Maintenance Support in Open Source Software Projects

TL;DR

This study investigates how open source software projects utilize forums, mailing lists, and trackers to support maintenance activities, highlighting their roles in addressing user requests and error reporting.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the effectiveness of different support channels in open source software maintenance.

Findings

Forums and mailing lists address user requests effectively.

Trackers are used for error reporting and user requests.

Support channels significantly impact OSS maintenance quality.

Abstract

Easy and mostly free access to the internet has resulted in the growing use of open source software (OSS). However, it is a common perception that closed proprietary software is still superior in areas such as software maintenance and management. The research model of this study establishes a relationship between maintenance issues (such as user requests and error handling) and support provided by open source software through project forums, mailing lists and trackers. To conduct this research, we have used a dataset consisting of 120 open source software projects, covering a wide range of categories. The results of the study show that project forums and mailing lists play a significant role in addressing user requests in open source software. However according to the empirical investigation, it has been explored that trackers are used as an effective medium for error reporting as well as user requests.