Copy to Create: Patterns of copying and reuse in Web 2.0

1
Copy to Create Patterns of copying and reuse in
Web 2.0

• M. Cameron Jones
• mjones2_at_uiuc.edu , http//cameronjones.com/
• Graduate School of Library and Information
  Science
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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How Its Made

• How are information technologies created?
• By professionals
• By novice programmers
• By end-users
• What aspects of the technology landscape enable
  or facilitate technology creation?
• How can we better design systems, and tools to
  support IT production?

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The Copying Meme

• People create things often by sharing with, and
  copying from each other
• People learn how to create things by copying
  (Mackay, 1990 Nardi Miller, 1991)
• Copying and sharing code helps bridge the
  expertise gap (Nardi Miller, 1990)
• Professional programmers also copy source code
  when programming (Kim et al. 2005).

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What is Web 2.0?
Markus Angermeier retrieved from
http//kosmar.de/wp-content/web20map.png
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How does Web 2.0 function?

• Who is web 2.0?
• How do people
• contribute?
• create content?
• program mashups?
• consume and recycle material?
• What is unique about these interactions?
• What is familiar?

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Outline

• Web Mashups
• Recent research on mashup programming
• Yahoo! Pipes
• Authorship in Pipes
• Social Networks of Cloning
• Mapping Mashups
• Google Maps
• Yahoo! Maps

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Web Mashups

• Websites which combine data and services from
  across the web
• What is interesting about web mashups
• Creativity
• Innovation
• Exploration
• Functional solutions
• Store (and share) knowledge/expertise

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HousingMaps.com
HousingMaps.com Google Maps Craigslist
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WASABE
WASABE Amazon Google Wikipedia OPAC
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Student Projects
Campus Schedule Planner
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Student Projects
Champaign-Urbana Bus Route Planner
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but Mashups are hard!

• Examples presented are exception, not the norm
  (e.g., Jones Twidale, 2006 Jones, Twidale,
  Urban, 2007)
• High threshold (lots of diverse knowledge and
  skills needed)
• Cryptic APIs (each one is different, and often
  changes)
• But there may be hope!

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Yahoo! Pipes
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Yahoo! Pipes Data
Screenshot taken June 18, 2007 from
http//pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipes.popular
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Authorship in Pipes

• 18,680 pipes (collected June 6, 2007)
• 11,868 authors

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Long-tail Distributions

• Book sales
• City population sizes
• Web page hits
• Authorship in scholarly journals
• Authorship in the Wikipedia
• Citation counts in scholarly writing
• Project membership in Open-Source

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Yahoo! Pipes Data
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Social Networks of cloning

• 1,856 clones identified with names Copy of or
  copy
• Identify who was cloning from whom by trying to
  determine the author of the original pipe being
  cloned (an inexact measure)
• 1,579 pipe authors nodes in network
• 1,483 edges representing the cloned a pipe from
  relationship

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Social network of Pipe Cloning
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What pipes are being cloned?

• Examples (DanielRaffel, Edward H, Pasha Sadri)
• Cloned pipes

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Clusters of clones
Aggregated News Alerts
Example pipes
Apartment NearSomething del.icio.us Web Search
eBay Price Watch
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Factors determining cloning

• Activating social ties

franticindustries
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Factors determining cloning

• Cumulative Advantage Distributions (Simon, 1957
  Price, 1976)

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Factors determining cloning

• Time

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Further topics to be explored

• What modules are most frequently used?
• What modules are most frequently cloned?
• How are the pipes modified or changed when they
  are cloned? Are they modified?
• Are portions (subsets of modules) of pipes copied
  into new pipes? What subsets?

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Copying Code in Programming

• What about mashup programming more generally
  where there isnt a simple clone function?
• HTML View Source
• Rosson and Caroll (1993) qualitative study of
  professional SmallTalk programmers found code was
  often copied from documentation examples.

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Map-based Web Mashups

• 58 of Mashups on Programmable Web are mapping
  mashups (1,178/2,038)
• Three main API providersGoogle Maps (50 of all
  mashups)Yahoo Maps (4 of all mashups)Microsoft
  Virtual Earth (4 of all mashups)
• How are people coding and constructing Map
  Mashups?

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Data Collection - Mashups

• Downloaded JavaScript source code for all mapping
  mashups listed
• Problems Dead links and inaccurate URLs
• Google Maps 494 unique mashups
• Yahoo Maps 94 unique mashups
• Microsoft Virtual Earth 17 unique mashups

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Data Collection - Snippets

• Downloaded JavaScript example snippets from API
  provider documentation.
• Google Maps 32 (1121) example snippets
• Yahoo Maps 16 example snippets
• Microsoft Virtual Earth 65 example snippets
• Microsoft Virtual Earth excluded from further
  analysis (not enough data)

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Data Analysis

• Clone Analysis on source code
• Identify code clones in the Mashup code
• Clone Pair a pair of source code segments that
  are structurally or syntactically similar
  (Kapser Godfrey, 2003).
• Use source code cloning to identify what code is
  being copied and how mashups are related.

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Software Clones
function load() if (GBrowserIsCompatible()
) var map new GMap2(document.getElemen
tById("map")) map.addControl(new
GSmallMapControl()) map.addControl(new
GMapTypeControl()) map.setCenter(new
GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13) //
Create our "tiny" marker icon var icon
new GIcon() icon.image
"/ridefinder/images/mm_20_red.png"
icon.shadow "/ridefinder/images/mm_20_shadow.png
" icon.iconSize new GSize(12, 20)
icon.shadowSize new GSize(22, 20)
icon.iconAnchor new GPoint(6, 20)
icon.infoWindowAnchor new GPoint(5, 1)
// Add 10 markers to the map at random
locations var bounds map.getBounds()
var southWest bounds.getSouthWest()
var northEast bounds.getNorthEast()
var lngSpan northEast.lng() - southWest.lng()

function load() if (GBrowserIsCompatible()
) var map new GMap2(document.getElemen
tById("map")) map.addControl(new
GSmallMapControl()) map.addControl(new
GMapTypeControl()) map.setCenter(new
GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13)
From gmap.doc.3.mash
From gmap.doc.15.mash
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Data Analysis

• Filter applications w/o clones
• Google Maps 505 applications
• Yahoo Maps 101 applications
• Filter intra-application clones
• Google Maps 5,731 clones
• Yahoo Maps 2,718 clones
• Dichotomous application-by-clone occurrence
  matrix
• Hamming -difference distance measure
• Classic, metric multi-dimensional scaling

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Google Maps
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Yahoo Maps Clones
Yahoo! Widgets
Microsoft Virtual Earth
MochiKit
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Conclusions

• Copying and sharing are essential components of
  technology production
• Example and documentation are heavily used in the
  processes of creating and learning to create
• What is familiar?
• Patterns of production appear to be similar to
  other media and contexts
• What is unique about copying on the web?
• The scale of web systems - many of the
  statistical tests and measures do not adequately
  cope.

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Future Research

• Collect code snippets from other sources
• Forums
• Mailing lists
• Coding websites
• Collect code from other sources
• PHP-language Open-Source projects
• Analyze and classify the clones
• What code is being copied? Why?
• Other domains and contexts

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Copying Across the web

• MySpace layouts
• RSS aggregation
• SpamBlogs
• Video and music mashups
• CyWorld scraping
• Online learning (Inquiry Page)

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Scrapbooking in CyWorld
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