My name is Esteban Jorge Alonso, and I am a PhD researcher at Universidad Austral (Argentina) conducting a scientific study on software quality in open-source projects. This research explores how developers, maintainers, and contributors perceive and prioritize quality across three essential dimensions: Product, Process, and People – commonly referred to as the 3P model.
To support this investigation, I have developed a short and anonymous survey (approx. 10–15 minutes) aimed at contributors to OSS projects hosted on GitHub. The purpose is to gather informed perspectives that will help identify and refine quality metrics relevant to real-world software development practices.
Key information about the study includes:
This project has received ethics approval as part of my doctoral research
The survey is anonymous and does not collect personal data
Results will be published as open-access academic output
If permitted by the community, I would like to share the survey link in a future post, along with the formal consent form and additional study details. I am not including any links in this message, as I wish to respect community norms and seek prior approval before proceeding.
I kindly ask for your guidance or approval on how to best proceed with this initiative within the GIMP community. Your input and support would be greatly appreciated, and I am of course open to any feedback or suggestions to ensure this request aligns with your norms and values.
Thank you very much in advance for your time and consideration.
Best regards, Esteban Jorge Alonso
PhD Candidate – Universidad Austral (Argentina)
estebanalonso@austral.edu.ar
you mention that the survey is “aimed at contributors to OSS projects hosted on GitHub”.
While there is a mirror of the source code there, contribution happens GNOME GitLab. This is certainly similar, but distinct from GitHub. Is this relevant?
Answering with my hat of maintainer of GIMP: you don’t have to seek our approval for promoting your research and survey. As long as it’s not anything bad, illegal or the like, it’s fine and we are not going to intervene.
As you note, this is a community, not a company. We are not responsible for other contributors’ time so if any of them wish to answer your survey, they are free to do it.
It doesn’t mean we endorse these studies either. But we are not against someone promoting their study on a forum and asking for feedback.
Just be nice and polite as in your message, then you can ask anything as long as you respect agreeably-living-together rules, such as accepting when some are not interested to participate.
Thank you very much, Jehan and Michael, for your thoughtful and clear replies.
@Jehan, I deeply appreciate your openness and transparency — it’s good to know that the community is free to engage voluntarily. I will follow your advice and share the survey respectfully, without any pressure.
@Michael, your observation is highly relevant: the survey does mention GitHub, but it’s designed to include contributors from any platform where OSS collaboration happens (including GitLab). I will make sure to clarify this point in the survey preamble for GIMP contributors.
I will now proceed to share the survey link in this same thread in the next message. Many thanks again!
