Barriers faced by newcomers to

open source projects:

a Systematic Review

Igor Steinmacher

Marco Aurélio Graciotto Silva

Marco Aurélio Gerosa

Context

... and need support on their first steps

“Newcomers are explorers who must orient themselves within an unfamiliar landscape...”

[Degenais et al. 2010]

B. Dagenais, H. Ossher, R.K.E Bellamy, M.P. Robillard and J.P. de Vries, Moving into a new software project landscape, in ICSE 2010.

Context

• A group of PhD students received an assignment:

▫ Contribute significantly to an OSS project

• Result:

▫ All succeeded!!!

• But...

▫ Onboarding was very hard

emails not answered after a week

outdated information on the issue tracker

waste of time on an already existent feature

concurrent work on translation caused by an unread/ unanswered message sent to devs forum

undocumented code/architecture

Goal

Identifying the barriers that newcomers face when contributing to an Open Source Software project

Aggregate the barriers evidenced by different studies and organize them

Scope and Definitions

• Community-based OSS projects

• Newcomer

• Onboarding

• Contribution = source code

Outsider

Onboarding Contributing

Newcomer Contributor Member

Motivation

Attractiveness Retention

Onboarding Barriers

Onboarding

Onboarding Barriers

Method

• Systematic Literature Review

▫ Aims to present a fair evaluation of a research topic by using a trustworthy, rigorous, and auditable methodology [Kitchenham, 2004]

• Analysis of papers using open coding + axial coding (Grounded Theory)

Kitchenham, B.: Procedures for performing systematic reviews. Tech. rep., Keele University and NICTA (2004)

Systematic Literature Review

• Research Question

▫ What are the barriers that hinder newcomers’ onboarding to OSS projects?

• Keywords based on research question:

Systematic Literature Review

• Selecting the studies

Query Digital Libraries

Selection of Primary Studies

Analysis of Primary Studies using open

coding

Author snowballing

Backward snowballing

ACM, IEEE, Scopus SpringerLink

(("OSS" OR "Open Source" OR "Free Software" OR FLOSS OR FOSS) AND (newcomer OR "joining process" OR newbie OR "new developer" OR "new member" OR "new contributor" OR "new member" OR novice OR beginner OR "potential participant" OR retention OR joiner OR onboarding OR "new committer"))

Systematic Literature Review

Studies found and selected

Systematic Literature Review

Resulting map of barriers

Systematic Literature Review

Stakeholder that needs to take action

Mapping Projects Analyzed

Mapping Types of Studies

Mapping Forums

Conclusions

• 21 studies that evidence barriers that can hinder newcomers’ onboarding in OSS projects

• Most evidenced barriers:

▫ newcomers’ previous technical experience

▫ receiving response from community

▫ social interactions with core members

Conclusions

• Social interaction issues is the most thoroughly studied category: 71.42% (15 out of 21) papers

▫ High focus on interaction in mailing lists (MSR)

• Technical issues are under-investigated

▫ code issues are evidenced by only 6 studies

Conclusions

• High diversity of projects studied

• Growth of studies evidencing problems

• No studies aiming specifically at identifying the barriers faced by newcomers to OSS

• Most part of the studies rely on results of quantitative case studies

• Qualitative work is needed to reveal the barriers and needs of the newcomers

Thank you!

Questions?

Igor Steinmacher

igorfs@utfpr.edu.br

Marco Aurélio Graciotto Silva

magsilva@utfpr.edu.br

Marco Aurélio Gerosa

gerosa@ime.usp.br