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Cited by 67Open Source Software InnovationsSoftware Engineering Techniques and PracticesSoftware Engineering Research

Hidden Figures: Roles and Pathways of Successful OSS Contributors

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Trinkenreich, Bianca, Guizani, Mariam, Wiese, Igor, Sarma, Anita, Steinmacher, Igor·2020·Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
DOI 10.1145/3415251
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Abstract

Open Source Software (OSS) development is a collaborative endeavor where expert developers, distributed around the globe create software solutions. Given this characteristic, OSS communities have been studied as technical communities, where stakeholders join and evolve in their careers based on their (often voluntary) code contributions to the project. However, the OSS landscape is slowly changing with more people and companies getting involved in OSS. This means that projects now need people in non-technical roles and activities to keep the project sustainable and evolving. In this paper, we focus on understanding the roles and activities that are part of the current OSS landscape and the different career pathways in OSS. By conducting and analyzing 17 interviews with OSS contributors who are well known in the community, we provide empirical evidence of the existence and importance of community-centric roles (e.g advocate, license manager, community founder) in addition to the well-known project-centric ones (e.g maintainer, core member). However, the community-centric roles typically remain hidden, since these roles may not leave traces in software repositories typically analyzed by researchers. We found that people can build a career in OSS through different roles and activities, with different backgrounds, including those not related to writing software. Furthermore, people's career pathways are fluid, moving between project and community-centric roles. Our work highlights that communities and researchers need to take action to acknowledge the importance of these varied roles, making these roles visible and well-recognized, which can ultimately help attract and retain more people in the OSS projects.

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  • Cisgender women and other underrepresented groups often bear the brunt of the labor of advocacy and thankless community-oriented tasks.

    “Cisgender women and other underrepresented groups often bear the brunt of the labor of advocacy and thankless community-oriented tasks (e.g., documentation and organizing community events) [25].”

    From Codes of Conduct in Open Source (2024) · cites this paper as [25]

    The “OSS has matured” section says community-centric work is crucial but often unrecognized, while “OSS Advocate” and “OSS Writer” describe event organizing and documentation. The paper does not establish that cisgender women or other underrepresented groups disproportionately perform this work; its participant table records gender but not whether participants are cisgender. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Contributors rarely assume authority immediately; they progress from peripheral participation to more central involvement through learning, recognition, and sustained interaction.

    “Contributors rarely assume authority immediately. They progress from peripheral participation to more central forms of involvement through a combination of learning, recognition, and sustained interaction [48, 53, 58].”

    From Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define and Document Roles (2026) · cites this paper as [53]

    The ‘Legitimate Peripheral Participation’ section reports that 12 participants lurked before learning enough to participate, supporting the claim that contributors often do not begin in central roles. But ‘What about the Onion Model?’ says only two of 17 followed the typical progression to the core, and the paper describes some contributors who began in central positions. Recognition appears in the Related Work discussion, but the paper does not establish sustained interaction as part of a general progression. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Contributors' trajectories are shaped not only by technical expertise but also by social and communicative engagement.

    “These trajectories are shaped not only by technical expertise, but also by social and communicative engagement, as contributors' progress depends on their ability to build relationships, exchange feedback, and gain recognition within the community [3, 49, 53, 58].”

    From Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define and Document Roles (2026) · cites this paper as [53]

    The Conclusion reports that contributors’ career paths include community-centric roles, even for people with technical expertise, and the OSS Advocate section describes connecting people and recognizing talent. This supports the claim that trajectories involve more than technical expertise. The paper does not establish the citing sentence’s more specific assertion that contributors’ progress depends on exchanging feedback. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Little is known about how roles such as maintainers, committers, or core contributors are formally defined in writing, including their privileges, responsibilities, and decision rights.

    “Although multiple studies discuss roles such as maintainers, committers, or core contributors [3, 53], little is known about how such roles (e.g., associated privileges, responsibilities, and decision rights) are formally defined in writing.”

    From Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define and Document Roles (2026) · cites this paper as [53]

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Cited by

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Authors
Trinkenreich, B., Guizani, M., Wiese, I., Sarma, A., & Steinmacher, I.
Affiliations
  • Northern Arizona University (US)
  • Oregon State University (US)
  • Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (BR)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Published
2020-10-14
Volume
4
Issue
CSCW2
Pages
1-22
ISSN
2573-0142 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1145/3415251
OpenAlex
W3093530664
Cited by
67
References
5
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 12
FWCI
7.89
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor, 366 d)
Locations
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation (1901031, 1815486, 1815503, 1900903)
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 software, contributor roles, career paths, open source communities, contributor retention, license management

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