II/1/1/8 Open Source Software Development

This is a research idea rather than a research agenda. The idea is to look at the quality of typical open-source software (OSS). The possible areas of research that we currently consider are:

Specification-based testing of OSS.
Empirical SW Engineering of OSS.

Typical OSS does not come with test-suites or specifications from which test-cases could be derived systematically. This makes it difficult to (1) understand the code, (2) check the functionality, and (3) refactorize the code. Case-studies should investigate the value of adding Open Formal Specifications to OSS and of deriving test-cases systematically.

In addition, experience should be gained on what kind of measures indicate the quality of OSS. Many data, like bug reports, number and kind of revisions, number of users/inspectors, etc. are available for many OSS projects. It would be useful to establish a set of measures to indicate on which maturity level an OSS project is.

The advantage of this research area on OSS is that partners from developing countries can easily participate.

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Open Source Software Development

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