article

Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla

Authors:

Roy T. Fielding,

James D. HerbslebAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Volume 11, Issue 3

Pages 309 - 346

https://doi.org/10.1145/567793.567795

Published: 01 July 2002 Publication History

Abstract

According to its proponents, open source style software development has the capacity to compete successfully, and perhaps in many cases displace, traditional commercial development methods. In order to begin investigating such claims, we examine data from two major open source projects, the Apache web server and the Mozilla browser. By using email archives of source code change history and problem reports we quantify aspects of developer participation, core team size, code ownership, productivity, defect density, and problem resolution intervals for these OSS projects. We develop several hypotheses by comparing the Apache project with several commercial projects. We then test and refine several of these hypotheses, based on an analysis of Mozilla data. We conclude with thoughts about the prospects for high-performance commercial/open source process hybrids.

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 11, Issue 3

July 2002

93 pages

ISSN:1049-331X

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/567793

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2002 ACM.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2002

Published in TOSEM Volume 11, Issue 3

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-0354-1_20
Jalote PJalote P(2025)Industry-Strength SoftwareA Concise Introduction to Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-74318-4_1(1-22)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-74318-4_1
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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-73143-3_11
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