Open Source Software Maintenance

Summer 2022 Internship at Carnegie Mellon University - Software and Societal Systems Department

In the summer of 2022, I was a part of the REUSE program at Carnegie Mellon University, under Professors Christian Kästner and Bogdan Vasilescu in the Kästner Group and STRUDEL Lab, where my research focused on understanding the motivations behind open-source software maintainers.

In order to interview maintainers, my role was to figure out who were maintainers of projects on GitHub given a definition of contributors responsible for the top 80% of total project commits in a year. I utilized Python with NumPy and Pandas for the data mining scripts. It was fascinating to apply my coding skills to answering a simple-sounding, but difficult question to objectively answer: what motivates people to maintain open-source projects? This research program has inspired me to pursue a minor in Data Science, a field that I had never known about until this opportunity.


On the left, I'm posing with one of my advisors, Bogdan Vasilescu. On the right, I'm posing with my poster again.


Our intern cohort outside TCS Hall.


Some photos from my time in Pittsburgh. On the left, the Andy Worhol Bridge, one of the Three Sister bridges and of 446 total bridges in Pittsburgh. Middle, the Cathedral of Learning on Pitt campus. Right, is a dreamy sunset over Fifth Avenue, one of the main streets in Pittsburgh.


Above, the research poster I presented at research poster sessions. Click on the poster to view it in full size.