msr2009 emad
TRANSCRIPT
On the use of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) meetings by developers of the GNOME
GTK+ project
Emad ShihabZhen Ming JiangAhmed E. Hassan
Software Analysis and Intelligence Lab (SAIL)Queen’s University
OSS developers are distributed
Communication methods
EmailMailing lists
Instant Messaging
IRC Meetings
Asynch.
Synch.
One-to-One One-to-Many
Sample IRC meeting log
Start time
End time
Messages
Attendants
Our study
We performed a quantitative study on the usage of IRC meetings and studied the following 3 dimensions:
1.Discussion Volume (Are the meetings becoming more popular?)
2.Meeting Attendance (Are the meetings useful?)
3.Participants’ Contribution (Are participants active or just showing face?)
1. Discussion Volume
Number of message lines in IRC meetings per year
1. Increase in meeting attendants or2. Discussions are lasting longer.
2. Meeting Attendance
Number of meeting attendants per year
1. IRC meetings are becoming more popular or2. More developers are seeing the usefulness of the meetings.
3. Participants’ Contribution
1. Steady participant contribution.2. More even contribution in recent years
Number of message lines per participant per year
Summary
Summary