Entering the circle of trust

Abstract

The success of an open-source project depends to a large degree on the proactive and constructive participation by the developer community. An important role that developers play in a project is that of a code committer. However, code-commit privilege is typically restricted to the core group of a project. In this paper, we study the phenomenon of the induction of external developers as code committers. The trustworthiness of an external developer is one of the key factors that determines the granting of commit privileges. Therefore, we formulate different hypotheses to explain how the trust is established in practice. To investigate our hypotheses, we developed an automated approach based on mining code repositories and bug-tracking systems. We implemented the approach and performed an empirical study, using the Eclipse projects, to test the hypotheses. Our results indicate that, most frequently, developers establish trust and credibility in a project by contributing to the project in a non-committer role. Moreover, the employing organization of a developer is another factor-although a less significant one-that influences trust.

Configurational patterns for COVID-19 related social media rumor refutation effectiveness enhancement based on machine learning and fsQCA

“…If a microblogger is highly active, the possibility of interaction and the number of followers will increase. Although frequent broadcasting to followers on social media does not necessarily lead to greater engagement ( Suh, 2010 ), microbloggers with high activity are more likely to encourage users to share the microblogs and promote the dissemination of false rumor-refuting information ( Sinha, 2013 ; Li, 2021 ). The number of microblogs published by the microblogger is used to measure microbloggers’ activity.…”

Committer Assessment Practice in Blockchain Project: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Potential developers will be asked to demonstrate their skills, which will be used as a basis for the existing committers to recommend the developer for the committer role (Garagol & Nilsson, 2018). It is interesting to note that some publications were found to demonstrate non-technical aspects, such as commitment to the project, developer personality, and trustworthiness, that influence the committer assessment practice in traditional OSS projects (Sinha et al, 2015). In Blockchain, governing decisions on who will become a new committer can be difficult (Garagol & Nilsson, 2018).…”

Comparative Performance of Machine Learning Algorithms for Predicting Future Committer in Blockchain Projects

“…Prior researchers have studied developer induction to committers phenomenon [1,10,32,33]. For example, [9] developed an automated approach based on mining archive records of code repositories and bug-tracking systems in Eclipse OSS projects. Findings show that the trustworthiness of an external developer and his credibility are significant key factors that determine the developer's promotion to commit role privileges.…”

“…In general, based on the aforementioned perspectives, extant empirical studies have been able to develop several committer promotion models by taking into consideration of objective measures of developers' activities [1,9,10,32]. There are several shortfalls in these studies.…”

“…Project leaders must create mechanisms for role evolution best practices to ensure that only competent developers get elevated to committer responsibilities [8]. Therefore, project leaders offer the best opportunity to address committer assessment problems [8][9][10]. However, the project leaders do not know whether a developer promoted to committer status will continue to contribute to the project for a long time.…”