A Tailored Participatory Action Research for FOSS Communities

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is an established method to implement change in
organizations. However, it cannot be applied in the open source (FOSS) communities, without adaptation
to their particularities, especially to the specific control mechanisms developed in FOSS. FOSS communities
are self-managed, and rely on consensus to reach decisions. This study proposes a PAR framework
specifically tailored to FOSS communities. We successfully applied the framework to implement a set of
quality assurance interventions in the Robot Operating System community. The framework we proposed
is composed of three components, interventions design, democratization, and execution. We believe that
this process will work for other FOSS communities too. We have learned that changing a particular aspect
of a FOSS community is arduous. To achieve success the change must rally the community around it for
support and attract motivated volunteers to implement the interventions.