Open Source Software Development: Future or Fad?

Social Coding Sites (SCSs) are social media services for sharing software development projects on the Web, many open source projects are currently being developed on SCSs. Assessing the quality is a crucial element for better selection of a specific project serving people requirements or needs. In this paper, we reviewed existing traditional models which evolved prior the evolution of open source software as well as open source quality models. We evaluated the selected models according to their reflection with respect to social coding project success factors: sociality, popularity, activity and supportability. Eight models were included in our research as we only selected models that introduces explicit metrics well defined for measuring, neither a process nor a generic methodology. Based on our selection criteria, a summary of the findings we obtained is that existing models doesn’t fully consider or cover social factors for open source software evaluation hence there is a need for a model to measure the maturity / quality of open source projects from social factors perspective. We have also evaluated the existing models against a selected open source project hosted on social coding GitHub to assess each model applicability. Some of the measurements from the existing models were not applicable for evaluation.

BackgroundInnovation through an open source model has proven to be successful for software development. This success has led many to speculate if open source can be applied to other industries with similar success. We attempt to provide an understanding of open source software development characteristics for researchers, business leaders and government officials who may be interested in utilizing open source innovation in other contexts and with an emphasis on drug discovery.MethodsA systematic review was performed by searching relevant, multidisciplinary databases to extract empirical research regarding the common characteristics and barriers of initiating and maintaining an open source software development project.ResultsCommon characteristics to open source software development pertinent to open source drug discovery were extracted. The characteristics were then grouped into the areas of participant attraction, management of volunteers, control mechanisms, legal framework and physical constraints. Lastly, their applicability to drug discovery was examined.ConclusionsWe believe that the open source model is viable for drug discovery, although it is unlikely that it will exactly follow the form used in software development. Hybrids will likely develop that suit the unique characteristics of drug discovery. We suggest potential motivations for organizations to join an open source drug discovery project. We also examine specific differences between software and medicines, specifically how the need for laboratories and physical goods will impact the model as well as the effect of patents.

Many previous studies have shown that open-source technologies help democratize information and foster collaborations to enable addressing global physical and societal challenges. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has imposed unprecedented challenges to human society. It affects every aspect of livelihood, including health, environment, transportation, and economy. Open-source technologies provide a new ray of hope to collaboratively tackle the pandemic. The role of open source is not limited to sharing a source code. Rather open-source projects can be adopted as a software development approach to encourage collaboration among researchers. Open collaboration creates a positive impact in society and helps combat the pandemic effectively. Open-source technology integrated with geospatial information allows decision-makers to make strategic and informed decisions. It also assists them in determining the type of intervention needed based on geospatial information. The novelty of this paper is to standardize the open-source workflow for spatiotemporal research. The highlights of the open-source workflow include sharing data, analytical tools, spatiotemporal applications, and results and formalizing open-source software development. The workflow includes (i) developing open-source spatiotemporal applications, (ii) opening and sharing the spatiotemporal resources, and (iii) replicating the research in a plug and play fashion. Open data, open analytical tools and source code, and publicly accessible results form the foundation for this workflow. This paper also presents a case study with the open-source spatiotemporal application development for air quality analysis in California, USA. In addition to the application development, we shared the spatiotemporal data, source code, and research findings through the GitHub repository.

