分析637个开源项目，揭示从创始人主导到社区共治的演化规律。
Patterns in the Transition From Founder-Leadership to Community Governance of Open Source
- 通过解析GitHub仓库的GOVERNANCE.md文件，提取治理角色与行为模式。
- 治理角色与行动随时间增多，规则趋于平衡，体现管理范围扩大与分工细化。
- 适合关注开源社区治理、可持续发展的开发者与研究者参考。
开放数字公共基础设施需要社区管理以确保问责性、可持续性和鲁棒性。然而，许多开源项目仍依赖集中决策，成功社区管理的决定因素尚不明确。我们分析了637个GitHub仓库，追踪从创始人领导向共享治理的过渡过程。具体而言，通过从版本控制的项目宪章GOVERNANCE.md中提取制度角色、行为和道义线索，构建语义解析管道，将元素聚类为更广泛的职责与行动类型。研究发现，角色与行动数量持续增长，监管趋于平衡，反映出治理范围扩大与职能分化。社区并非简单改变语气，而是通过层层叠加与细化责任实现成长。随着治理转型成熟，项目越来越多地规范生态级关系，并明确定义项目监督角色。总体而言，本研究提供了一种可扩展的流水线，用于从开源软件普遍存在的创始人所有权默认状态中追踪社区治理体制的发展。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Open digital public infrastructure needs community management to ensure accountability, sustainability, and robustness. Yet open-source projects often rely on centralized decision-making, and the determinants of successful community management remain unclear. We analyze 637 GitHub repositories to trace transitions from founder-led to shared governance. Specifically, we document trajectories to community governance by extracting institutional roles, actions, and deontic cues from version-controlled project constitutions GOVERNANCE .md. With a semantic parsing pipeline, we cluster elements into broader role and action types. We find roles and actions grow, and regulation becomes more balanced, reflecting increases in governance scope and differentiation over time. Rather than shifting tone, communities grow by layering and refining responsibilities. As transitions to community management mature, projects increasingly regulate ecosystem-level relationships and add definition to project oversight roles. Overall, this work offers a scalable pipeline for tracking the growth and development of community governance regimes from open-source software's familiar default of founder-ownership.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品；中文卡片由大模型生成，请以原文为准。