Governance practices and software maintenance: A study of open source projects

We have proposed a two-dimensional taxonomy of open source project governance, namely participation management and responsibility management. We have then formulated four hypotheses by linking the two dimensions to software maintenance time. These hypotheses were tested using maintenance data from 352 open source software projects. This study contributes to open source software maintenance literature by demonstrating the effects of the two governance dimensions on open source software maintenance outcomes.

[1]  Paul B. de Laat,et al.  Governance of open source software: state of the art , 2007 .

[2]  Peter Weill,et al.  Don't Just Lead, Govern: How Top-Performing Firms Govern IT , 2004, MIS Q. Executive.

[3]  Chiara Francalanci,et al.  An Empirical Study on the Relationship among Software Design Quality , Development Effort , and Governance in Open Source Projects , 2008 .

[4]  Capers Jones,et al.  Programming Productivity , 1986 .

[5]  Alexander Dymo.  Open source software engineering , 2006 .

[6]  C.K.S. Chong Hok Yuen.  Differences in types of software maintenance work: an empirical study , 1989, ICSM.

[7]  Vijay K. Vaishnavi,et al.  Predicting Maintenance Performance Using Object-Oriented Design Complexity Metrics , 2003, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[8]  Premkumar T. Devanbu,et al.  Open Borders? Immigration in Open Source Projects , 2007, Fourth International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (MSR'07:ICSE Workshops 2007).

[9]  Budi Arief,et al.  focus developing with open source software The Many Meanings of Open Source , 2022 .

[10]  Daniel Stewart.  Social Status in an Open-Source Community , 2005 .

[11]  Joseph Dvorak.  Conceptual entropy and its effect on class hierarchies , 1994, Computer.

[12]  Hyunsoo Kim,et al.  The software maintenance project effort estimation model based on function points , 2003, J. Softw. Maintenance Res. Pract..

[13]  Vander Wielen,et al.  The Dimensions of Software Maintenance , 1985 .

[14]  Vishal Midha,et al.  Does Complexity Matter? The Impact of Change in Structural Complexity on Software Maintenance and New Developers' Contributions in Open Source Software , 2008, ICIS.

[15]  Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni,et al.  Optimal Allocation of Effort to Software Maintenance: A Queuing Theory Approach , 2008 .

[16]  E. Burton Swanson,et al.  The dimensions of maintenance , 1976, ICSE '76.

[17]  Andreas Zeller,et al.  How Long Will It Take to Fix This Bug? , 2007, Fourth International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (MSR'07:ICSE Workshops 2007).

[18]  Carol V. Brown.  Examining the Emergence of Hybrid IS Governance Solutions: Evidence From a Single Case Site , 1997, Inf. Syst. Res..

[19]  Audris Mockus,et al.  Inferring change effort from configuration management databases , 1998, Proceedings Fifth International Software Metrics Symposium. Metrics (Cat. No.98TB100262).

[20]  D HerbslebJames,et al.  Two case studies of open source software development , 2002 .

[21]  Elaine J. Weyuker,et al.  Evaluating Software Complexity Measures , 2010, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[22]  Sharad Borle,et al.  Open source software success: Measures and analysis , 2012, Decis. Support Syst..

[23]  J. Herbsleb,et al.  Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla , 2002, TSEM.

[24]  Chandrasekar Subramaniam,et al.  Determinants of open source software project success: A longitudinal study , 2009, Decis. Support Syst..

[25]  Amrit Tiwana,et al.  Governance-Knowledge Fit in Systems Development Projects , 2009, Inf. Syst. Res..

[26]  Tom Mens,et al.  A survey of software refactoring , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[27]  Paolo Nesi,et al.  Estimation and Prediction Metrics for Adaptive Maintenance Effort of Object-Oriented Systems , 2001, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[28]  E. B. Swanson,et al.  Software maintenance management , 1980 .

[29]  Virpi Hotti,et al.  Open source software maintenance process framework , 2005, ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes.

[30]  P. Weill,et al.  Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology , 1998 .

[31]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  ICIS 2008 Proceedings , 2008 .

[32]  Kay M. Nelson,et al.  Contributors to quality during software maintenance , 1998, Decis. Support Syst..

[33]  Luciano Baresi,et al.  Three empirical studies on estimating the design effort of Web applications , 2007, TSEM.

[34]  Mark Sullivan,et al.  Software defects and their impact on system availability-a study of field failures in operating systems , 1991, [1991] Digest of Papers. Fault-Tolerant Computing: The Twenty-First International Symposium.

[35]  June R. Klein,et al.  Software Productivity as a Strategic Variable , 1985 .

[36]  Magnus Mähring.  IT project governance , 2002 .

[37]  Siu Leung Chung,et al.  An Economic Model to Estimate Software Rewriting and Replacement Times , 1996, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[38]  David A. Wheeler,et al.  Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! , 2005 .

[39]  Gary L. Lilien,et al.  Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[40]  Eric S. Raymond,et al.  The Cathedral & the Bazaar , 1999 .

[41]  Carl Gutwin,et al.  Group awareness in distributed software development , 2004, CSCW.

[42]  Dorine C. Andrews,et al.  FUSION: integrating IE, CASE, and JAD: a handbook for reengineering the systems organization , 1993 .

[43]  Barbara A. Kitchenham,et al.  Effort estimation using analogy , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[44]  Ammar Rashid,et al.  Gauging the Differences between Expectation and Systems Support: The Managerial Approach of Adaptive and Perfective Software Maintenance , 2009, 2009 Fourth International Conference on Cooperation and Promotion of Information Resources in Science and Technology.

[45]  Bennet P. Lientz,et al.  Software Maintenance Management: A Study of the Maintenance of Computer Application Software in 487 Data Processing Organizations , 1980 .

[46]  M. Markus.  The governance of free/open source software projects: monolithic, multidimensional, or configurational? , 2007 .

[47]  Andrew Gelman,et al.  Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models , 2006 .

[48]  Sandeep Krishnamurthy,et al.  Cave or Community? An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects , 2002, First Monday.

[49]  Robert W. Zmud,et al.  Arrangements for Information Technology Governance: A Theory of Multiple Contingencies , 1999, MIS Q..

[50]  Prashant Palvia,et al.  Factors affecting the success of Open Source Software , 2012, J. Syst. Softw..

[51]  Walt Scacchi,et al.  Role Migration and Advancement Processes in OSSD Projects: A Comparative Case Study , 2007, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07).

[52]  Carolyn Seaman,et al.  Practical Software Maintenance , 2000, J. Softw. Maintenance Res. Pract..

[53]  Audris Mockus,et al.  Does Code Decay? Assessing the Evidence from Change Management Data , 2001, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[54]  Robert L. Glass,et al.  Software Maintenance Guidebook , 1981 .

[55]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Open Source Software and the "Private-Collective" Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[56]  A. H. Studenmund.  Using Econometrics: A Practical Guide , 1987 .

[57]  Jing Wang,et al.  Adoption of Open Source Software: The role of social identification , 2011, Decis. Support Syst..

[58]  Thomas Zimmermann,et al.  Duplicate bug reports considered harmful … really? , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance.

[59]  J. Henkel.  Selective revealing in open innovation processes: the case of embedded Linux (gekürzte Version) , 2006 .

[60]  Cláudia Maria Lima Werner,et al.  The Configuration Management Role in Collaborative Software Engineering , 2010, Collaborative Software Engineering.

[61]  Andrea De Lucia,et al.  Assessing effort estimation models for corrective maintenance through empirical studies , 2005, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[62]  Christoph Lattemann,et al.  Framework for Governance in Open Source Communities , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.