Cyber security is a rapidly developing field and open-source software (OSS) is being led by a collaborative community and a transparent nature. This research intends to make a theoretical framework highlighting the symbiosis of community engagement models, governance models, and the security of open-source ecosystems. The significant purposes aim to investigate how community engagement affects open source software development, analyze the deployment of the governance systems in widely used open source projects, and create the theoretical model that brings the cybersecurity processes in those practices. The literature survey covers existing research on open-source software development, community engagement, governance models, and cybersecurity practices within the OSS ecosystem. Through literature review the basic concepts are investigated using conceptual analysis to determine which principles and mechanisms the Community Model Engagement and Governance models operate, influencing the security of Open Source Software. Open-source project policy recommendations are the foundation for the security of communities where members fully contribute to better governance. This includes developing a fundamental conceptual analysis to lay out the framework's principles and operation (mechanisms). This contributes to the overall development of the theoretical framework. This research expects to develop a standardized theoretical framework that tackles the community engagement-governance models-security software link from new and insightful perspectives. Practical policy recommendations to protect OSS projects will be presented to solve the cybersecurity problem easily and immediately. This study aims to add to the academic and practical discussions that focus on human and organizational components' critical roles in securing open-source software. The discussion of theoretical aspects gives this platform a unique angle that fits well into the technical approach while improving the understanding of a legally open cybersecurity community

Summary form only given. In spite of the hype and hysteria surrounding open source software development, there is very little that can be said of open source in general. Open source projects range in scope from the miniscule, such as the thousands of non-maintained code dumps left behind at the end of class projects, dissertations, and failed commercial ventures, to the truly international, with thousands of developers collaborating, directly or indirectly, on a common platform. One characteristic that is shared by the largest and most successful open source projects, however, is a software architecture designed to promote anarchic collaboration through extensions while at the same time preserving centralized control over the interfaces. This paper features a survey of the state-of-the-practice in open source development in regards to software architecture, with particular emphasis on the modular extensibility interfaces within several of the most successful projects, including Apache httpd, Eclipse, Mozilla Firefox, Linux kernel, and the World Wide Web (which few people recognize as an open source project in itself). These projects fall under the general category of collaborative open source software development, which emphasizes community aspects of software engineering in order to compensate for the often-volunteer nature of core developers and take advantage of the scalability obtainable through Internet-based virtual organizations.

Interest of scientific research on Open Source software and its development process is frequent. The number of articles available and the number of tracks or workshops on this topic in most relevant IS Conferences is high. The usability of Open Source Software has been scarcely considered until few years ago, probably due to the particular role that the user has in such a development environment. In Open Source software development, users and developers are not so different. Anyhow, the diffusion of the Open Source software outside the development community contributes to sharpen the distinction among these two groups that are no longer equivalent. This circumstance has contributed to increase the interest on usability of Open Source software. Nevertheless, studies on end-users in Open Source contexts are still young. This paper introduces a pilot study on end user's perception of Open Source software. The aim of this pilot study is to identify how the end user perceives the Open Source software (in terms of Usability, Functionality, Reliability, Efficiency and Quality in Use).

Shared understandings are important for software development as they guide effective individual contributions and coordination of the software development process. However, it is not clear if such understandings can be developed in highly distributed groups that do not regularly meet face-to-face. In this paper, we present the results of a preliminary analysis of shared mental models within a Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development team. We analyzed mental models using cognitive mapping and process analysis and compared the models of four developers from the Apache Lucene Java project. Our analysis suggests that there is a high level of sharing among core developers but the sharing is not complete, with some differences related to tenure and role in the project. Finally, we suggest directions for further research on shared mental models in FLOSS teams.

“We do not appreciate being experimented on”: Developer and researcher views on the ethics of experiments on open-source projects

Open source software is becoming increasingly prominent, and the economic structure of open-source development is changing. In recent years, firms motivated by revenues from software services markets have become the primary contributors to open-source development. In this paper we study the role of services in open source software development and explore the choice between open source and proprietary software. Specifically, our economic model jointly analyzes the investment and pricing decisions of the originators of software and of subsequent open-source contributors. We find that if a contributor is efficient in software development, the originator should adopt an open-source strategy, allowing the contributor to offer higher total quality and capture the higher end of the market while the originator focuses on providing software services to lower end consumers. Conversely, if the contributor is not efficient in development, the originator should adopt a proprietary software development strategy, gaining revenue from software sales and squeezing the contributor out of the services market. In certain cases an increase in originator development efficiency can result in increased contributor profits. Finally, we find that, somewhat counterintuitively, an increase in contributor development efficiency can reduce overall social welfare.

