一句话：提出用软件供应链网络的 Katz/PageRank 中心性衡量开发者产出的重要性，替代原始提交量。
原始开发者产出常以提交或变更次数衡量，但新开发者多改动边缘部分，资深开发者才涉及系统核心，因此该指标可能误导。本文构建软件供应链（SSC）网络，融合作者—文件、共同变更文件、调用层次和汇报关系，并计算节点 Katz 中心性与 PageRank。基于 Meta 数据，作者部分复现既有结论：原始提交数在项目特定周期后趋于平台；但开发者工作的中心性在整个研究期持续增长，一年后增速放缓。评估建模开发者产出时，汇报数和项目等局部属性仅解释约 5.8% 方差，加入 Katz 中心性或 PageRank 后 R² 超过 30%。
Raw developer output, as measured by the number of changes a developer makes to the system, is simplistic and potentially misleading measure of productivity as new developers tend to work on peripheral and experienced developers on more central parts of the system. In this work, we use Software Supply Chain (SSC) networks and Katz centrality and PageRank on these networks to suggest a more nuanced measure of developer productivity. Our SSC is a network that represents the relationships between developers and artifacts that make up a system. We combine author-to-file, co-changing files, call hierarchies, and reporting structure into a single SSC and calculate the centrality of each node. The measures of centrality can be used to better understand variations in the impact of developer output at Meta. We start by partially replicating prior work and show that the raw number of developer commits plateaus over a project-specific period. However, the centrality of developer work grows for the entire period of study, but the growth slows after one year. This implies that while raw output might plateau, more experienced developers work on more central parts of the system. Finally, we investigate the incremental contribution of SSC attributes in modeling developer output. We find that local attributes such as the number of reports and the specific project do not explain much variation (𝑅2 = 5.8%). In contrast, adding Katz centrality or PageRank produces a model with an 𝑅2 above 30%. SSCs and their centrality provide valuable insights into the centrality and importance of a developer’s work.
@inproceedings{MockusR0SCN23,
title = {Modeling the Centrality of Developer Output with Software Supply Chains},
author = {Audris Mockus and Peter C. Rigby and Rui Abreu and Parth Suresh and Yifen Chen and Nachiappan Nagappan},
booktitle = {FSE},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1145/3611643.3613873}
}