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Overcoming Social Barriers When Contributing to Open Source Software Projects

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An influx of newcomers is critical to the survival, long-term success, and continuity of many Open Source Software (OSS) community-based projects. However, newcomers face many barriers when making their first contribution, leading in many cases to dropouts. Due to the collaborative nature of community-based OSS projects, newcomers may be susceptible to social barriers, such as communication breakdowns and reception issues. In this article, we report a two-phase study aimed at better understanding social barriers faced by newcomers. In the first phase, we qualitatively analyzed the literature and data collected from practitioners to identify barriers that hinder newcomers’ first contribution. We designed a model composed of 58 barriers, including 13 social barriers. In the second phase, based on the barriers model, we developed FLOSScoach, a portal to support newcomers making their first contribution. We evaluated the portal in a diary-based study and found that the portal guided the newcomers and reduced the need for communication. Our results provide insights for communities that want to support newcomers and lay a foundation for building better onboarding tools. The contributions of this paper include identifying and gathering empirical evidence of social barriers faced by newcomers; understanding how social barriers can be reduced or avoided by using a portal that organizes proper information for newcomers (FLOSScoach); presenting guidelines for communities and newcomers on how to reduce or avoid social barriers; and identifying new streams of research.

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Steinmacher, Igor; Gerosa, Marco; Conte, Tayana U.; Redmiles, David F. (2019): Overcoming Social Barriers When Contributing to Open Source Software Projects. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 28. DOI: 10.1007/s10606-018-9335-z. Springer. PISSN: 1573-7551. pp. 247-290

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Beginners, Challenges, Difficulties, Entry, FLOSS, Joining, New contributor, Newbies, Newcomers, Onboarding, Online communities, Open source software, Qualitative study, Social barriers, Socialization

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Number of citations to item: 26

  • Raul Medeiros, Oscar Díaz (2022): Assisting Mentors in Selecting Newcomers’ Next Task in Software Product Lines: A Recommender System Approach, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07472-1_27
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  • Prakriti Dumaru, Ankit Shrestha, Rizu Paudel, Arezou Behfar, Hanieh Atashpanjeh, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen (2023): “I Have Learned that Things are Different here”: Understanding the Transitional Challenges with Technology Use After Relocating to the USA, In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-35936-1_15
  • Zixuan Feng, Katie Kimura, Bianca Trinkenreich, Anita Sarma, Igor Steinmacher (2024): Guiding the way: A systematic literature review on mentoring practices in open source software projects, In: Information and Software Technology, doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107470
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  • Tamar Wilner, Krishna Akhil Kumar Adavi, Sreehana Mandava, Ayesha Bhimdiwala, Hana Frluckaj, Jennifer Turns, Ahmer Arif (2024): From Concept to Community: Unpacking the Work of Designing Educational and Activist Toolkits, In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, doi:10.1145/3613904.3642681
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  • Stefanie Birkle, Jürgen Seifried (2024): Perceived Challenges When Changing Employer, In: Journal of Personnel Psychology 3(23), doi:10.1027/1866-5888/a000342
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