Do CONTRIBUTING files provide information about OSS newcomers' onboarding barriers?

• Main Authors: FRONCHETTI, Felipe, SHEPHERD, David, WIESE, Igor, TREUDE, Christoph, GEROSA, Marco, STEINMACHER, Igor
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: novices; onboarding; FLOSS; open source; software engineering; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8897; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9900/viewcontent/FSE2023_Fronchetti.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Effectively onboarding newcomers is essential for the success of open source projects. These projects often provide onboarding guidelines in their ‘CONTRIBUTING’ files (e.g., CONTRIBUTING.md on GitHub). These files explain, for example, how to find open tasks, implement solutions, and submit code fo...