Using social network analysis techniques to study collaboration between a FLOSS community and a company

Abstract

Because of the sheer volume of information available in FLOSS repositories, simple analysis have to face the problems of filtering the relevant information. Hence, it is essential to apply methodologies that highlight that information for a given aspect of the project. In this paper, some techniques from the social sciences have been used on data from version control systems to extract information about the development process of FLOSS projects with the aim of highlighting several processes that occur in FLOSS projects and that are difficult to obtain by other means. In particular, the collaboration between the FLOSS community and a company has been studied by selecting two projects as case studies. The results highlight aspects such as efficiency in the development process, release management and leadership turnover. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.