Article
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A Tailored Participatory Action Research for FOSS Communities
Version 1
: Received: 16 June 2020 / Approved: 17 June 2020 / Online: 17 June 2020 (13:16:27 CEST)
How to cite: Alami, A.; Nielsen, P. A.; Wasowski, A. A Tailored Participatory Action Research for FOSS Communities. Preprints 2020, 2020060218. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0218.v1 Alami, A.; Nielsen, P. A.; Wasowski, A. A Tailored Participatory Action Research for FOSS Communities. Preprints 2020, 2020060218. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202006.0218.v1
Abstract
Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an established method to implement change in organizations. However, it cannot be applied in the open source (FOSS) communities, without adaptation to their particularities, especially to the specific control mechanisms developed in FOSS. FOSS communities are self-managed, and rely on consensus to reach decisions. This study proposes a PAR framework specifically tailored to FOSS communities. We successfully applied the framework to implement a set of quality assurance interventions in the Robot Operating System community. The framework we proposed is composed of three components, interventions design, democratization, and execution. We believe that this process will work for other FOSS communities too. We have learned that changing a particular aspect of a FOSS community is arduous. To achieve success the change must rally the community around it for support and attract motivated volunteers to implement the interventions.
Keywords
Participatory Action Research; FOSS; Change implementation
Subject
Computer Science and Mathematics, Software
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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