We empirically examine the relationship between software design modularity and software quality in open source software (OSS) development projects. Conventional wisdom suggests that degree of software modularity affects software quality. An analysis of 203 software releases in 46 OSS projects hosted on SourceForge.net lends support for a more complex relationship between software modularity and software quality than conventional wisdom suggests. We find that software modularity is associated with reduced software complexity, an increased number of static software bugs, and a mixed relationship with the percentage of bugs closed. We do not find empirical evidence supporting any relationship between modularity and other measures of customer satisfaction. In addition to empirically testing the relationship between modularity and quality, we introduce new measures of software modularity and software quality. Implications are developed for the theory of modularity and the practice of software development.

Usability is an important quality characteristic of software products and information systems. Different approaches for introducing usability activities into open source software (OSS) development have not yet been fully evaluated. This paper experiments with the introduction of usability activities into OSS development through a participative approach. An empirical case study was carried out in a game development OSS project. The results of this study suggest that it is beneficial to introduce usability activities into OSS development through the participative approach. In the participative approach the usability experts become recognized part of the development community through adapting their ways of work into the culture of the OSS project and submitting code patches. This participative approach had a clear impact in the case project as seen in changes in the user interface and in improved usability. The challenge of adapting usability and OSS development philosophies and practices should, however, be researched further.

Open Source Software (OSS) projects rely on the efforts of thousands of software developers. The sustainability and diversity of these communities are two important factors for the longterm viability of OSS communities. This paper reviews the research on OSS sustainability and diversity. Drawing on the findings of measures on sustainability and diversity, we applied a number of the established metrics to the Android Open Source Project and found that over a third of all contributions originate from Google. Surprisingly, in 2015 we saw a decrease in the total number of contributors within the Android project. Findings from our analysis highlight the importance of sustainability and diversity for the development of OSS.

Much of the data about free, libre, and open source (FLOSS) software development comes from studies of code forges or code repositories used for managing projects. This paper presents a method for integrating data about open source projects by way of matching projects (entities) across multiple code forges. After a review of the relevant literature, a few of the methods are chosen and applied to the FLOSS domain, including a comparison of some simple scoring systems for pairwise project matches. Finally, the paper describes limitations of this approach and recommendations for future work.

Open Source Software (OSS) is software products available to the public, with its source code to study, change, and improves its design. Open Source Software Development (OSSD) is the process by which open source software is developed within the confines of software engineering life-cycle methods. However when open source used for commercial purpose, then an open source license is required. Open source software is very often developed in a public and collaborative manner. The quality assurance principle under open source software development is an approach to improve software product quality against traditional methods and techniques. Despite the fact that the open source developments have seen remarkable successful in recent years, there are a number of product quality issues and challenges facing the open source development model. Many industries and business sectors are following or using OSSD, since they realize the benefits, but they do have some reservations concerning quality assurance in the form of program code quality, maintenance of the code and its quality, over the life-cycle of the product and third party usage. This paper reviews the literature of the process of the latest quality assurance, under open source software development methods and techniques. The result from this review is to show the process of quality assurance of open source software and that how it can affect the overall quality assurance principal.

Proponents of open source style software development claim that better software is produced using this model compared with the traditional closed model. However, there is little empirical evidence in support of these claims. In this paper, we present the results of a pilot case study aiming: (a) to understand the implications of structural quality; and (b) to figure out the benefits of structural quality analysis of the code delivered by open source style development. To this end, we have measured quality characteristics of 100 applications written for Linux, using a software measurement tool, and compared the results with the industrial standard that is proposed by the tool. Another target of this case study was to investigate the issue of modularity in open source as this characteristic is being considered crucial by the proponents of open source for this type of software development. We have empirically assessed the relationship between the size of the application components and the delivered quality measured through user satisfaction. We have determined that, up to a certain extent, the average component size of an application is negatively related to the user satisfaction for this application.