@article {1686,
	title = {Why and How Should Open Source Projects Adopt Time-Based Releases?},
	journal = {IEEE Software, 32(2)},
	year = {2015},
	abstract = {Traditional release strategies have a number of associated problems, which can be overcome by time-based release management. We present findings from interviews with key members of seven prominent volunteer-based open source projects, all of which have adopted a time-based release strategy. We discuss the importance of release planning, the numerous challenges that can result from a lack of such planning, and the benefits of time-based releases. Finally, we discuss how an open source project can adopt a time-based release strategy.},
	url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268815678_Why_and_How_Should_Open_Source_Projects_Adopt_Time-Based_Releases},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr and Fitzgerald, Brian}
}
@article {1707,
	title = {Time-Based Release Management in Free and Open Source (FOSS) Projects},
	journal = {International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes},
	volume = {4},
	year = {2012},
	month = {31/2012},
	pages = {1 - 19},
	abstract = {As the Free and Open Source (FOSS) concept has
matured, its commercial significance has also
increased, and issues such as quality and
sustainability have moved to the fore. In this study,
we focus on time-based release management in large
volunteer FOSS projects, and reveal how it addresses
quality and sustainability issues. We discuss the
differences between release management in the
traditional software context and contrast it with
FOSS settings. Based on detailed case studies of a
number of prominent FOSS projects, we describe the
move to time-based release management and identify
the factors and criteria necessary for a successful
transition. We also consider the implications for
software development more generally in the current
dynamic Internet-enabled environment.},
	issn = {1942-3934},
	doi = {10.4018/jossp.2012010101},
	url = {http://lero.ie/sites/default/files/Lero-TR-2011-04.pdf},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Lero-TR-2011-04.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr and Fitzgerald, Brian}
}
@book {1803,
	title = {Emerging Free and Open Source Software PracticesVolunteers in Large Libre Software Projects},
	series = {Emerging Free and Open Source Software Practices},
	year = {2007},
	pages = {1 - 24},
	publisher = {IGI Global},
	organization = {IGI Global},
	abstract = {Most libre (free, open source) software projects rely on the work of volunteers. Therefore, attracting people who contribute their time and technical skills is of paramount importance, both in technical and economic terms. This reliance on volunteers leads to some fundamental management challenges: Volunteer contributions are inherently difficult to predict, plan, and manage, especially in the case of large projects. In this chapter we present an analysis of the evolution over time of the human resources in large libre software projects, using the Debian project, one of the largest and most complex libre software projects based mainly in voluntary work, as a case study. We have performed a quantitative investigation of data corresponding to roughly seven years, studying how volunteer involvement has affected the software released by the project, and the developer community itself.
},
	doi = {10.4018/978-1-59904-210-7.ch001},
	url = {http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/volunteers-large-libre-software-projects/10080},
	author = {Gregorio Robles and Gonz{\'a}lez-Barahona, Jes{\'u}s M. and Martin Michlmayr},
	editor = {Sowe, Sulayman K. and Stamelos, Ioannis G. and Samoladas, Ioannis}
}
@conference {671,
	title = {From the Cathedral to the Bazaar: An Empirical Study of the Lifecycle of Volunteer Community Projects},
	booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing },
	volume = {234/2007},
	year = {2007},
	month = {2007///},
	pages = {31 - 44},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	chapter = {3},
	abstract = {Some free software and open source projects have been extremely successful in the past. The success of a project is often related to the number of developers it can attract: a larger community of developers (the {\textquoteleft}bazaar{\textquoteright}) identifies and corrects more software defects and adds more features via a peer-review process. In this paper two free software projects (Wine and Arla) are empirically explored in order to characterize their software lifecycle, development processes and communities. Both the projects show a phase where the number of active developers and the actual work performed on the system is constant, or does not grow: we argued that this phase corresponds to the one termed {\textquoteleft}cathedral{\textquoteright} in the literature. One of the two projects (Wine) shows also a second phase: a sudden growing amount of developers corresponds to a similar growing output produced: we termed this as the {\textquoteleft}bazaar{\textquoteright} phase, and we also argued that this phase was not achieved for the other system. A further analysis revealed that the transition between {\textquoteleft}cathedral{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}bazaar{\textquoteright} was a phase by itself in Wine, achieved by creating a growing amount of new modules, which attracted new developers.
