A Prediction Model of the Project Life-span in Open Source Software Ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper analyzes factors influencing the lifespan of open source software projects on GitHub and proposes a prediction model to estimate project duration based on characteristics like programming language and project size.

Contribution

It introduces a novel prediction model for project lifespan in open source ecosystems, based on statistical analysis of project characteristics.

Findings

Programming language choice affects project lifespan

Number of files correlates with project duration

Label format and membership expressions impact lifespan

Abstract

In nature ecosystems, animal life-spans are determined by genes and some other biological characteristics. Similarly, the software project life-spans are related to some internal or external characteristics. Analyzing the relations between these characteristics and the project life-span, may help developers, investors, and contributors to control the development cycle of the software project. The paper provides an insight on the project life-span for a free open source software ecosystem. The statistical analysis of some project characteristics in GitHub is presented, and we find that the choices of programming languages, the number of files, the label format of the project, and the relevant membership expressions can impact the life-span of a project. Based on these discovered characteristics, we also propose a prediction model to estimate the project life-span in open source software ecosystems. These results may help developers reschedule the project in open source software ecosystem.