Understanding the sustainability of online software development groups in Bangladesh

Abstract

The field of software development currently is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors in terms of research as well as establishing a career. An immense amount of youths are entering it as new opportunities are being discovered and developments are being made on a daily basis. However, they are not receiving the best from the communities, because many of them are slowly stagnating. In this work, an endeavor was undertaken to determine the sustainability of online software development groups in Bangladesh. Loosely based on the OSS newcomer barrier model, a sustainability factor model was constructed. Six Facebook groups were selected and post data were collected to quantitatively represent member interaction by assigning reaction units. Based on the amount of posts against that of the reaction units, correlation was assessed, which yielded a Pearson coefficient value of 0.4753 with a P-Value of .062795 which is significant at p <.10, and a Spearman coefficient value of 0.471 with a 2-tailed p value of 0.06582 which is statistically non-significant. The coefficient values were then checked using R. The values implied a weak yet positive correlation between the amount of posts and reactions. Combined with the model, which revealed that 59.24% are support-related posts (among which 93.69% are being answered), the coefficient values enabled us to reach the decision that online software developer groups of Bangladesh are, as a whole, currently sustainable.