Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Kyushu University have published a research report on the activities of the OSS (Open Source Software) community, ``OSS Myths and Facts,'' with the aim of conceptualizing the next generation of software development work styles. )” was published.
OSS development refers to a work style in which software is developed in a community formed on the Internet. Because OSS development allows developers from all over the world to collaborate on the Internet and create a large amount of valuable software, many companies and organizations have adopted software development methodologies and practices that refer to this work style. Proposed and put into practice. On the other hand, there is a lot of information and myths about the characteristics of OSS development that have no scientific basis, and although there are multiple survey results, it has been difficult to evaluate and compare them side by side.
Therefore, a joint research group consisting of Shinobu Saito, Special Researcher at NTT Computer & Data Science Laboratories, and Naoyasu Urashi, Professor and Deputy Director of Kyushu University's Faculty of Systems and Information Science, systematized the multiple myths about OSS as "OSS Myths." , conducted the largest-scale survey to date with over 40 developers and 230 million communications. This is the world's largest survey to verify multiple myths using the same data.
In this survey, we collected data from over 4 repositories on GitHub, a widely used version control system for OSS, analyzed and evaluated it, and created a list of OSS Myths and Facts. The report titled ``The Truth'' was published on the Internet in both Japanese and English versions.
According to the survey, the myths of OSS are: ``Communication in the OSS community is slow,'' ``The OSS community never sleeps,'' ``The OSS community is quick to die,'' ``The OSS community does not succumb to crackers,'' and ``The OSS community responds quickly to requests.'' "The participants of the OSS community are top developers."
Regarding these, ``About half of the communications occur within 4 hours,'' ``Activities are concentrated during office hours in North America,'' ``Probability of survival after 4 years is over 50%,'' ``Resolution time for vulnerabilities is approximately 3 months,'' `` Verification results showed that most of the requests, such as bug fixes, were resolved within two weeks, and that the role in the community was not limited to programming. Details were announced at the international workshop "EEE OSS 2" (held in South Korea on December 2023th) co-sponsored by NTT and Kyushu University.
NTT and Kyushu University will utilize this survey in subsequent research activities, and from a practical perspective, by accurately understanding the activities and characteristics of the OSS community, they will be able to use it to create a comfortable work environment and motivate efforts, especially for employees. The company says it is expected to contribute to improving employee experience (EX). In addition, we will continue our research and plan and make recommendations for the next generation software development work style.
