Exploratory Analysis of Quality Practices in Open Source Domain

TL;DR

This paper surveys and analyzes quality assurance practices in open source software, comparing them with closed-source environments to identify unique features and suggest future directions.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive exploratory analysis of OSS quality practices and highlights distinct patterns compared to closed-source development.

Findings

OSS quality practices differ from closed-source methods

Distinct patterns in OSS quality assurance identified

Recommendations for OSS developers proposed

Abstract

Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades, but relatively few analyses were performed on open source software (OSS). As OSS has become very popular in our daily life, many researchers have been keen on the quality practices in this area. Although quality management presents distinct patterns compared with those in closed-source software development, some widely used OSS products have been implemented. Therefore, quality assurance of OSS projects has attracted increased research focuses. In this paper, a survey is conducted to reveal the general quality practices in open source communities. Exploratory analysis has been carried out to disclose those quality related activities. The results are compared with those from closed-source environments and the distinguished features of the quality assurance in OSS projects have been confirmed. Moreover, this study suggests potential directions for OSS developers to follow.