How contribution streaks form and their role in long-term retention in OSS projects

Abstract Contributor turnover is a major challenge in open-source software (OSS) projects, affecting project sustainability, quality, and many other dimensions of project performance. Although turnover has been widely studied in the OSS context, the importance of sustained contribution periods to long-term contributor survival remains poorly understood. In this context, contributor survival refers to the probability of sustained activity over time. We investigate the effect of contribution streaks, defined as consecutive months of contribution, on long-term survival, and analyze what kind of engagement, at different levels of ownership, predicts short-term contribution streaks. Using five years of data from 14 open-source projects, we applied landmark analysis to understand long-term survival based on peak streak lengths and logistic regression to identify the activities supporting short-term streaks. In both cases, we identified a three-month contribution streak to be an important threshold for sustained contributions. We found that development and communication related activities across ownership levels are important predictors of whether contributors continue their streaks, even though the relative importance shifts over time. In addition, we found that prior experience plays a stronger role early on, but its effect diminishes during later streak months. These findings suggest that contribution streaks are important predictors of long-term survival and provide practical insights for open-source practitioners on how to improve the retention of new and existing contributors through supporting short-term contribution streaks.