TY - JOUR
T1 - To Fork or Not to Fork: Fork Motivations in SourceForge Projects
AU - Nyman, Linus Morten
AU - Mikkonen, Tommi
N1 - This article was first published by Springer and later, by invitation (having won a "best paper" award at the 2011 International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS)), published in IJOSSP. The Springer version can be found at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/c06rn08t75711v73/
Volume:
Proceeding volume:
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - A project fork occurs when software developers take a copy of source code from one software package and use it to begin an independent development work that is maintained separately from its origin. Although forking in open source software does not require the permission of the original authors, the new version, nevertheless, competes for the attention of the same developers that have worked on the original version. The motivations developers have for performing forks are many, but in general they have received little attention. In this paper, we present the results of a study of forks performed in SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/) and list the developers’ motivations for their actions. The main motivation, seen in close to half of the cases of forking, was content modification; either adding content to the original program or focusing the content to the needs of a specific segment of users. In a quarter of the cases the motivation was technical modification; either porting the program to new hardware or software, or improving the original.
AB - A project fork occurs when software developers take a copy of source code from one software package and use it to begin an independent development work that is maintained separately from its origin. Although forking in open source software does not require the permission of the original authors, the new version, nevertheless, competes for the attention of the same developers that have worked on the original version. The motivations developers have for performing forks are many, but in general they have received little attention. In this paper, we present the results of a study of forks performed in SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/) and list the developers’ motivations for their actions. The main motivation, seen in close to half of the cases of forking, was content modification; either adding content to the original program or focusing the content to the needs of a specific segment of users. In a quarter of the cases the motivation was technical modification; either porting the program to new hardware or software, or improving the original.
KW - 113 Computer and information sciences
U2 - 10.4018/jossp.2011070101
DO - 10.4018/jossp.2011070101
M3 - Article
VL - 3
SP - 1
EP - 9
JO - International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes
JF - International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes
SN - 1942-3926
IS - 3
ER -