Project Life Cycles in Open-Source Software
For researchers and practitioners in open-source software, this provides a theoretical framework to understand project life cycles, but the contribution is incremental as it adapts existing product life cycle methods.
This paper models developer engagement in open-source projects using endogenous growth theory and differential equations, finding that the model calibrates well to many projects and can estimate lifetime production value.
Using methods previously applied to product life cycles, this paper models developer engagement through the project life cycle for open-source projects, and detects similar dynamics in a cross section of projects. Endogenous growth theory is used to model growth dynamics in open-source software engineering, while incorporating the interactions between growth levels and developer activity over time using systems of differential equations. The solution to this model calibrates well to many open-source projects. The model generates an estimate of the lifetime developer engagement and growth, which supports estimating a lifetime production value of open-source projects.