Abstract
Open source has revolutionized how software development is carried out, with a growing number of individuals and organizations contributing to open source projects. As the importance of open source continues to grow, companies also expect to grow thriving and sustainable open source communities with continued contributions and better collaborations. In this study, we applied the contribution leaderboard to seven open source projects initiated by Alibaba. We conducted a case study to investigate the perceptions and facts regarding how to motivate collaboration through gamification. Specifically, we employed a social network algorithm, OpenRank, to evaluate and steer developers' contributions. We validated the effectiveness of OpenRank by comparing it with other evaluation metrics and surveying developers. Through semi-structured interviews and project metric analysis, we found that the OpenRank Leaderboard can promote transparent communication environments, a better community atmosphere, and improved collaboration behavior.