Lessons from a Decade of Open Source Sustainability Research
333 | Sat 02 Aug 2 p.m.–2:45 p.m.
Presented by
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Igor Steinmacher
@igorsteinmacher
https://www.igor.pro.br
Dr. Igor Steinmacher is an Associate Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo (2015) and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Irvine (2013). His research focuses on supporting newcomers to open source and sustaining open source communities over time. He investigates socio-technical challenges in onboarding, mentoring, and community retention, and explores how AI-driven tools can promote inclusion and long-term project sustainability. His work bridges software engineering, HCI, and computing education, an he has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications.
Igor Steinmacher
@igorsteinmacher
https://www.igor.pro.br
Abstract
Several FOSS projects struggle with long-term sustainability. This talk walks through years of research and development focused on addressing some of the most pressing challenges faced related to the sustainability of FOSS communities: newcomer onboarding, maintainer burnout, and project governance. I will begin by discussing interventions to support newcomers' onboarding, including community-driven mentorship strategies, structured contribution paths, and other approaches, designed to build confidence and skills early in the contribution process. I will also present ongoing work exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to create conversational agents that assist contributors and reduce repetitive questions directed at maintainers, helping scale mentoring while keeping community standards. I will also share insights from longitudinal analyses of developer activity and engagement patterns, including the role of personal and project-level breaks in sustaining healthy contribution cycles and how we may use this to plan. Throughout the talk, I will reflect on how these align with broader structural improvements. In one example, a governance shift in the data.table project was accompanied by investments in multilingual documentation and structured issue triage---steps that revitalized participation and distributed responsibility. Together, these threads present a holistic vision for building more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient FOSS communities, combining technical scaffolding, community design, and human-centered practices.
Several FOSS projects struggle with long-term sustainability. This talk walks through years of research and development focused on addressing some of the most pressing challenges faced related to the sustainability of FOSS communities: newcomer onboarding, maintainer burnout, and project governance. I will begin by discussing interventions to support newcomers' onboarding, including community-driven mentorship strategies, structured contribution paths, and other approaches, designed to build confidence and skills early in the contribution process. I will also present ongoing work exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to create conversational agents that assist contributors and reduce repetitive questions directed at maintainers, helping scale mentoring while keeping community standards. I will also share insights from longitudinal analyses of developer activity and engagement patterns, including the role of personal and project-level breaks in sustaining healthy contribution cycles and how we may use this to plan. Throughout the talk, I will reflect on how these align with broader structural improvements. In one example, a governance shift in the data.table project was accompanied by investments in multilingual documentation and structured issue triage---steps that revitalized participation and distributed responsibility. Together, these threads present a holistic vision for building more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient FOSS communities, combining technical scaffolding, community design, and human-centered practices.