Exploring Apache Incubator Project Trajectories with APEX

TL;DR

This paper introduces APEX, a web dashboard tool that visualizes and monitors the development and sustainability trajectories of Apache Incubator projects using publicly available developer activity data.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel visualization tool, APEX, for tracking and analyzing the social and technical progress of ASF incubator projects to support sustainability assessment.

Findings

APEX effectively visualizes project development trajectories.

Stakeholders can monitor social and technical network evolution.

The tool aids in predicting project success or failure.

Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) is a major component of our digital infrastructure, yet more than 80% of such projects fail. Seeking less uncertainty, many OSS projects join established software communities, e.g., the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), with established rules and community support to guide projects toward sustainability. In their nascent stage, ASF projects are incubated in the ASF incubator (ASFI), which provides systematic mentorship toward long-term sustainability. Projects in ASFI eventually conclude their incubation by either graduating, if successful, or retiring, if not. Time-stamped traces of developer activities are publicly available from ASF, and can be used for monitoring project trajectories toward sustainability. Here we present a web app dashboard tool, APEX, that allows internal and external stakeholders to monitor and explore ASFI project sustainability trajectories, including social and technical networks.