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ICSE 2021
Mon 17 May - Sat 5 June 2021

A sound Decision-Making (DM) process is key to the successful governance of software projects. In many Open Source Software Development (OSSD) communities, DM processes lie buried amongst vast amounts of publicly available data. Hidden within this data lie the rationale for decisions that led to the evolution and maintenance of software products. While there have been some efforts to extract DM processes from publicly available data, the rationale behind ‘how’ the decisions are made have seldom been explored. Extracting the rationale for these decisions can facilitate transparency (by making them known), and also promote accountability on the part of decision-makers. This work bridges this gap by means of a large-scale study that unearths the rationale behind decisions from Python development email archives comprising about 1.5 million emails. This paper makes two main contributions. First, it makes a knowledge contribution by unearthing and presenting the rationale behind decisions made. Second, it makes a methodological contribution by presenting a heuristics-based rationale extraction system called Rationale Miner that employs multiple heuristics, and follows a data-driven, bottom-up approach to infer the rationale behind specific decisions (e.g., whether a new module is implemented based on core developer consensus or benevolent dictator’s pronouncement). Our approach can be applied to extract rationale in other OSSD communities that have similar governance structures.

Fri 28 May

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

10:00 - 10:55
4.1.1. Open Source: General IssuesSEIS - Software Engineering in Society / Technical Track / SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice at Blended Sessions Room 1 +12h
Chair(s): Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, USA
10:00
20m
Paper
Extracting Rationale for Software Development Decisions—A Study of Python Email ArchivesTechnical Track
Technical Track
Pankajeshwara Sharma University of Otago, Dunedin, Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, Nigel Stanger University of Otago, Dunedin
Pre-print Media Attached
10:20
20m
Paper
An Empirical Study of the Landscape of Open Source Projects in Baidu, Alibaba, and TencentSEIP
SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice
Junxiao Han Zhejiang University, Shuiguang Deng Zhejiang University, David Lo Singapore Management University, Chen Zhi Zhejiang University, Jianwei Yin Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab
Pre-print Media Attached
10:40
15m
Paper
Understanding Community Smells Variability: A Statistical ApproachArtifact ReusableSEISArtifact Available
SEIS - Software Engineering in Society
Gemma Catolino Tilburg University & ​Jheronimus Academy of Data Science, Fabio Palomba University of Salerno, Damian Andrew Tamburri TU/e, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
Pre-print Media Attached
22:00 - 22:55
22:00
20m
Paper
Extracting Rationale for Software Development Decisions—A Study of Python Email ArchivesTechnical Track
Technical Track
Pankajeshwara Sharma University of Otago, Dunedin, Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, Nigel Stanger University of Otago, Dunedin
Pre-print Media Attached
22:20
20m
Paper
An Empirical Study of the Landscape of Open Source Projects in Baidu, Alibaba, and TencentSEIP
SEIP - Software Engineering in Practice
Junxiao Han Zhejiang University, Shuiguang Deng Zhejiang University, David Lo Singapore Management University, Chen Zhi Zhejiang University, Jianwei Yin Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab
Pre-print Media Attached
22:40
15m
Paper
Understanding Community Smells Variability: A Statistical ApproachArtifact ReusableSEISArtifact Available
SEIS - Software Engineering in Society
Gemma Catolino Tilburg University & ​Jheronimus Academy of Data Science, Fabio Palomba University of Salerno, Damian Andrew Tamburri TU/e, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
Pre-print Media Attached