The measurement of the software ecosystem’s productivity with GitHub

Zhifang Liao, Yiqi Zhao, Shengzong Liu, Yan Zhang, Limin Liu*, Jun Long

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
101 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Software productivity has always been one of the most critical metrics for measuring software development. However, with the open-source community (e.g., GitHub), new software development models are emerging. The traditional productivity metrics do not provide a comprehensive measure of the new software development models. Therefore, it is necessary to build a productivity measurement model of open source software ecosystem suitable for the open-source community’s production activities. Based on the natural ecosystem, this paper proposes concepts related to the productivity of open source software ecosystems, analyses influencing factors of open source software ecosystem productivity, and constructs a measurement model using these factors. Model validation experiments show that the model is compatible with a large portion of open source software ecosystems in GitHub. This study can provide references for participants of the open-source software ecosystem to choose proper types of ecosystems. The study also provides a basis for ecosystem health assessment for researchers interested in ecosystem quality.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)239-258
Number of pages20
JournalComputer Systems Science and Engineering
Volume36
Issue number1
Early online date23 Dec 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Keywords

  • open-source software ecosystem
  • OSSECO
  • productivity
  • productivity model
  • Software ecosystem

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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