How do free/open source developers pick their tools?: A Delphi study of the Debian project

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Date
2016-05
Authors
Krafft, Martin F.
Stol, Klaas-Jan
Fitzgerald, Brian
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Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
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Research Projects
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Abstract
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has come to play a critical role in the global software industry. Organizations are widely adopting FOSS and interacting with open source communities, and hence organizations have a considerable interest in seeing these communities flourishing. Little research has focused on the tools used to develop that software. Given the absence of formal mandate that would appear in traditional organizations, an open question is what influences a FOSS contributor's decision to adopt a tool and how workflows get established in FOSS teams. In this paper we report on a Delphi study conducted in the Debian Project, one of the largest FOSS projects. Drawing from data collected in three phases from a panel of 21 carefully selected and well-informed participants, we identified 15 factors that affect decisions to adopt tools and relate those to existing models of innovation and diffusion.
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Keywords
Free/open source software , Tools , Delphi study , Qualitative study , Software engineering , Software maintenance tools , Collaboration in software development
Citation
Krafft, M. F., Stol, K.-J. and Fitzgerald, B. (2016) 'How do free/open source developers pick their tools?: a Delphi study of the Debian project', ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, Austin, Texas, 14-22 May, 2889248: ACM, pp. 232-241. doi: 10.1145/2889160.2889248
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© ACM, 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ICSE '16 Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion , pp. 232-241, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2889160.2889248