Understanding the evolution of socio-technical aspects in open source ecosystems

Abstract

Open source systems being related to each other may be grouped in bigger systems called software ecosystems. The goal of our PhD dissertation [4] was to understand the evolution of the social aspects in such ecosystems. More precisely, we studied how contributors to these ecosystems can be grouped in different communities that evolve and collaborate in different ways. In doing so, we provided evidence that contributors have specificities that are not taken into account by today's analysis tools. Becoming aware of these specificities opens up new research and practically relevant questions on how new automated tools can be designed and used to offer better support to the ecosystem's contributors in their activities.