Title | ||
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Evolutionary Success of Open Source Software: an Investigation into Exogenous Drivers |
Abstract | ||
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The "success" of a Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) project has often been evaluated through the number of commits made to its configuration management system, number of developers and number of users. Based on Source- Forge, most studies have concluded that the vast majority of projects are failures. This paper argues that the relative success of a FLOSS project depends also on the chosen forge and distribution: given a random sample of 50 projects contained within a popular FLOSS forge (Debian, which is the basis of the successful Debian distribution), we compared these with a similar sample from SourceForge, using product and process metrics, like size achieved and developers involved. The results show at first that, depending on the forge of FLOSS projects , researchers can draw different conclusions on the overall concept of success of FLOSS software. Secondly, the projects included in the Debian distribution benefit, on averag e, from a larger evolutionary activity and a larger number of developers than the comparable projects on SourceForge. Finally, the Debian projects benefit from more activity and more developers from the point at which they joined this distribution. |
Year | Venue | Keywords |
---|---|---|
2007 | ECEASST | repositories,metrics,evolvability,floss,success,software evolution,random sampling,configuration management |
Field | DocType | Volume |
Software engineering,Computer science,Forge,Configuration management,Software evolution,Open source software | Journal | 8 |
Citations | PageRank | References |
10 | 0.55 | 14 |
Authors | ||
4 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
---|---|---|---|
Karl Beecher | 1 | 58 | 3.52 |
Cornelia Boldyreff | 2 | 464 | 56.05 |
Andrea Capiluppi | 3 | 488 | 42.51 |
Stephen Rank | 4 | 71 | 4.31 |