Abstract
Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades, but relatively few analyses were performed on open source software (OSS). As OSS has become very popular in our daily life, many researchers have been keen on the quality practices in this area. Although quality management presents distinct patterns compared with those in closed-source software development, some widely used OSS products have been implemented. Therefore, quality assurance of OSS projects has attracted increased research focuses.In this paper, a survey is conducted to reveal the general quality practices in open source communities. Exploratory analysis has been carried out to disclose those quality related activities. The results are compared with those from closed-source environments and the distinguished features of the quality assurance in OSS projects have been confirmed. Moreover, this study suggests potential directions for OSS developers to follow.
Highlights
Open source software (OSS) has played a more and more important role since it emerged
This paper provides exploratory analysis on current quality activities in the open source community, based on the data collected by means of a survey
Schmidt and Porter (2001) analyzed some major aspects of the open source development and discussed the strength of the development model. They emphasized on the contributions of the large user communities, but only two OSS projects were used for the case study
Summary
Open source software (OSS) has played a more and more important role since it emerged. When being compared with the development of software in closed-source environment, OSS development presents many distinguishable features in plan, schedule, requirements, testing, user involvement, etc. OSS development teams often comprise of developers in a loosely organized form, and the best motivation for them is user participation and self-commitment. When quality assurance for OSS is concerned, the best practices in closed-source environment are not adopted directly. Quality assurance seems to be weak according to traditional definitions, some well-known OSS products have been developed and are considered to have high quality. This appealing phenomenon has aroused great interest for research on OSS quality assurance. This paper provides exploratory analysis on current quality activities in the open source community, based on the data collected by means of a survey
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