2013/02/28 by Marcelo Serrano Zanetti, Ingo Scholtes, Zanetti, Marcelo Serrano +5
Computer Science · #Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) #D.2.8 #D.2.9 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #K.4.3 #K.6.1 #K.8.3 #Open Source Software Innovations #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Software System Performance and Reliability
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1302.7191
openalex publication_date 2013/02/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Social organization and division of labor crucially influence the performance\nof collaborative software engineering efforts. In this paper, we provide a\nquantitative analysis of the relation between social organization and\nperformance in Gentoo, an Open Source community developing a Linux\ndistribution. We study the structure and dynamics of collaborations as recorded\nin the project's bug tracking system over a period of ten years. We identify a\nperiod of increasing centralization after which most interactions in the\ncommunity were mediated by a single central contributor. In this period of\nmaximum centralization, the central contributor unexpectedly left the project,\nthus posing a significant challenge for the community. We quantify how the\nrise, the activity as well as the subsequent sudden dropout of this central\ncontributor affected both the social organization and the bug handling\nperformance of the Gentoo community. We analyze social organization from the\nperspective of network theory and augment our quantitative findings by\ninterviews with prominent members of the Gentoo community which shared their\npersonal insights.\n