The development of open source software (OSS) is a broad field which requires diverse skill sets. For example, maintainers help lead the project and promote its longevity, technical writers assist with documentation, bug reporters identify defects in software, and developers program the software.
However, it is unknown which skills are used in OSS development as well as OSS contributors' general attitudes towards skills in OSS. In this paper, we address this gap by administering a survey to a diverse set of 455 OSS contributors. Guided by these responses as well as prior literature on software development expertise and social factors of OSS, we develop a model of skills in OSS that considers the many contexts OSS contributors work in. This model has 45 skills in the following 9 categories: technical skills, working styles, problem solving, contribution types, project-specific skills, interpersonal skills, external relations, management, and characteristics. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses, we find that OSS contributors are actively motivated to improve skills and perceive many benefits in sharing their skills with others. We then use this analysis to derive a set of design implications and best practices for those who incorporate skills into OSS tools and platforms, such as GitHub.
Mon 14 NovDisplayed time zone: Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi change
14:00 - 15:30 | CommunityResearch Papers / Ideas, Visions and Reflections / Demonstrations / Industry Paper at SRC LT 51 Chair(s): Dirk Riehle University of Bavaria, Erlangen | ||
14:00 15mTalk | In War and Peace: The Impact of World Politics on Software Ecosystems Ideas, Visions and Reflections Raula Gaikovina Kula Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Christoph Treude University of Melbourne DOI | ||
14:15 15mTalk | A Retrospective Study of One Decade of Artifact Evaluations Research Papers Stefan Winter LMU Munich, Christopher Steven Timperley Carnegie Mellon University, Ben Hermann TU Dortmund, Jürgen Cito TU Wien, Jonathan Bell Northeastern University, Michael Hilton Carnegie Mellon University, Dirk Beyer LMU Munich DOI | ||
14:30 15mTalk | Understanding Skills for OSS Communities on GitHub Research Papers Jenny T. Liang University of Washington, Thomas Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Denae Ford Microsoft Research DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
14:45 15mTalk | Achievement Unlocked: A Case Study on Gamifying DevOps Practices in Industry Industry Paper Patrick Ayoup Concordia University, Diego Costa Concordia University, Canada, Emad Shihab Concordia University DOI | ||
15:00 7mTalk | iTiger: An Automatic Issue Title Generation Tool Demonstrations Ting Zhang Singapore Management University, Ivana Clairine Irsan Singapore Management University, Ferdian Thung Singapore Management University, DongGyun Han Royal Holloway, University of London, David Lo Singapore Management University, Lingxiao Jiang Singapore Management University | ||
15:08 7mTalk | CodeMatcher: A Tool for Large-Scale Code Search Based on Query Semantics Matching Demonstrations Chao Liu Chongqing University, Xuanlin Bao Chongqing University, Xin Xia Huawei, Meng Yan Chongqing University, David Lo Singapore Management University, Ting Zhang Singapore Management University | ||
15:15 15mTalk | Generating Realistic Vulnerabilities via Neural Code Editing: An Empirical Study Research Papers Yu Nong Washington State University, Yuzhe Ou University of Texas at Dallas, Michael Pradel University of Stuttgart, Feng Chen University of Texas at Dallas, Haipeng Cai Washington State University DOI Pre-print | ||