Trends in Open Source Research Giancarlo Succi

(CC) 1988-2010 Giancarlo Succi. Some rights reserved. This document is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence, available in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

Research on Quality and FLOSS “Se tu segui tua stella, non puoi fallire a glorïoso porto”

Typical questions How stable product X? What if a bug is found? What if I want to extend it? What if I need to integrated it with Y? Who is going to provide me long term training or support?

And … worse ... Supplying products that include FLOSS may infringe 3rd party IPR’s (Licenses, Trademarks, Patents) Violating the license obligations of the FLOSS packages may lead to preliminary injunction and unpredictable legal costs

Remember None has been fired for buying XYZ

Goal Entrust FLOSS via the identification of FLOSS trustworthy elements (TWE) that is, elements that bring trust in the quality of specific aspects of the FLOSS development process

Fact There is a large number of users of FLOSS that are interested in using a standardized assessment methodology for evaluating FLOSS and the FLOSS development process

Approach The creation of OMM, a CMM-like Model

Side benefits Raise the perception of the FLOSS project quality and its development process Promote a wider introduction of FLOSS in the software industry

Building the OMM Compare the TWEs identified in FLOSS development processes with elements present in CMMI Identify which are necessary to define the maturity of FLOSS production

Details

Sample result of the mapping The trustworthy elements identified with a survey of EU software companies, FLOSS communities and individuals in the context of the QualiPSo project (WD6.2.1) 1- Product documentation 2- Popularity of the FLOSS product 3- Use of established and widespread standards

Sample result of the mapping 1. Product documentation 2. Popularity of the FLOSS product 3. Use of established and widespread standards 4. Availability and use of a (product) roadmap 5. Quality of Test Plan 6. Relationship between stakeholders 7. Licenses 8. Technical environment (tools, OS, languages etc.) 9. Number of commits and the number of bug reports 10. Maintainability and stability 11. Contribution to FLOSS development by SW companies

The result

Status Tested in a few environments Deployed and in use For additional questions: Giancarlo.Succi@unibz.it