Investigation of the Software Code Vulnerabilities' Impact on the Popularity of Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

This paper has statically investigated the source code of open source software (OSS) projects to uncover the presence of vulnerabilities in the code. The conducted research emphasizes that the presence of vulnerabilities has adverse effects on the overall software quality. The authors found the increasing trends in the vulnerabilities as the lines of code (LOC) increases during the software evolution. This signifies the fact that the addition of new features or change requests into the OSS project may cause an increase in vulnerability. Further, the relation between software vulnerabilities and popularity is also examined. This research does not find the existence of any relationship among software vulnerabilities and popularity. This research will provide significant implications to the developers and project managers to better understand the present state of the software.