Open Source Software Quality Research Articles

Quality evaluation models or frameworks for open source software: A systematic literature review

AbstractAs open project repositories have become widespread, evaluating the quality of open source software (OSS) has gained attention in the software community. Despite the variety in quality evaluation models or frameworks (QEMoF) proposed for OSS, their adoption in practice remains limited. To further investigate this argument, a systematic literature review (SLR) has been conducted to characterize the existing QEMoF for OSS, based on particular properties, and to examine comprehensively their content and structure for identifying the gap between theory and practice. In this context, a total of 36 primary studies in the period of 2003–2020 have been analyzed. It has been identified that the majority of QEMoF takes ISO/IEC 9126 as a reference, evaluates community‐based aspects, mostly evaluates maintainability and usability as quality attributes, supports subjective and quantitative evaluations, and faces challenges due to diverse and dynamic nature of OSS products. For a better overview of the state of the art in the field, evaluation criteria for comparing the overall quality of the QEMoF are identified and applied. Finally, overall findings are discussed, and suggestions are provided for practitioners and researchers to formulate more robust studies in the future, which can advance the current situation for the benefit of the software community.

Model of Open Source Software Reliability with Fault Introduction Obeying the Generalized Pareto Distribution

Open source software reliability is an important factor affecting the quality of open source software. The developed reliability models of open source software cannot meet the actual evaluation of open source software reliability because of the complexity, dynamics, and uncertainty of open source software development. Considering the dynamic changes of fault introduction in open source software development, we propose an open source software reliability model with fault introduction based on the generalized Pareto distribution. We use three Apache open source software projects to validate the proposed model. Least squares estimation is used to estimate the model parameter values. Experimental results indicate that the proposed model has better fitting and predictive performance than other existing models. The generalized Pareto distribution of the fault introduction is consistent with that in actual open source software development. Thus, the proposed model can assist developers and managers in evaluating the reliability of open source software in the actual process of open source software development.

Comparative Study of Open Source Software Quality Models

Software Quality Models are a structured software product assessment method. With the rising fashion in software production, new applications are being designed and created daily. This inevitably gives an increase to the need to ensure that the product so constructed meets at least the intended expectations. The software engineering literature includes numerous quality models and each software quality model consisting of various quality attributes or factors or characteristics as some models call them. These quality attributes can be viewed from this feature's perspective to describe the software component or product's quality. A real challenge is to identify which Quality Models to use. The following quality models' content will be presented in this paper by the researcher: McCall's Quality Model, Dromey's Quality Model, Boehm's Quality Model, FURPS Quality Model, and ISO 9126.

Customer reviews as the measure of software quality

Open Source Software (OSS) has become ubiquitous nowadays. It is crucial for the OSS project managers as well as developers to understand users' perception of quality to remain consistent with producing good quality software. To understand users' point of view, like many studies in the commercial product/service sectors which rely upon customer reviews to understand customer behaviour, the authors' main focus is to analyse user ratings and reviews of OSS projects that may represent user satisfaction for that particular software application. We have analysed 41,428 customer reviews (obtained from SourceForge.net) of 886 most popular OSS projects belonging to a specific domain and programming language. The results indicate that overall user ratings and reviews of the popular OSS projects contain a very positive sentiment and more frequent occurrence of emotions like joy, anticipation, and trust as compared to disgust, fear, and surprise. Further, we have examined that the affectiveness of customer reviews with respect to OSS popularity and quality aspects along with their programming languages and problem domains. The results show a stronger association of review affectiveness with the number of reviews than with the number of downloads of the OSS projects, and more downloads do not mean more reviews.

Підходи до побудови моделі загроз для аналізу безпеки відкритого програмного кода

Гарантування безпеки програмного продукту з відкритим вихідним кодом є актуальною проблемою, бо навіть у проектах з закритим вихідним кодом можуть бути присутні open source бібліотеки, що робить можливим появу вразливості у них. Серед методів, що використовують для виявлення вразливостей, варто виділити моделювання загроз, бо цей метод дозволяє вже на ранніх етапах розробки програмного коду прийняти заходи, що знизять витрати на ліквідацію вразливостей та спростять їх усунення і зміни до архітектури додатку. Підбір відповідного підходу при побудові моделі загроз залежить від специфіки проекту, ресурсів, а також кваліфікації адміністраторів. 

