Aristotle vs. Ringelmann: On superlinear production in open source software

摘要

On December 19, 2015, Scholtes et al.'s work was published online in theJournal of Empirical Software Engineering, in which they challenged theexciting findings that we (with another co-author) presented in 2014, showingthat open source software production exhibits superlinear productive bursts. Wepresented our findings as the first quantification of Aristotle's famous adage:The whole is more than the sum of its parts. In contrast, Scholtes et al.referred to Maximilien Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer (1861-1931)who discovered the tendency for individual members of a group to becomeincreasingly less productive as the size of their group increases. SinceRingelmann, the topic of collective intelligence has interested numbers ofresearchers in social sciences, as well as practitioners in management aimingat improving the performance of their team. And indeed, in most research andpractice case studies, the Ringelmann effect has been found to hold. Ourresults challenge common wisdom, precisely because the Ringelmann effect hasbeen replicated in countless experiments. We are glad that the study byScholtes et al. allows us to explain further our findings by highlighting themethodological aspects that condition our diverging results. In particular, thedefinitions of group sizes and measurement periods are essential to explain thedifferent conclusions. This healthy debate enriches the understanding on groupproductivity, in particular in the case of open source software production.