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Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?
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Many organisations are dependent upon long-term sustainable software systems and associated communities. In this paper we consider long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities in Open Source software projects involving a fork. There is currently a lack of studies in the literature that address how specific Open Source software communities are affected by a fork. We report from a study aiming to investigate the developer community around the LibreOffice project, which is a fork from the OpenOffice.org project. In so doing, our analysis also covers the OpenOffice.org project and the related Apache OpenOffice project. The results strongly suggest a long-term sustainable LibreOffice community and that there are no signs of stagnation in the LibreOffice project 33 months after the fork. Our analysis provides details on developer communities for the LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice projects and specifically concerning how they have evolved from the OpenOffice.org community with respect to project activity, developer commitment, and retention of committers over time. Further, we present results from an analysis of first hand experiences from contributors in the LibreOffice community. Findings from our analysis show that Open Source software communities can outlive Open Source software projects and that LibreOffice is perceived by its community as supportive, diversified, and independent. The study contributes new insights concerning challenges related to long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities.
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“They described how vendor dominance and 'conflicts in the origin project arose due to inadequate working processes, lack of congruence concerning project goals, and unclear (or in other ways inadequate) leadership' (p.129) resulted in the shuffling of some members staying with the original project and some leaving to the hard fork.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“Gamalielsson and Lundell (2014) explored the window in time when a hard fork provided a path towards sustainability of the OpenO ffice. org project.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“Others yet see the survival of open source challenged by internal threats instead of external ones (Gamalielsson & Lundell, 2014).”
From The sustainability of open source commons (2023) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson & Lundell, 2014
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“The newly forked open source project, LibreOffice, enabled new forms of participation and the development of a new future in relation to prior experiences.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“In this, a hard fork created a branch to which members of the original project could join to help ensure the sustainability of open source artefacts.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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BackgroundWhy do blockchains split? An actor-network perspective on Bitcoin splits
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“As an example, Cai and Zhu [75] and Hu et al. [76] already proposed some metrics to evaluate the community reputation while Gamalielsson and Lundell [77] also identified approaches for contributing to the community sustainability.”
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“Therefore, researchers performed a significant number of studies on this topic to understand the sustainability of open source projects (Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014; Valiev et al. 2018; Coelho and Valente 2017; Eghbal 2016).”
BackgroundPublic attitudes on open source communities in China: A text mining analysis
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“22 23-25 Previous work also mentioned that the lack of some roles that compose the core team, such as maintainers, sup-porters, reviewers, and others, impacts the sustainability of the project.”
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“…et al. 2018, Klievink et al. 2017), and activity theory (Engeström and Sannino 2011; Dionne and Bourdon 2018; Karanasios et al. 2017; Malaurent and Karanasios 2020), and OSS development (Appleyard and Chesbrough 2017; Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014; Germonprez et al. 2017; Shaikh and Vaast 2016).”
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“Open source communities remain healthy in some form as long as the related software is being copied, used, and developed (Gamalielsson & Lundell, 2014).”
BackgroundTWINS - This Workflow Is Not Scrum: Agile Process Adaptation for Open Source Software Projects
Robinson, P. T., & Beecham, S. (2019) · International Conference on Software and System Process · doi:10.1109/icssp.2019.00014 · Cited by 7
“Companies participating in OSS projects find that they must adapt to, or at least coordinate with, “work practices that are appreciated by community members” [5] even if both conform to agile principles”
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“Gamalielsson et al. [46] found that successful retention and further recruitment of contributors can improve the robustness of the open-source software community.”
BackgroundSocio-Technical Dependencies in Forked OSS Projects: Evidence from the BSD Family
Syeed, M. M. M., & Hammouda, I. (2014) · Journal of Software · doi:10.4304/jsw.9.11.2895-2909 · Cited by 7
“The identified pattern of collaboration among the three projects could be one way to explain the sustainability of the forked projects [44], particularly during their early formation stages.”
BackgroundVariant Forks - Motivations and Impediments
Businge, J., Zerouali, A., Decan, A., Mens, T., Demeyer, S., & De Roover, C. (2022) · 2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER) · doi:10.1109/saner53432.2022.00105 · Cited by 7
“Before the advent of social coding platforms, forking was rare and was typically intended to compete with the original project [1]–[6].”
BackgroundThe Art of Bioinformatics Learning in Our Arabic World
Alsamman, A. M. (2019) · Highlights in BioScience · doi:10.36462/h.biosci.20193 · Cited by 7
“On the contrary, Linux can operate videos, games and handle all the types of data files you use in windows, and it has free writing programs like Libreoffice (19) and a lot of wonderful programs and tools that could change your life.”
Chua, B. B., & Zhang, Y. (2020) · Australasian Journal of Information Systems · doi:10.3127/ajis.v24i0.1714 · Cited by 7
“Forking sustainability : four groups of researchers (Ernst et al., 2010; Nyman et al., 2012; Gamalielesson et al 2013; Jiang et al., 2016) undertook real-world projects, comparing original versus forked projects (Table 3).”
