Using classification methods to reinforce the impact of social factors on software success

Abstract

Define the way of success for software can be an arduous task, especially when dealing with OSS projects. In this case, it is extremely difficult to have control over all stages of the development process. Many researchers have approached ways to identify aspects, whether social or technical, that have some impact on the success or failure of software. Despite the large number of results found, there is still no consensus among which types of attributes have a greater success impact. Thus, after identifying technical and socio-technical factors that influence the success of OSS using data-mining techniques in about 20.000 projects data from GitHub, this study aims to compare them in order to identify those which most influence in determining the success of an OSS project. The results show that it is possible to identify the status (active or dormant) in more than 90% of the cases based, mainly, in social attributes of the project.