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Open Source Software Field Research: Spanning Social and Practice Networks for Re-Entering the Field

Sean P. Goggins, Kevin Lumbard, Matt Germonprez, Caifan Du, Karthik Ram, James Howison

TL;DR

This paper provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social sub-networks during engaged field research and describes practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another.

Abstract

Sociotechnical research increasingly includes the social sub-networks that emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses these numerous sub-networks as advantageous for researchers. It provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social sub-networks during engaged field research. Specifically, we describe practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another. To surface the importance of spanning sub-networks, we incorporate a discussion of social capital and the role of technical infrastructure in its development for sociotechnical researchers. We then characterize a five-step process for spanning social sub-networks during engaged field research: commitment, context mapping, jargon competence, returning value, and bridging. We then present our experience studying corporate open source software projects and the role of that experience in accelerating our work in open source scientific software research as described through the lens of bridging social capital. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations for engaging in fieldwork in adjacent social sub-networks that share a technical context and discussion of how the relationship between social and technically acquired social capital is a missing but critical methodological dimension for research on large-scale sociotechnical research.

Open Source Software Field Research: Spanning Social and Practice Networks for Re-Entering the Field

TL;DR

This paper provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social sub-networks during engaged field research and describes practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another.

Abstract

Sociotechnical research increasingly includes the social sub-networks that emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses these numerous sub-networks as advantageous for researchers. It provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social sub-networks during engaged field research. Specifically, we describe practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another. To surface the importance of spanning sub-networks, we incorporate a discussion of social capital and the role of technical infrastructure in its development for sociotechnical researchers. We then characterize a five-step process for spanning social sub-networks during engaged field research: commitment, context mapping, jargon competence, returning value, and bridging. We then present our experience studying corporate open source software projects and the role of that experience in accelerating our work in open source scientific software research as described through the lens of bridging social capital. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations for engaging in fieldwork in adjacent social sub-networks that share a technical context and discussion of how the relationship between social and technically acquired social capital is a missing but critical methodological dimension for research on large-scale sociotechnical research.
Paper Structure (24 sections, 5 figures)

This paper contains 24 sections, 5 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Prior Literature
  3. The Role of Common Infrastructure in Obscuring Boundaries
  4. Bridging and Bonding Social Capital
  5. Methods: Bridging from corporate Open Source to Scientific Open Source
  6. Our Ethical Guideposts for Open Source Software Field Engagement and Social Computing
  7. (Re)-Entering the Field
  8. Trace Ethnography
  9. Structural Contrast of Corporate and Scientific OSS Sub-networks
  10. Findings: Social Capital in Spanning Sub-networks
  11. Engaged Field Research to Establish Bonding Social Capital in Corporate Open Source
  12. Engaged Field Research to Apply Bridging Social Capital to Scientific Open Source
  13. Five Stages Of Building Social Capital in the Scientific Software Sub-network
  14. Case Example: Establishing Ourselves in the Scientific Open Source Sub-network
  15. Case Example: Orientation
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: These are sociograms of the most prominent communities within a corporate (\ref{['fig:x corpnet']}), funded scientific (\ref{['fig:x czi']}), and naturally occurring scientific (\ref{['fig:x harvardsub']}) open source software contribution networks. These differences in structure require different approaches for engaged field research, while the common central artifact of a software repository and motivation to understand the relative health and sustainability of individual repositories within each ecosystem frame the methodological importance and points of transferability of social capital from one context to the next.
  • Figure 2:
  • Figure 3: Dozens of these communities are visible in the donut-shaped corporate OSS ecosystem.
  • Figure 4: The clock-shaped funded scientific OSS ecosystem has 5-6 major community clusters.
  • Figure 5: The funnel-shaped organic Scientific OSS ecosystem is visibly dominated by a singular community around a single, dominant project (in this case, Bioconductor).