Behavioral analysis of contributors in China's open-source software ecosystem

作者：Zhe WANG, Zhixing Li, Tao WANG, Yang ZHANG, Minghui Zhou, X.L. Liu · 发表于：Scientia Sinica Informationis · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1360/ssi-2025-0329 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Open Source Software Innovations、Software Engineering Research、Knowledge Management and Sharing

The open-source software (OSS) ecosystem aggregates hundreds of millions of contributors and massive code repository resources.Open-source communities serve as a critical component of the ecosystem,effectively supporting global collaboration and playing a pivotal role in innovation activities across cutting-edge technological fields.In any practical activity,behavioral pattern is the overt manifestation of engagement,behavioral motivation serves as the internal driving force,and behavioral incentives act as external triggers that reinforce individual actions.This paper conducts an empirical study of Chinese OSS contributors' behavior,aiming at bridging the research gap in a systematic research on localized OSS practicesandadvancing the high-quality development of the OSS ecosystem in China.A mixed-methods research approach was adopted to construct a model examining Chinese OSS contributors'behavioral patterns, motivation, and incentives.The key findings are as follows.First,Chinese OSS contributors engage in both project-level participation and ecosystem-level participation,and code-related behaviors account for over 60% of contributions.While Chinese OSS practices exhibit diversity comparable to international OSS practices,there remains a relative lag in producing high-quality ecosystem-level outcomes.Second,Chinese contributors demonstrate significantly higher recognition of intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation.A striking 82% of contributors engage in OSS p...