},
	issn = {978-0-387-72485-0},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_3},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/From\%20the\%20Cathedral.pdf},
	author = {Capiluppi, Andrea and Martin Michlmayr}
}
@unpublished {flosswp363,
	title = {Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free and Open Source Software Projects},
	year = {2007},
	month = {March},
	abstract = {Free and open source software has had a major impact on the computer industry since the late 1990s and has changed the way software is perceived, developed and deployed in many areas. Free and open source software, or FOSS, is typically developed in a collaborative fashion and the majority of contributors are volunteers. Even though this collaborative form of development has produced a significant body of software, the development process is often described as unstructured and unorganized. This dissertation studies the FOSS phenomenon from a quality perspective and investigates where improvements to the development process are possible. In particular, the focus is on release management since this is concerned with the delivery of a high quality product to end-users. This research has identified considerable interest amongst the FOSS community in a novel release management strategy, time based releases. In contrast to traditional development which is feature-driven, time based releases use time rather than features as the criterion for the creation of a new release. Releases are made after a specific interval, and new features that have been completed and sufficiently tested since the last release are included in the new version. This dissertation explores why, and under which circumstances, the time based release strategy is a viable alternative to feature-driven development and discusses factors that influence a successful implementation of this release strategy. It is argued that this release strategy acts as a coordination mechanism in large volunteer projects that are geographically dispersed. The time based release strategy allows a more controlled development and release process in projects which have little control of their contributors and therefore contributes to the quality of the output.},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/michlmayr-phd.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr}
}
@conference {647,
	title = {Release Management in Free Software Projects: Practices and Problems},
	booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing },
	volume = {234/2007},
	year = {2007},
	month = {2007///},
	pages = {295 - 300},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	chapter = {31},
	abstract = {Release management plays an important role in every software project since it is concerned with the delivery of a high quality product to end-users. This paper explores release practices employed by volunteer free software projects and shows problems that occur. A challenge that has been identified is the difficulty of coordinating a distributed team of volunteers in order to align their work for a release.
},
	issn = {978-0-387-72485-0},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_31},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Release\%20Management\%20in\%20Free\%20Software.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr and Hunt, Francis and Probert, David}
}
@conference {Robles:2006:MLS:1137983.1137986,
	title = {Mining large software compilations over time: another perspective of software evolution},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories},
	series = {MSR {\textquoteright}06},
	year = {2006},
	pages = {3{\textendash}9},
	publisher = {ACM},
	organization = {ACM},
	address = {New York, NY, USA},
	abstract = {With the success of libre (free, open source) software, a new type of software compilation has become increasingly common. Such compilations, often referred to as {\textquoteright}distributions{\textquoteright}, group hundreds, if not thousands, of software applications and libraries written by independent parties into an integrated system. Software compilations raise a number of questions that have not been targeted so far by software evolution, which usually focuses on the evolution of single applications. Undoubtedly, the challenges that software compilations face differ from those found in single software applications. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that both, the evolution of applications and that of software compilations, have similarities and dependencies.In this sense, we identify a dichotomy, common to that in economics, of software evolution in the small (micro-evolution) and in the large (macro-evolution). The goal of this paper is to study the evolution of a large software compilation, mining the publicly available repository of a well-known Linux distribution, Debian. We will therefore investigate changes related to hundreds of millions of lines of code over seven years. The aspects that will be covered in this paper are size (in terms of number of packages and of number of lines of code), use of programming languages, maintenance of packages and file sizes.},
	keywords = {debian, distributions, evolution, large software collections, lines of code, loc, metrics, mining software repositories, size, sloc, sloccount, software evolution, software integrators},
	isbn = {1-59593-397-2},
	doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1137983.1137986},
	url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1137983.1137986},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/3miningLarge.pdf},
	author = {Gregorio Robles and Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona and Martin Michlmayr and Amor, Juan Jose}
}
@conference {731,
	title = {Evolution of Volunteer Participation in Libre Software Projects: Evidence from Debian},
	booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems },
	year = {2005},
	note = {"For each release we have retrieved the corresponding sources.gz file (see below) from the Debian archive. From it we have extracted information about the packages and their maintainers...."
