, Android development and systems administration Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
26. Bitergia Bitergia provides metrics about FLOSS communities at several levels: basic, medium or advanced Focused on costumers requirements and providing useful information to companies interested in understanding the insights of FLOSS communities Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities
27. Questions? Thanks for your attendance! Questions? – Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar dizquierdo@{libresoft.es/bitergia.com} GSyC/LibreSoft - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Slides: http://www.scribd.com/dicortazar/ Daniel Izquierdo Cort´ azar Analyzing FLOSS Communities