Turnover is the phenomenon of continuous influx and retreat of human resources in a team. Despite being well-studied in many settings, turnover has not been characterized for opensource software projects. We study the source code repositories of five open-source projects to characterize patterns of turnover and to determine the effects of turnover on software quality. We define the base concepts of both external and internal turnover, which are the mobility of developers in and out of a project, and the mobility of developers inside a project, respectively. We provide a qualitative analysis of turnover patterns. We also found, in a quantitative analysis, that the activity of external newcomers negatively impact software quality.
Foucault et al. REF report the negative impacts of turnover in the internal quality of five open source projects.
Impact of developer turnover on quality in open-source software
ESEC/FSE 2015
Computer Science