Developer experience · Registered-report execution; GitHub mining plus survey and manual classification.
Newcomer OSS-Candidates: Characterizing Contributions of Novice Developers to GitHub
Peer-reviewed research · 2022
Summary
66% targeted software repositories; first commits were mainly development (74%), first PRs mainly management/maintenance (60%); 30% contributed PRs to original OSS repositories quantitatively, while 70% of 27 survey respondents reported onboarding; “finding a way to start” was the leading barrier.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Create explicit first-step guidance, technically scoped starter tasks, and measure fork-to-PR conversion.
Reported result
What the study found
66% targeted software repositories; first commits were mainly development (74%), first PRs mainly management/maintenance (60%); 30% contributed PRs to original OSS repositories quantitatively, while 70% of 27 survey respondents reported onboarding; “finding a way to start” was the leading barrier.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What repositories and first contributions do novice GitHub users make, and to what extent do they onboard OSS projects?
Design
Registered-report execution; GitHub mining plus survey and manual classification.
Sample and setting
171 newcomer candidates; 2,392 repositories; survey received 208 responses and qualitative onboarding results used 27 respondents.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The study notes protocol deviations and relies on a GitHub/first-contribution-community sample; survey results are small and self-reported.
Research sources
Publisher/authoritative landing page and abstract/full text fetched: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-022-10163-0 Firecrawl research job 01a14366-d263-71d0-bc44-b95482987b7b returned this citation and metadata.