Structural Complexity Evolution in Free Software Projects: A Case Study

The fundamental role of Free Software in contemporary IT Industry is sometimes threatened by the lack of understanding of its development process, which sometimes leads to distrust regarding quality of Free Software projects. While Free Software projects do have quality assurance activities, there is still room for improvement and introduction of new methods and tools. This paper presents a case study of structural complexity evolution in a small project written in C. The approach used can be used by Free Software developers in their own projects to understand and control complexity, and the results provide initial understanding on the study of structural complexity evolution.