Correlation between bug notifications, messages and participants in Debian's bug tracking system

Bugs are an essential part of software projects because they lead its evolution. Without bug notifications developers cannot know if their software is accomplishing its tasks properly. However, few analytical studies have been made about this aspect of projects. We have developed a tool to extract and to store information from Debian's BTS (Bug Tracking System) in a relational database. In this paper we show that there is a strong dependence between three variables which can be used to analyze the activity of a project through its bugs: bug notifications, communications between users and developers and people involved.