BackgroundFree Software, the Internet, and Global Communities of Resistance
Schoonmaker, S. (2018) · doi:10.4324/9781315672786 · Cited by 7
A theory of FLOSS projects and Open Source business models dynamics
Jullien, N., Viseur, R., & Zimmermann, J. (2025) · Journal of Systems and Software · doi:10.1016/j.jss.2025.112383 · Cited by 6
The Right to a Contribution: An Exploratory Survey on How Organizations Address It
Poo-Caamaño, G., & Germán, D. M. (2015) · IFIP advances in information and communication technology · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_15 · Cited by 6
“[2,4,7,19,21,25] Other [5,28,3,8,10,14,15,16,26,31] Table 1: Papers according to topics covered.”
InfluentialDefining an open source CAD workflow for experimental music and media arts
Merendino, N., & Rodà, A. (2021) · International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts (ARTECH) · doi:10.1145/3483529.3483715 · Cited by 6
“Open source software can play an important role in terms of democratization and long term sustainability of many initiatives [7], and this article aims to help a vast number of workers and researchers in the field of sound and media art to embrace those virtuous software in their artistic practices.”
BackgroundGitHub OSS Governance File Dataset
Yan, Y., Frey, S., Zhang, A. X., Filkov, V., & Yin, L. (2023) · International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) · doi:10.1109/msr59073.2023.00089 · Cited by 6
Changement de gouvernance et communautés open source : le cas du logiciel Claroline
Viseur, R., & Charleux, A. (2019) · Innovations · doi:10.3917/inno.058.0071 · Cited by 6
Alvares, C. M. S., Grossi, L. B., Ramos, R. L., Magela, C. S., & Amaral, M. C. S. (2019) · International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer · doi:10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.07.014 · Cited by 6
Beyond Dependencies: The Role of Copy-Based Reuse in Open Source Software Development
Jahanshahi, M., Reid, D., & Mockus, A. (2025) · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology · doi:10.1145/3715907 · Cited by 5
Community engagement and the lifespan of open-source software projects
Kaushik, M., & Chahal, K. K. (2025) · Information and Software Technology · doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2025.107914 · Cited by 5
Fathoming Software Evangelists with the D-Index
Borreguero, F., Nitto, E. D., Stebliuk, D., Tamburri, D. A., & Zheng, C. (2015) · International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) · doi:10.1109/chase.2015.26 · Cited by 5
“For example, this very correlation in open-source may be a latent cause behind nasty phenomenons such as organisational rebellion [2], community forking [3] or dead open-source projects, a.”
BackgroundSocial debt analytics for improving the management of software evolution tasks
Palomba, F., Serebrenik, A., & Zaidman, A. (2017) · TU/e Research Portal · Cited by 5
Sustainable digitalisation through different dimensions of openness
Lundell, B., & Gamalielsson, J. (2018) · International Symposium on Open Collaboration · doi:10.1145/3233391.3233527 · Cited by 5
“…significant interests from many individuals and organisations over several decades, and the community around the LibreOffice project has attracted interests from individuals and organisations beyond the life-cycle of the company (SUN) that initially launched the project as an OSS project [17].”
BackgroundSelf-citationOpen Source Communities and Forks: A Rereading in the Light of Albert Hirschman's Writings
Viseur, R., & Charleux, A. (2021) · IFIP advances in information and communication technology · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-75251-4_6 · Cited by 5
Open Source Software Resilience Framework
Kritikos, A., & Stamelos, I. G. (2018) · IFIP advances in information and communication technology · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92375-8_4 · Cited by 4
Wei, K., Crowston, K., & Eseryel, U. Y. (2021) · Internet Research · doi:10.1108/intr-03-2020-0112 · Cited by 4
Meankaew, P., Lawpoolsri, S., Piyaphanee, W., Wansatid, P., Chaovalit, P., Lawawirojwong, S., & Kaewkungwal, J. (2022) · Tropical Diseases Travel Medicine and Vaccines · doi:10.1186/s40794-022-00174-6 · Cited by 5
“ThaiEpidem-ics was developed as an open-source software; it discloses and shares the source code, allowing developers to learn, modify, or use it under the terms of open-source licenses, allowing it to be adapted to suit other conditions [48].”
BackgroundeLearning and the Sustainable Campus
Stewart, B. G., & Khare, A. (2014) · World sustainability series · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-08837-2_20 · Cited by 4
Ikuine, F., & FUJITA, H. (2014) · Annals of Business Administrative Science · doi:10.7880/abas.13.283 · Cited by 4
A resilience‐based framework for assessing the evolution of open source software projects
Kritikos, A., & Stamelos, I. G. (2023) · Journal of Software Evolution and Process · doi:10.1002/smr.2597 · Cited by 4
“Gamalielsson and Lundell 21 investigate the case of LibreOffice and how forking OpenOffice helped it evolve.”
