Communication is essential in software engineering. Especially in distributed open-source teams, communication needs to be supported by channels including mailing lists, forums, issue trackers, and chat systems. Yet, we do not have a clear understanding of which communication channels stakeholders in open-source projects use. In this study, we fill the knowledge gap by investigating a statistically representative sample of 400 GitHub projects. We discover the used communication channels by regular expressions on project data. We show that (1) half of the GitHub projects use observable communication channels; (2) GitHub Issues, e-mail addresses, and the modern chat system Gitter are the most common channels; (3) mailing lists are only in place five and have a lower market share than all modern chat systems combined.
翻译:通信在软件工程中至关重要。特别是在分布式开放源码团队中,通信需要得到包括邮寄名单、论坛、问题跟踪器和聊天系统在内的渠道的支持。然而,我们并不清楚开放源码项目使用哪些通信渠道利益攸关方。在本研究中,我们通过对400个GitHub项目进行具有统计代表性的抽样调查来填补知识差距。我们通过项目数据的定期表达来发现使用过的通信渠道。我们显示:(1) GitHub项目中有一半使用可观测通信渠道;(2) GitHub问题、电子邮件地址和现代聊天系统Gitter是最常见的渠道;(3) 邮寄名单仅位居第5位,其市场份额低于所有现代聊天系统的总份额。