Navigating Open Source Serverless Frameworks: An Empirical Analysis of Issues and their Underlying Causes

Replication Package: This replication package supports the paper "Navigating Open Source Serverless Frameworks: An Empirical Analysis of Issues and Their Underlying Causes." The study systematically examines common issues in the 12 open-source serverless frameworks, organizing them into a structured taxonomy of Issues and their underlying causes to assist developers and researchers in identifying and addressing issues in the 12 open-source serverless frameworks. The package is provided in a Microsoft Excel file, which includes several key worksheets as outlined below: Selected Frameworks: This sheet lists 12 popular open-source serverless frameworks (e.g., OpenFaaS, Apache OpenWhisk, and Knative) with URLs and metadata of each framework. Raw Data: This sheet contains information on the initial dataset of 15,884 issues including issue ID, titles, URLs, open and close dates, and the number of participants in each discussion. Exclusion Criteria: This sheet describes the filtering process applied to exclude irrelevant or incomplete issues which narrows the dataset to 3,550 documented cases by removing general inquiries, feature requests, and stale issues to maintain data quality. Final Issues: The refined dataset of 3,550 issues with complete descriptions forms the basis of the study. Each issue here meets the criteria for addressing research questions. Open Coding: This sheet contains the initial codes used to identify types of issues and causes. Key points of issues and causes and their open codes were used in the development of types of issues, types of causes, their subcategories, and overarching categories. Taxonomy of Issues: Presents the detailed taxonomy of issues, organized into 9 categories, 27 subcategories, and 263 specific types. Taxonomy of Causes: This sheet details the taxonomy of issue causes, categorized into 9 main categories, 33 subcategories, and 158 specific types of causes, providing a structured view of the underlying causes of the issues.