Abstract
Open source modules, which are software libraries, are often abandoned by their maintainers. This abaondonment becomes a serious concern for developers and for software projects at large. In this study, we want to first help developers recognize module abandonment in a data-driven manner. Second, we wish to help the sites which host modules to examine the value of preserving expensive usage data. We examine the modules of the Ruby programming language in this study. We try to predict if gems will be abandoned in the near future by analyzing data from GitHub and RubyGems using data mining techniques. We discover effective models to predict abandonment and factors associated with it. Moreover, we begin to percive that it may not be necessary to collect expensive usage data from independent module hosting communities to predict module abandonment. Using these results, we build an online dashboard to help Ruby developers recognize potential abandonment of modules. This study helps us to combined theoretical methods with practical use.