},
	pages = {100-107},
	abstract = {Most libre software projects rely on the work of volunteers. Therefore, attracting people who contribute their time and technical skills is of paramount importance, both in technical and economic terms. This reliance on volunteers leads to some fundamental management challenges: volunteer contributions are inherently difficult to predict, plan and manage, especially in the case of large projects. In this paper we analyze the evolution in time of the human resources of one of the largest and most complex libre software projects composed primarily of volunteers, the Debian project. Debian currently has around 1300 volunteers working on several tasks: much activity is focused on packaging software applications and libraries, but there is also major work related to the maintenance of the infrastructure needed to sustain the development. We have performed a quantitative investigation of data from almost seven years, studying how volunteer involvement has affected the software...},
	keywords = {contributors, debian, maintainers, PopCon, popularity, Volunteers},
	url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/857},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/robles_barahona_michlmayr-evolution_participation.pdf},
	author = {Gregorio Robles and Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona and Martin Michlmayr}
}
@conference {785,
	title = {Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free Software Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management},
	booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems },
	year = {2005},
	pages = {309-310},
	abstract = {Even though free software has achieved great popularity and success in recent years, there are a number of product quality challenges facing the open source development model. There is significant room for further quality improvement and one area that deserves special attention is release management. This research will identify problems with current release practices, verify possible advantages of an increasingly popular release model, and develop interventions to improve release management in free software projects. The research also aims to answer the fundamental question as to how volunteer projects can deliver predictable and high quality software.},
	keywords = {free software, open source, process improvement, quality assurance, release management, volunteer projects},
	url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/1429},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr}
}
@article {flosswp244,
	title = {Quality Practices and Problems in Free Software Projects},
	year = {2005},
	month = {July},
	abstract = {Free software and open source projects are often perceived to be of high quality. It has been suggested that the high level of quality found in some free software projects is related to the open development model which promotes peer review. While the quality of some free software projects is comparable to if not better than that of closed source software, not all free software projects are successful and of high quality. Even mature and successful projects face quality problems, some of which are related to the unique characteristics of free software and open source as a distributed development model based primarily on volunteers. In exploratory interviews performed with free software and open source developers, common quality practices as well as actual quality problems have been identified. The results of these interviews are presented in this paper to take stock of the current status of quality in free software projects and to act as a starting point for the implementation of quality process improvement strategies.},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/michlmayr_hunt_probert-quality_practices_problems.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr}
}
@article {flosswp243,
	title = {Software Process Maturity and the Success of Free Software Projects},
	year = {2005},
	month = {October},
	abstract = {The success of free software and open source projects has increased interest in utilizing the open source model for mature software development. However, the ad hoc nature of open source development may result in poor quality software or failures for a number of volunteer projects. In this paper, projects from SourceForge are assessed to test the hypothesis that there is a relationship between process maturity and the success of free software and open source projects. This study addresses the question of whether the maturity of particular software processes differs in unsuccessful and unsuccessful projects. Processes are identified which are key factors in successful free software projects. The insights gained from this study can be used improve the software process used by free software projects.},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/michlmayr1.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr}
}
@article {flosswp201,
	title = {Managing Volunteer Activity in Free Software Projects},
	year = {2004},
	month = {July},
	abstract = {During the last few years, thousands of volunteers have created a large body of free software. Even though this accomplishment shows that the free software development model works, there are some drawbacks associated with this model. Due to the volunteer nature of most free software projects, it is impossible to fully rely on participants. Volunteers may become busy and neglect their duties. This may lead to a steady decrease of quality as work is not being carried out. The problem of inactive volunteers is intensified by the fact that most free software projects are distributed, which makes it hard to quickly identify volunteers who neglect their duties. This paper shows Debian{\textquoteright}s approach to inactive volunteers. Insights presented here can be applied to other free software projects in order to implement effective quality assurance strategies.},
	keywords = {debian, volunteer, volunteer teams},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/michlmayr-mia.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr}
}
@proceedings {1177,
	title = {Quality and the Reliance on Individuals in Free Software Projects},
	year = {2003},
	month = {2003},
	pages = {105-109},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/105-109.pdf},
	author = {Martin Michlmayr and Hill, B.M.}
}
