This posted to both the SLUG and ACS open source SIG lists ...
I just heard about this, and thought people may be interested (curtesy
of John Leany at UTS).
Rather frustratingly, I'm not available on the 5th May - darn.
All the best,
Bruce
-----Forwarded Message-----
>FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH SEMINAR, UTS
>
>THREE UNEXPECTED RESULTS IN EMPIRICAL OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
>
>Date and time: 2pm, 5/5/2004
>Location: 10.4.460 (Building 10, Floor 4, Room 460)
>Presenter: Associate Professor Stephen R. Schach, Vanderbilt University
>
>ABSTRACT:
>We present the results of three research projects in empirical open-source
>software engineering.
>
>First, we consider Linus's Law ("Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are
>shallow"), named in honor of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux
>operating system. We show that Linus's Law does not hold for Mozilla,
>Gnome, or Apache. On the contrary, between 70 and 90 percent of faults in
>the versions we examined were corrected by the members of the small core
>group (the inner circle of software developers), rather than by the
>"eyeballs" of the hundreds of thousands of worldwide users who have
>downloaded the software.
>
>Second, we give a new categorization of common coupling within the context
>of software product lines, and use it to show that Linux will become
>extremely hard to maintain in the future.
>
>Third, in 1978, Lientz, Swanson, and Tomkins ("LST") published data that
>seemed to demonstrate that less than 20% of maintenance is performed in
>order to correct a defect. However, when we examined 60 versions of the
>Linux kernel and 15 versions of GCC, we found that over 50% of the
>maintenance was corrective in nature. We also query the validity of the
>original LST data.
>
>
>BIOGRAPHY:
>Stephen R. ("Steve") Schach is an associate professor of computer science
>and computer engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and
>Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. Steve is the author of some
>115 refereed publications and 12 books. The Sixth Edition of his textbook
>Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering will be published in
>June 2004 by McGraw-Hill. His current research is in the area of
>empirical software engineering, with particular application to open-source
>software.
>
>SEMINAR LOCATION:
>The Faculty is located in Building 10 (the Fairfax Building) in Jones
>Street off Broadway. Maps are available at:
>http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/bway.html
>or
>http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/citymap.html
>
>PRESENTATION SLIDES:
>Presentation slides of past Faculty Research Seminars are available at:
>http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~laurel/Research/ResearchSeminarshtm.htm
>
>
>
>Dr Laurel Evelyn Dyson, CCNA CCAI
>Lecturer and Assessor
>Department of Information Systems
>Faculty of Information Technology
>University of Technology, Sydney
>PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007
>
>Building 10, Floor 4, Room 324
>Phone: 9514 4493
>Webpage: www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~laurel/
>
>UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
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