OpenIoT & ELC 2016

Mobile phones last for months before turning obsolete thesedays. Planes, trains, or power stations, to name a few, face possible lifespans of decades. Despite these vast differences, the increasing deployment of open source software creates a commonality between IT and industrial domains.

Drastic differences in innovation cycles translate into massive problems in software maintenance that are partly technical, but also exhibit a substantial social component: Trustworthy and long-term stable communities are an important ingredient for successful
long-term maintenance.

We discuss different types of quantitatively identified collaboration network
types in OSS projects, and show their impact on long-term
maintenance questions. We describe typical temporal phases of project
evolution, and their implications on long-term maintenance from an
industrial perspective.