Component-oriented Reliability Analysis and Optimal Version-upgrade Problems for Open Source Software

Abstract

The current software development environment has been changing into new development paradigms such as concurrent distributed development environment and the so-called open source project by using network computing technologies. Especially, OSS (Open Source Software) systems which serve as key components of critical infrastructures in our society are still ever-expanding now. However, poor handling of quality attainment and customer support prohibit the progress of OSS. We focus on the problems in low software quality that prohibit the progress of OSS. In case of considering the effect of the debugging process on an entire system in the development of a method of reliability assessment for open source project, it is necessary to grasp the deeply-intertwined factors, such as programming path, size of each component, skill of fault reporter, and so on. In order to consider the effect of each software component on the reliability of an entire system under such OSS development, we propose a new approach to software reliability assessment by creating a fusion of neural networks and the software reliability growth models. Also, it has been necessary to manage the software development process in terms of reliability, effort, and version-upgrade time. In this paper, we find the optimal version-upgrade time based on the total expected software maintenance effort by using our software reliability growth models.