Herding cats in a FOSS ecosystem: a tale of communication and coordination for release management

• Published in: Journal of internet services and applications Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 1 - 24
• Main Authors: Poo-Caamaño, Germán, Knauss, Eric, Singer, Leif, German, Daniel M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 2017; Sociedade Brasileira de Computação; Brazilian Computing Society (SBC)
• Subjects: Channels; Communication channels; Computer Applications; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Empirical study; Free and Open Source Software Development; Freeware; Information Systems and Communication Service; IT in Business; Management; Open source software; Processor Architectures; Programvaruteknik; Release management; Software ecosystem; Software Engineering; Release management; Empirical study; Software ecosystem
• ISSN: 1867-4828; 1869-0238; 1869-0238
• DOI: 10.1186/s13174-017-0063-2

Release management in large-scale software development projects requires significant communication and coordination. It is particularly challenging in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystems, in which hundreds of loosely connected developers and their projects are coordinated to release software to a schedule. To better understand this process and its challenges, we analyzed over two and half years of communication in the
GNOME
ecosystem and studied developers’ interactions. Through a case study, we cataloged communication channels, determined the main channel from which we categorized high level communication and coordination activities spanning five releases, and triangulated our results by interviewing ten key developers. We found that a release schedule, influence (instead of direct control), and diversity are the main factors that positively impact the release process in the GNOME ecosystem. We report a set of lessons learned that encapsulates our understanding of how the Release Management process function in a FOSS ecosystem, we learned that: (1) ensure that the release team follows the main communication channels used by developers, (2) provide a common place for coordination for an ecosystem, (3) consider including both good technical and social skills in a release team, (4) aim for a diverse release team, (5) based on lack of power, lobbying and consensus based management must be followed, (6) help the release team in the coordination process with a well defined schedule, and (7) release team work is different from regular software work. Our results can help organizations build better large-scale teams and show that research focused on individual projects might miss important parts of the picture.