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The ubiquity of GitHub for software developers to coordinate software development in a community platform has resulted in a rich source of public data. Blockchain teams put open-source code as a founding principle since the release of Bitcoin and nearly all blockchain-based projects have code visible on GitHub. Developer engagement is known to be important to the health and viability of open-source software, yet has varying definitions and no standard method of measuring what constitutes engagement. This work uses exploratory factor analysis to identify dimensions that represent engagement in a community of open-source developers. We find that a latent factor composed of pull-requests, commits, comments, and authors based on a monthly average of the previous three months is a representation of Developer Engagement. A secondary factor consists of stars, forks, and total authors. Cross validation of the dataset is carried out with good support for the model.
Blockchain Cases and Innovations, blockchain, developer engagement, factor analysis, github, open-source software
| ID | stars_tot | forks_tot | auth_tot | authors_ma3 | commits_ma3 | comments_ma3 | PR_open_ma3 | days_inactive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 72112 | 59013 | 6242 | 150.33 | 360 | 2440.67 | 170.67 | 0.006 |
| 2 | 4904 | 10079 | 728 | 13.33 | 39 | 23 | 3 | 0.696 |
| 52 | 4799 | 3023 | 594 | 35.67 | 18.67 | 138 | 19.33 | 0.287 |
| 74 | 15491 | 4684 | 1663 | 28.33 | 14 | 91.67 | 9.33 | 0.031 |
| Column name | Description |
|---|---|
| ID | A unique identifier for each repository |
| stars_tot | The total number of stars the repository has received |
| forks_tot | The total number of forks the repository has received |
| auth_tot | The total number of authors who have contributed to the repository |
| authors_ma3 | The average number of monthly authors who have contributed to the repository in the past three months |
| commits_ma3 | The average number of monthly commits made to the repository in the past three months |
| comments_ma3 | The average number of monthly comments in the repository in the past three months |
| PR_open_ma3 | The average number of monthly pull requests that were opened in the repository in the past three months |
| days_inactive | The number of days since the repository was active |
- Prodeedings: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/communities/f36bf371-28c7-4427-bff7-718d2c995872
- Track: Organisational Systems and Technology
- Mini-Track: Blockchain Cases and Innovations
- DOI: https://hdl.handle.net/10125/103285;
- pdf download: Nijsse-Litchfield-Developer-Engagement-HICSS56.pdf
Not a bad spot for a conference 🤠
