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Open source barriers to entry, revisited: a sociotechnical perspective

ICSE '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software EngineeringMay 2018Pages 1004–1015https://doi.org/10.1145/3180155.3180241
Published:27 May 2018Publication History
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ICSE '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

Open source barriers to entry, revisited: a sociotechnical perspective
Pages 1004–1015
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ABSTRACT

Research has revealed that significant barriers exist when entering Open-Source Software (OSS) communities and that women disproportionately experience such barriers. However, this research has focused mainly on social/cultural factors, ignoring the environment itself --- the tools and infrastructure. To shed some light onto how tools and infrastructure might somehow factor into OSS barriers to entry, we conducted a field study with five teams of software professionals, who worked through five use-cases to analyze the tools and infrastructure used in their OSS projects. These software professionals found tool/infrastructure barriers in 7% to 71% of the use-case steps that they analyzed, most of which are tied to newcomer barriers that have been established in the literature. Further, over 80% of the barrier types they found include attributes that are biased against women.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      ICSE '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering
      May 2018
      1307 pages
      ISBN:9781450356381
      DOI:10.1145/3180155
      • Conference Chair:
      • Michel Chaudron,
      • General Chair:
      • Ivica Crnkovic,
      • Program Chairs:
      • Marsha Chechik,
      • Mark Harman

      Copyright © 2018 ACM

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      • Published: 27 May 2018

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