Problemas entre padres e hijos

One important specialization of this chapter’s research question is: What factors influence the contribution barriers that a newcomer experiences? This section derives research hypotheses

2.2 Main Survey from literature and results from the exploratory survey. These research hypotheses will be tested with statistical methods in Section 2.6.

The programming language has influence on different aspects of a modification: First, each programming language comes with its own tool chain. Some programming languages have better tool support, others are relatively new and therefore the community had less time to develop good tools, or the community may simply be smaller. Second, the choice of programming language depends on the purpose of the modification. Changes to an application’s interface may require a different programming language than changes to an application’s core. For example with Mozilla, Graphical User Interface (GUI) changes may often require modifications of Extensible Markup Language (XML) codes like Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and XML User Interface Language (XUL) or JavaScript code, while changes to Mozilla’s core libraries may require modifications to C or C++ code. Changes to these core libraries may be more difficult, for example because there are more dependencies of other modules that need to be considered. Third, some programming languages are simply easier to learn and use than others [SS13; End+14]. This leads to

Hypothesis 1. The contribution barrier for modification depends on the programming language used for the first modification.

Despite claims that programming experience and programming performance may be uncor- related [GS67; Bro95, p. 30], research on larger data sets confirms the intuition of a correla- tion [WSK08]. Thus, experienced developers should have less problems handling technical problems when they try to modify a FLOSS application, and therefore perceive lower technical contribution barriers. This leads to the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2. More experience of newcomers helps to lower their contribution barriers. Each FLOSS project uses its own development tool chain, depending on the programming languages of its source code, the platform the FLOSS application runs on, and the platforms the developers use. Additionally, FLOSS projects differ in the attitudes and procedures they have employed. New contributors may appreciate some of these more than others; partly, because some procedures may actually speed up the joining of new contributors. To another part, the attitudes and procedures simply may or may not create a welcoming atmosphere. As a third factor, FLOSS projects have different user bases due to their supported platforms and intended use cases. For example, users of the Eclipse IDE [P*The15c] are developers themselves, while users of the Mozilla Firefox browser may not necessarily be technically savvy. When FLOSS projects recruit newcomers out of their user base, as for example according to the onion model [Cro+05] and Raymond’s “first lesson” [Ray00], the skills of these newcomers differ between FLOSS projects. Consequently, the newcomers in one FLOSS project may easily overcome a contribution barrier that fits their skill set, while the newcomers in another FLOSS project perceive the same contribution barrier as an important hurdle when they lack the required skills. These factors suggest the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3. Contribution barriers vary between FLOSS projects.

The exploratory survey presented in Section 2.1 shows in Section 2.1.2 that the most important modification motivation for the respondents was their Own Need: They needed the modification

for their own use of the application. This is in agreement with Shah’s qualitative results [Sha06]. This may be a general rule for modification motivations:

Hypothesis 4. Most newcomers modify the FLOSS project’s source code primarily because they need the modification for themselves.

According to the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance [Fes57], a person feels discomfort if two of the person’s opinions contradict each other. This is particularly the case when new information contradicts the expectation derived from existing information. This type of discomfort is called dissonanceand its reduction is a natural stimulus just like hunger. In order to reduce dissonance, people may take a new point of view, but they may also just discard newly gained information if it does not fit their existing views.

Before newcomers decide that they want to contribute to a FLOSS project, they have a mental model of how a FLOSS project works and especially about the procedures and reception of their contribution. Like any model, this mental model is incomplete, although some newcomers may be aware of this incompleteness. Even if they are, they have unconscious or conscious assumptions about the procedures of their contribution, as they must have founded their decision to contribute on something. Thus, their motivation to contribute derives from this model. For example, if they assume that a contribution to a FLOSS project gains respect for the contributor, then they may derive the motivation to gain respect from the FLOSS community through their contribution. Accordingly, this can be used in the other direction: Contributors’ motivations are indicators for their assumptions about the contribution before their contribution experience.

If the contribution experience contradicts the previous assumptions, dissonance arises. The mental model also includes assumptions about what parts of the contribution procedure are difficult and which are not. Hence, unexpected problems create more discomfort than expected problems. One way to reduce this dissonance is to refrain from the contribution: Either after accepting the new information about unexpected problems or through discarding existing infor- mation that served as foundation for the motivation, even if that information was in fact true. A newcomer may also ignore or accept the unexpected problems and continue with the contribution, if that is the lesser mental effort [Fes57]. Since dissonance can be a reason to refrain from contribution, dissonance influences the perception of contribution barriers.

If this application of the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance to FLOSS contributions is correct, the following hypothesis must hold:

Hypothesis 5. Contribution barriers are less important for contributors whose motivations suggest that they expect these contribution barriers.