Investigating quality in large-scale Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) development and use has increased significantly over recent years. Therefore, there is a need to analyze and understand these projects. Software quality is an important characteristic effecting overall system lifecycle cost, performance and useful life. The existing models for software quality are based on empirical analysis of propriety source software (PSS), and need to be verified in OSS. Research on PSS has revealed that software quality declines, as it ages. Part of this decline is associated with the lifecycle maintenance activities that introduce change in the size and complexity of the system, while introducing software errors into modified system. Lifecycle maintenance activities in OSS systems are processed under a very different paradigm. We are interested in investigating the effects of maintenance activities on OSS project outcomes. Linux is one of the most popular and complex OSS project available. In our research, we investigate the characteristics of Linux source code. In this position paper we present some preliminary results of the effects of various types of maintenance activities on quality of Linux software.