BackgroundSoftware evolution: the lifetime of fine-grained elements
Spinellis, D. D., Λουρίδας, Π., & Kechagia, M. (2021) · PeerJ Computer Science · doi:10.7717/peerj-cs.372 · Cited by 3
Structural Analysis of Collaboration Network in OSS Communities∗
Liu, P., & Gui, L. (2021) · International Conference on Data Science and Information Technology (DSIT) · doi:10.1145/3478905.3478923 · Cited by 3
Gakh, D. B. (2021) · Lecture notes in business information processing · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-71846-6_7 · Cited by 3
Does the first response matter for future contributions? A study of first contributions
Assavakamhaenghan, N., Wattanakriengkrai, S., Shimada, N., Kula, R. G., Ishio, T., & Matsumoto, K. (2023) · Empirical Software Engineering · doi:10.1007/s10664-023-10299-7 · Cited by 3
Finding Collaborations based on Co-Changed Files
Constantino, K. F., & Figueiredo, E. (2023) · doi:10.5753/sbsc_estendido.2023.229735 · Cited by 2
“In other words, all collaboration is essential for the sustainability of the project [Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014].”
BackgroundSustaining Scientific Open-Source Software Ecosystems: Challenges, Practices, and Opportunities
Sun, J. (2024) · ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion) · doi:10.1145/3639478.3639805 · Cited by 2
“Therefore, the applicability of existing solutions, such as effective governance and sponsorships [19, 46], to the unique context of scientific OSS communities remains questionable.”
BackgroundTowards Understanding Developers’ Collaborative Behavior in Open Source Software Ecosystems
Liu, Y., He, P., Wu, G., & Li, Y. (2017) · Journal of Software · doi:10.17706/jsw.12.6.393-405 · Cited by 2
“404 Volume 12, Number 6, June 2017 [27] Gamalielsson, J., & Lundell, B. (2014).”
BackgroundMontes, F. J. R., Bueno, S., & Gallego, M. D. (2021) · Electronics · doi:10.3390/electronics10030277 · Cited by 2
“Thus, OSS is also considered to be a global phenomenon, which tries to control the whole software design cycle [13].”
BackgroundRecommending Collaborators Based on Co–Changed Files: A Controlled Experiment
Constantino, K. F., Prates, R. O., & Figueiredo, E. (2023) · doi:10.5753/sbsc.2023.229104 · Cited by 2
“That is, all collaboration is essential for the project to succeed [Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014].”
BackgroundCouldry, N., Rodríguez, C., Bolin, G., Cohen, J. E., Goggin, G. M., Kraidy, M. M., Iwabuchi, K., Lee, K.-S., Qiu, J. L., Volkmer, I., et al. (2018) · ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) · Cited by 2
Forking From the Future: How an Interorganizational Network Learned Its Way to New Software Business
Järvenpää, S. L., & Välikangas, L. (2022) · IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management · doi:10.1109/tem.2022.3193959 · Cited by 1
“Forkingisseenasbeneficialtothe sustainabilityofsoftware[10],[11],[36],[37].”
BackgroundAdvancing Sustainable Communities in Scientific Oss: a Replication Study With Astropy
Sun, J., Patil, A. A., Li, Y., Guo, J., & Zhou, S. (2025) · International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) · doi:10.1109/chase66643.2025.00027 · Cited by 1
“…whether scientific OSS encounters comparable challenges related to community sustainability; and (2) whether the existing solutions in OSS (e.g., effective governance of OSS community, sponsors and donations to support developers [30], [31]) can be directly applied to scientific OSS communities.”
Exploring the Effectiveness of Open‐Source Donation Platform: An Empirical Study on Opencollective
Zhang, S., Tang, E., Gao, X., Zhang, Z., Shan, Y., Zhang, H., He, Z., Zhao, J., & Li, X. (2025) · Journal of Software Evolution and Process · doi:10.1002/smr.70033 · Cited by 1
Self-Reinforcing Cascades: A Spreading Model for Beliefs or Products of Varying Intensity or Quality
Hébert‐Dufresne, L., Lovato, J. L., Burgio, G., Gleeson, J. P., Redner, S., & Krapivsky, P. L. (2025) · Physical Review Letters · doi:10.1103/5mph-sws5 · Cited by 1
“These modifications can either enhance or degrade the software, as well as its governance [11, 12].”
González-Blázquez, J. L., García-Holgado, A., & García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2025) · Array · doi:10.1016/j.array.2025.100595 · Cited by 1
Beyond Speed: Engagement Sustains Lifespan
Kaushik, M., & Chahal, K. K. (2026) · Software Practice and Experience · doi:10.1002/spe.70068 · Cited by 1
“swiftness of issue resolution, and by extension, the overall health and long-term sustainability of the project [6, 7].”
Metadata
- Authors
- Gamalielsson, J., & Lundell, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Skövde (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Gamalielsson, Jonas
- Venue
- Journal of Systems and Software
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-03
- Volume
- 89
- Pages
- 128-145
- ISSN
- 0164-1212 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2029743492
- Cited by
- 125
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 6
- FWCI
- 6.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Systems and Software (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Keywords
- open source communities, software forks, LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org, community sustainability, developer communities, project activity, long-term sustainability
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