A systematic literature review and comparative study of different software quality models

Every organization wants to run with profit only and it is a common trend to acquire the new technologies, methods and models to enhance the quality of software product. Quality of product is directly proportional to the value of the product and the profit of the organization. Different quality model are used by different organization foundation upon the requirements. Different thoughts of software quality attributes with various software quality models are evaluated and examined in this survey. Also researcher performed comparative study of different software quality models utilized by different organizations. Making software by using open source software (OSS) and commercial of the shelf (COTS) component is very useful for any organization. So as to quantify quality in software, quality models can be used to check the quality of existing COTS and OSS software components. The purpose of this research is to do the comparative study to check software quality prediction using COTS and OSS components. In this survey the researcher do study of more than 100 papers and identified that OSS as the development technique is more better then COTS development. Because COTS development is black box in nature, so some tradition quality metrics cannot be apply but in case of OSS as development methodology source code is available. So we can apply all software quality metrics to assess the OSS quality. But still there is no proper technique, model and tool is available by which we can evaluate the quality of OSS. In future the researcher can improve the software quality by creating some tools and models for estimation of quality characteristics according to the modified ISO-9126 quality assurance model for OSS.

A Study of Quality Indicator Model of Large-Scale Open Source Software Projects for Adoption Decision-making

Abstract Open source software (OSS) usage in information systems has been essential. As OSSs are deliverables of the developer community, their quality is not guaranteed. The corporate user adopting the OSS is responsible for its quality. Thus, it is desirable to have information that the corporate could use for quantitatively assessing whether an OSS should be adopted before discussing its detailed contents thoroughly. The objective of this study is to propose an OSS quality indicator model and assessment method by monitoring the status of member raised created and closed issue sessions in the community. The proposed method is based on two axes. First, the trends are summarized in three categories, “Linear,” “Logarithmic curve,” and “Cubic curve,” with thresholds. Next, the deviation timing between the number of created and closed cases is summarized in three stages, “Early,” “Middle,” and “Late.” We attempt to improve the understanding by examining 39 large-scale OSS projects from GitHub. We derived the “T-model” as a quality indicator for OSS adoption decision-making. Assessing only these quantitative evaluations, we can see that the projects in the “Late” horizontal axis and the “Logarithm” vertical axis maintain adequate quality that can be sufficiently used for system development. Based on these results, we conclude that the T-model has shown the possibility of a quick evaluation of whether to adopt the desired OSS for corporate information system.

A Quality Communication Framework for Open Source Softwares

Open Source Software (OSS) is an emerging technology of software development in present era, careful implementation and procurement can gives us more benefits for OSS- adapting organizations. But any failure in design, development and procurement will leads to major impact to OSS- developer organization (community) to stop their further release and completely destroy the adapted system. Success of any software’s based on it’s time to delivery, development cost and effectiveness. Open source software can fulfill these factors due to its availability of source code, openness and sustainability of Technical quality among development community. At the same time, more number of developers in a community of any OSS leads to delay in development. But it has chance to improve software effectiveness in terms of defect free, since software can be reviewed using various testing methodology, tools and plans in different perception. An OSS has more issues such as lack of architecture design, co-ordination, organizational structure and documentation, removing these issues will strengthen the quality of OSS. This paper includes the quality model and framework for organized communication the quality characteristics in an appropriate aspects is required since unorganized communications wherever people involved can leads to high quality risk.

An Empirical Study Examining the Impacts of Open Source Software Quality Factors on Perceived Usefulness and Satisfaction

An Empirical Study Examining the Impacts of Open Source Software Quality Factors on Perceived Usefulness and Satisfaction

Government Technology Policy, Social Value, and National Competitiveness

This study seeks to better understand the impact that government technology procurement regulations have on social value and national competitiveness. To do this, it examines the impact of a change in France’s technology procurement policy that required government agencies to favor open source software (OSS) over proprietary software in an attempt to reduce costs creating an unexpected demand shock for OSS. Analysis using the rest of the EU as controls via difference-in-differences and synthetic control frameworks shows that this policy change led to an increase of nearly 600,000 OSS contributions per year from France, creating social value by increasing the availability and quality of free and open source software. Estimates indicate this would have cost paid software developers roughly $20 million per year to replicate. However, the open nature of such goods means that any country can reap the benefits of these efforts. Therefore, additional economic outcomes that enhance France’s competitiveness are also considered. The results show that within France, the regulation led to a 0.6% - 5.4% yearly increase in companies that use OSS, a 9% - 18% yearly increase in the number of IT-related startups, a 6.6% - 14% yearly increase in the number of individuals employed in IT related jobs, and a 5% - 16% yearly decrease in software related patents. All of these outcomes help to increase productivity and competitiveness at the national level. In aggregate, these results show that changes in government technology policy that favor OSS can have a positive impact on both global social value and domestic national competitiveness.

