“Peeling the Onion”

Abstract

According to the now widely accepted "onion-model" of the organization of open source software development, an open source project typically relies on a core of developers that is assisted by a larger periphery of users. But what does the role of the periphery consist of? Raymond's Linus's Law which states that "given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow" suggests at least one important function: the detection of defects. Yet, what are the ways through which core and periphery interact with each other? With the help of text-mining methods, we study the treatment of bugs that affected the Firefox Internet browser as reflected in the discussions and actions recorded in Mozilla's issue tracking system Bugzilla. We find various patterns in the modes of interactions between core and peripheral members of the community. For instance, core members seem to engage more frequently with the periphery when the latter proposes a solution (a patch). This leads us to conclude that Alan Cox's dictum "show me the code", perhaps even more than Linus's law, seems to be the dominant rule that governs the development of software like Firefox.

Uncovering the Periphery: A Qualitative Survey of Episodic Volunteering in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Communities

“…In a study of popular projects on GitHub, Pinto et al [24] found that 30% of one-off contributors' commits fixed bugs, while 19% added features and 9% refactored code. When peripheral developers do not implement new features, their suggestions and reports can often result in the identification of bugs [8], [20] or trigger significant new development [18], [22], [84]. Lastly, peripheral developers engage in citizenship behaviors, such as policing adherence to community ruleswhich reduces friction and conflict-and identifying legal issues such as copyright infringement [21].…”

“…FLOSS contributors, both core and peripheral, experience a psychological sense of community, with-depending on the study-as few as 30% or as many as 83% of participants claiming they felt affinity for the community [20], [55], [96]. Even one-off contributors tend to have a positive impression of the projects to which they contribute [26].…”

“…Among FLOSS contributors, factors that affect sustained participation include: positive community experiences; association with the beliefs and values of FLOSS; and seeing oneself as a FLOSS developer [55], [98]. Adherence to cooperative norms, passion and a 'sense of community' are present among peripheral contributors [20], [21].…”

“…[17]) can be justified when looking at the quantity of contributions,the periphery actually represents a large proportion of FLOSS communities, but has not been studied in any great detail. We do know that peripheral developers are associated with a number of significant benefits: for example a high level of innovation potential, improving software quality, and developing new features [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]. Furthermore, peripheral developers come with extensive external social networks that are important for the sustainability of FLOSS projects [23].…”

Can FOSS projects benefit from integrating Kanban: a case study

“…The project fulfils all terms of the open source definition [29] and uses the GNU Affero General Public License. The project does not exactly adhere to the onion model as described in FOSS research [8,26,28,37]. The layers are similar but outer layers are not larger by an order of magnitude.…”