Icsm2009 shihab
- 1. Studying the Use of Developer IRC Meetings in Open Source Projects Emad Shihab Zhen Ming Jiang Ahmed E. Hassan Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL) Queen’s University
- 2. OSS coordination mechanisms Open source developers are distributed • Mailing lists • Email • Bug tracking systems • IRC channels • IRC meetings
- 3. IRC meetings are ... Focused and short group discussions held by developers to discuss maintenance issues such as: • Upcoming releases • Major bugs • Task assignments • etc ...
- 4. The role of IRC meetings Complement other coordination mechanisms
- 5. The role of IRC meetings Answer questions and brainstorm
- 6. The role of IRC meetings Substitute physical meetings
- 7. Evolution GTK+ 169 IRC meetings 5 years 26640 IRC messages 130 different participants Studied projects
- 8. Our study on IRC meetings Participants Content Style
- 9. IRC meeting participant groups Core group: Key group members identified by the project Dominant group: Top 20% most active IRC meeting participants Casual group: IRC meeting participants not in the dominant group (casual participants)
- 10. 1. IRC meeting participants Who participates? 90% of core project members attended at least 1 meeting More than 50% attended more than half of the meetings In 2008 ...
- 11. 1. IRC meeting participants How much do participants contribute? 80% of IRC messages are contributed by 20% of participants (dominant group) 60% of the dominant group is made up of core project members
- 12. 1. IRC meeting participants How stable are the different groups? Cosine distance Exact same Totally different GTK+ Evolution Dominant group Casual group 1 0 (0.81) (0.51) (0.98) (0.21)
- 13. 2. IRC meeting contents What are they talking about? Common topics across projects Evolution 2008 GTK+ 2008
- 14. 2. IRC meeting contents What are they talking about? Project specific topics Evolution 2008 GTK+ 2008
- 15. 2. IRC meeting contents What are they talking about? Time specific topics GTK+ 2004 GTK+ 2008
- 16. 3. IRC meeting style How are the meetings run? Three types of meetings: Agenda: Meetings follow a specific agenda Update: Meetings to provide progress updates Other: Meetings to discuss specific topics (i.e. specific bugs or releases )
- 17. 3. IRC meeting style How are the meetings run? Different projects follow different meeting styles
- 18. 3. IRC meeting style How do participants address each other? A large number of messages are direct-addressing messages Update meeting in the Evolution project
- 19. Implications of IRC meetings study IRC meetings provide unmatched features Participants: More vocal versus deep thinker personalities Content: Priorities of topics worth raising in such limited time Style: How key project members discuss and settle major Project decisions in real-time
- 20. Conclusion
- 22. 2. IRC meeting contents Common topics across projects Time specific topics Project specific topics