Do Female Employees at Small and Medium Enterprises Perceive Open Source Software Usefulness and Satisfaction Differently from Male Employees? A Survey Analysis

Many companies, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), use open source software (OSS) to promote the strategic application of their information technology assets. Several studies have claimed that male and female employees in SMEs differ in their use of various information technologies. This study investigates the factors influencing the perceived usefulness of and satisfaction with OSS among employees at SMEs in various industries, specifically comparing male and female employee perceptions. For this purpose, this study uses a proposed research model to examine the effects of quality factors—such as ease of maintenance, cost advantage, customization, and job relevance—on perceived usefulness of and satisfaction with OSS. Data were collected from 328 randomly selected survey responses of employees in various organizations using OSS. A structural equational model was created using AMOS 22.0 to test the proposed hypotheses in the research model. Results show that all OSS quality factors were significantly related to the perceived usefulness of OSS in both genders, positively affecting satisfaction. Moreover, the perceptions of male and female employees differed in relation to each research model variable. These findings suggest that employees value specific OSS qualities while perceiving its usefulness and their satisfaction.

Evaluating the Quality of Drupal Software Modules

Evaluating software modules for inclusion in a Drupal website is a crucial and complex task that currently requires manual assessment of a number of module facets. This study applied data-mining techniques to identify quality-related metrics associated with highly popular and unpopular Drupal modules. The data-mining approach produced a set of important metrics and thresholds that highlight a strong relationship between the overall perceived reliability of a module and its popularity. Areas for future research into open-source software quality are presented, including a proposed module evaluation tool to aid developers in selecting high-quality modules.

Open source computer game application: An empirical analysis of quality concerns

A computer game is one of the major sources of entertainment. People nowadays spend a lot of time while playing computer games. Open Source Software (OSS), despite some reservations on the quality, has been steadily increasing its popularity. The uncontrolled change management foresees an increase in the complexity of the methods and classes in an application, which sometimes result in poor quality. The number of OSS projects dealing with computer game development are on the increase, which lead to more research interests in assessing the quality of OSS resulting products. Some studies that deal with the evaluating the OSS quality, concerns use user’s survey approach focusing on the usability aspects. The empirical investigations to evaluate the quality concerns of the design, using internal code attributes, needs attention of researchers. In this study, we aim to investigate the quality concerns of the design complexity of methods in OSS computer game applications using internal code attributes. We use three quality criteria, namely correctness, reliability and maintainability from the set of six factors of ISO 9126 model. We collect data from 55 OSS computer game applications and use various statistical analysis techniques to examine the research question of this study. We conclude that the methods of the OSS computer game applications demonstrate an acceptable level of quality in the three criteria of correctness, reliability and maintainability.

Comparison of open source maturity models

Component based development was formerly dependent on propriety/closed source software’s (CSS) components. Open Source software components has attracted noteworthy attention and become an operational alternative of proprietary software because of OSS security, cost effectiveness, quality, flexibility and freedom. Due to the increased attention on component-based development in the past decades, companies have widely adopted open source software (OSS), with the view that using the right software is critical to project success. The availability of Internet as a marketplace for components and wide adoption of OSS has introduced new challenges for selection of software components. Source Forge, other general and domain specific software repositories, different software foundations and individual OSS providers offer an abundance of OSS components. Identification, evaluation and selection of best possible OSS Components for the required need is a quite challenging job. As a reaction to these challenges different methods have been proposed for OSS maturity measurements. E.g. Capgemini-Open Source Maturity Model(C-OSSM), Navicasoft-Open Source Maturity Model (N-OSSM), Qualification and Selection of Open Source (QSOS), Open Business Readiness Rating (Open BRR) and Easiest Open Source (E-OSS).In this paper we compare different Open Source software maturity models available in the market that will help user in OSS component selection.

