Keywords

author entropy, file size, GNOME

Abstract

We present the results of a study in which author entropy was used to characterize author contributions per file. Our analysis reveals three patterns: banding in the data, uneven distribution of data across bands, and file size dependent distributions within bands. Our re- sults suggest that when two authors contribute to a file, large files are more likely to have a dominant author than smaller files.

Original Publication Citation

Jason Casebolt, Jonathan L. Krein, Alexander C. MacLean, Daniel P. Delorey, Charles D. Knutson. Challenge Paper: "Author Entropy vs. File Size in the GNOME Suite of Applications." Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 9), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, May 23, 29.