Forking Around: Correlation of forking practices with the success of a project

TL;DR

This study investigates how forking practices impact open-source software project success, identifying key factors like modularity and management that influence sustainability.

Contribution

It introduces eight metrics to quantify forking-related attributes and analyzes their correlation with project success using statistical models.

Findings

Modularity positively correlates with project success.

Centralized management index influences sustainability.

Hard forks are associated with project outcomes.

Abstract

Forking-based development has made it easier and straightforward for developers to contribute to open-source software (OSS). Developers can fork an existing project and add changes in their local version without interrupting the development process in the main project. Despite the efficiency of OSS, more than 80% of the projects are not sustainable. Identifying the elements related to OSS success can enlighten developers regarding the sustainability of a project. In our study, we explore whether or not the inefficiencies which arise due to forking-based development like redundant development, fragmented communities, lack of modularity, etc. have any relation to the outcome of a project in terms of sustainability. We formulate eight metrics to quantify attributes for projects in the ASFI dataset. To find the correlation between the metrics and the success of a project, we built a logistic regression model to metrics with significant p-values and performed backward stepwise regression analysis, using the stepAIC function in R to cross-check our findings. The findings show that modularity, centralized management index, and hard forks are consequential for the success of a project. Developers can use the outcomes of our research to plan and structure their projects to increase the probability of their success.