A systematic literature review of open source software quality assessment models

Background Many open source software (OSS) quality assessment models are proposed and available in the literature. However, there is little or no adoption of these models in practice. In order to guide the formulation of newer models so they can be acceptable by practitioners, there is need for clear discrimination of the existing models based on their specific properties. Based on this, the aim of this study is to perform a systematic literature review to investigate the properties of the existing OSS quality assessment models by classifying them with respect to their quality characteristics, the methodology they use for assessment, and their domain of application so as to guide the formulation and development of newer models. Searches in IEEE Xplore, ACM, Science Direct, Springer and Google Search is performed so as to retrieve all relevant primary studies in this regard. Journal and conference papers between the year 2003 and 2015 were considered since the first known OSS quality model emerged in 2003.ResultsA total of 19 OSS quality assessment model papers were selected. To select these models we have developed assessment criteria to evaluate the quality of the existing studies. Quality assessment models are classified into five categories based on the quality characteristics they possess namely: single-attribute, rounded category, community-only attribute, non-community attribute as well as the non-quality in use models. Our study reflects that software selection based on hierarchical structures is found to be the most popular selection method in the existing OSS quality assessment models. Furthermore, we found that majority (47%) of the existing models do not specify any domain of application.ConclusionsIn conclusion, our study will be a valuable contribution to the community and helps the quality assessment model developers in formulating newer models and also to the practitioners (software evaluators) in selecting suitable OSS in the midst of alternatives.

Assessing Quality of Open Source Software Based on Community Metrics

The purpose of this study is to analyze data from Open Source Software (OSS) community with an objective of identifying community metrics that can predict quality of OSS projects. We experimented with data from Apache OfBiz and Apache httpd-2 server OSS projects. We applied linear regression technique to the dataset to assess the strength of possible relationships of variables and also examined possible trends amongst variables. From the analysis, we found out that the size of user mailing list has a correlation with number of reported bugs. We concluded that the size of user mailing list community may not be an accurate representation of the entire user community that adopted the project basing on quality. However Backlog Management Index was found to be a better metric for assessing how projects manage issues reported by users.

Selecting an Open-source Framework: A Practical Case Based on Software Development for Sensory Analysis

Abstract The use of frameworks based on Free Open-Source Software (FOSS) has become a viable alternative in the software development process, when compared with Proprietary Software or Closed Source Software. Given that the quality of Open-Source Software (OSS) products varies widely, the careful evaluation of such frameworks, according to a set of requirements, is an important step in the software development process. This work presents the evaluation of some open-source frameworks in order to find the most suitable one for developing a Decision Support System (DSS) to use in Sensory Analysis. This DSS is being designed to support the evaluation of Tasting Panels in sectors where Sensory Analysis is used to assess products’ quality. The methodology used, based on content analysis in Online Collaborative Spaces, proved to be appropriate to achieve the objectives of this study and therefore, can be extended to select OSS in other areas. Thus, the result of this work is valuable not only for researchers on trends in the OSS area, but also for software developers that intend to implement DSS using FOSS.

Open Source Software (OSS) Quality Assurance: A Survey Paper

Open source software (OSS) is a software product with the source code made public so that anyone can read, analyze, and change or improve the code. The use of this software is under a license, like Apache, GNU, MIT, Mozilla Public, and Eclipse Public License. Open source software development (OSSD) provides high quality assurance through user testing and peer reviews. The quality of these products depends on the size of the product community. This paper discusses the stakeholders of the OSS community, the quality assurance frameworks and models proposed in some studies, some statistics about OSS, the problems that affect the quality of OSSD, and the advantages and disadvantages of OSS compared to closed source software. This allows us to understand how we can achieve and improve the quality assurance and quality control of OSSD.

Patterns of Innovation: Standards and Open Source

Standards and open source software have facilitated collaboration among implementers and developers to an extraordinary level, essentially allowing dispersed people and teams to innovate on a scale previous available only to large organizations. This paper discusses the similarities between the organizational patterns used support the quality, stability and accessibility of specifications and open source software, the role each play in the other’s success, and the role each can play in supporting public policy.

OPEN SOURCE REMOTE SENSING:INTROSPECT AND PROSPECT

It is noteworthy that open source applications have been developed and studied in various fields as well as remote sensing field. Open sources for GIS have long history related to open standards over three decades, but those of remote sensing do relatively short. Moreover, there are still no summary reports for open sources for remote sensing. In this study, we summarized characteristics of open source applications for remotely sensed image processing and discussed their strengths and weaknesses at first. Based on the summary, two open source applications for InSAR Processing and Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis are practically implemented to introspect and prospect open source remote sensing. The developed applications have many advantages compared with existing open source applications because they provide user friendly interface, functions for searching from database and visualizing in mobile devises, concurrent processing of GIS and RS data. The quality of open source software is as good as commercial software. Therefore, OSRS will expand widely and improve continuously due to strengths of open source. We expect this study will be a good guide for users and developers of OSRS.