Disseminating Architectural Knowledge on Open-Source Projects: A Case Study of the Book "Architecture of Open-Source Applications"

This paper reports on an interview-based study of 18 authors of different chapters of the two-volume book "Architecture of Open-Source Applications". The main contributions are a synthesis of the process of authoring essay-style documents (ESDs) on software architecture, a series of observations on important factors that influence the content and presentation of architectural knowledge in this documentation form, and a set of recommendations for readers and writers of ESDs on software architecture. We analyzed the influence of three factors in particular: the evolution of a system, the community involvement in the project, and the personal characteristics of the author. This study provides the first systematic investigation of the creation of ESDs on software architecture. The observations we collected have implications for both readers and writers of ESDs, and for architecture documentation in general.