SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AS A SOCIAL PROCESS: A STUDY OF RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK

Abstract

Powered by increased capabilities of online collaboration tools, open source software development has become a critical component of the development landscape for both individual developers and for organizations. However, very little is known about how developers and organizations in regions with a heavy information technology presence participate in the open source community. This research uses public data from GitHub, a popular online open source collaboration tool, to gain a better understanding of open source software development activity in one such region, the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Research Triangle Park is one of the largest research parks in the world, and the largest in the United States. Within the 7,000 acre park, there are currently more than 200 companies employing around 50,000 people in a number of fields of expertise, with information technology playing a large role. To explore how developers and organizations in this region are involved in open source development, we use data mined from GitHub to aggregate information and trends about the developers and organizations themselves, their open source projects, and their use of the social media features within GitHub. The data collection tools and techniques created to enable this research are designed to easily enable similar studies to be performed for other geographical regions.