Open Source Software Hosting Platforms: A Collaborative Perspective’s Review

Abstract

Abstract—Open source software (OSS) has been gaining large attention lately. In fact, several studies have shown that the collaboration is a remarkably major factor influencing the OSS quality. In addition, there are several existing platforms providing mediums for collaborative development of the OSS projects and involve advanced features that assist in boosting the collaboration process. Such platforms which can be called as open source software hosting platforms are rich of collaborative workflows. Therefore, in this research a comprehensive investigation of the current OSS hosting platforms is held for the sake of studying their collaboration capabilities as well as pointing out any limitations related to collaboration that might hinder OSS from meeting high quality. The review has shown that the current OSS hosting platforms have some potential limitations. The identified limitations have been shared through a survey with developers working on OSS platforms and the results have generally revealed that there is a necessity to overcome these limitations.