An Exploratory Study on the Evidence of Hackathons' Role in Solving OSS Newcomers' Challenges

Ahmed Mahmoud, Alexander Nolte, Alexander Nolte, Dietmar Pfahl

2023

Abstract

Background: OSS projects face various challenges. One major challenge is to onboard and integrate newcomers to the project. Aim: We aim to understand and discuss the challenges newcomers face when joining an OSS project and present evidence on how hackathons can mitigate those challenges. Method: We conducted two searches on digital libraries to (1) explore challenges faced by newcomers to join OSS projects, and (2) collect evidence on how hackathons were used to address them. We defined four evidence categories (positive, inconclusive, and no evidence) to classify evidence how hackathons address challenges. In addition, we investigated whether a hackathon event was related to an OSS project or not. Result: We identified a range of newcomer challenges that were successfully addressed using hackathons. However, not all of the solutions we identified were applied in the context of OSS. Conclusion: There seems to be potential in using hackathons to overcome newcomers’ challenges in OSS projects and allow them to integrate faster into the project.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Mahmoud A., Nolte A. and Pfahl D. (2023). An Exploratory Study on the Evidence of Hackathons' Role in Solving OSS Newcomers' Challenges. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT; ISBN 978-989-758-665-1, SciTePress, pages 420-427. DOI: 10.5220/0012091200003538

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft23,
author={Ahmed Mahmoud and Alexander Nolte and Dietmar Pfahl},
title={An Exploratory Study on the Evidence of Hackathons' Role in Solving OSS Newcomers' Challenges},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT},
year={2023},
pages={420-427},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012091200003538},
isbn={978-989-758-665-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT
TI - An Exploratory Study on the Evidence of Hackathons' Role in Solving OSS Newcomers' Challenges
SN - 978-989-758-665-1
AU - Mahmoud A.
AU - Nolte A.
AU - Pfahl D.
PY - 2023
SP - 420
EP - 427
DO - 10.5220/0012091200003538
PB - SciTePress