Open Source Software Developer and Project Networks

Abstract : This paper outlines complex network concepts and how social networks are built from Open Source Software (OSS) data. We present an initial study of the social networks of three different OSS forges, BerliOS Developer, GNU Savannah, and SourceForge. Much research has been done on snapshot or conflated views of these networks, especially SourceForge, due to the size of the SourceForge community. The degree distribution, connectedness, centrality, and scale-free nature of SourceForge has been presented for the network at particular points in time. However, very little research has been done on how the network grows, how connections were made, especially during its infancy, and how these metrics evolve over time.