OSS Myths and Facts

Abstract: We have selected six myths about the OSS community and have tested whether they are true or not. The purpose of this report is to identify the lessons that can be learned from the development style of the OSS community and the issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve better Employee Experience (EX) in software development within companies and organizations. The OSS community has been led by a group of skilled developers known as hackers. We have great respect for the engineers and activities of the OSS community and aim to learn from them. On the other hand, it is important to recognize that having high expectations can sometimes result in misunderstandings. When there are excessive expectations and concerns, misunderstandings (referred to as myths) can arise, particularly when individuals who are not practitioners rely on hearsay to understand the practices of practitioners. We selected the myths to be tested based on a literature review and interviews. These myths are held by software development managers and customers who are not direct participants in the OSS community. We answered questions about each myth through: 1) Our own analysis of repository data, 2) A literature survey of data analysis conducted by previous studies, or 3) A combination of the two approaches.