A metric based approach for analysis of software development processes in open source environment

Open source software (OSS) is a software program whose source code is available to anyone under a license which gives them freedom to run the program, to study, modify and redistribute the copies of original or modified program. Its objective is to encourage the involvement in the form of improvement, modification and distribution of the licensed work. OSS proved itself highly suited, both as a software product and as a development methodology. The main challenge in the open source software development (OSSD) is to collect and extract data. This paper presents various aspects of open source software community, role of different types of users as well as developers. A metric-based approach for analysis of software development processes in open source environment is suggested and validated through a case study by studying the various development processes undertaken by developers for about fifty different open – source software’s.