Resource Allocation in Open Source Projects: A Profile Based Approach

Abstract

Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects have steadily been rising in popularity and adoption. This is because more organizations and companies are starting to rely on products created through open source software development. The structure of contributors involved in open source software projects causes challenges to resource allocation which are not present in closed source commercial software projects. In general terms resource allocation refers to the allocation of resources such as personnel, time, and budget to help contributors. This study aims to explore the relationship between resource allocation strategies in FLOSS projects and contributor profiles. This is done in order to provide a solution for the challenges of resource allocation, which in this context means the allocation of resources such as personnel, time, and budget. The challenges of resource allocation in a FLOSS project lies in the aspect that the contributors are often only loosely connected. Resource allocation can overcome these challenges by efficiently allocating resources to the contributors that need it most. The efficient allocation of resources can be achieved by distributing resources to the contributors based on their profile. The profiles represent the activity patterns of a contributor and can be used to schedule interactions between managers and contributors. We performed this research as a case study and extracted data from the Git repository of the Linux kernel project. From the extracted data we then constructed profiles of each contributor in the project. The final list of profiles were then grouped by similar profiles. These groups can then be targeted in a resource allocation process depending on the needs of a company or organization.