@proceedings {1456, title = {A Qualitative Method for Mining Open Source Software Repositories}, volume = {378}, year = {2012}, note = {The method proposed by this study employs content analysis Krippendorff [10], a classification technique that is frequently applied to interview and focus group data. The objective of content analysis is to ask quantitative questions about qualitative data. The approach is similar to the grounded theory method, but differs from grounded theory in that the results are quantitative rather than qualitative: content analysis produces results such as, {\textquotedblleft}49\% of messages submitted to project mailing lists were sent by core developers.{\textquotedblright}}, month = {09/2012}, pages = {256-261}, publisher = {IFIP AICT, Springer}, abstract = {The volume of data archived in open source software project repositories makes automated, quantitative techniques attractive for extracting and analyzing information from these archives. However, many kinds of archival data include blocks of natural language text that are difficult to analyze automatically. This paper introduces a qualitative analysis method that is transparent and repeatable, leads to objective findings when dealing with qualitative data, and is efficient enough to be applied to large archives. The method was applied in a case study of developer and user forum discussions of an open source electronic medical record project. The study demonstrates that the qualitative repository mining method can be employed to derive useful results quickly yet accurately. These results would not be possible using a strictly automated approach.}, keywords = {content analysis, Electronic Medical Record, Qualitative Research}, author = {Noll, John and Seichter, Dominik and Beecham, Sarah} } @inbook {springerlink:10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_20, title = {Download Patterns and Releases in Open Source Software Projects: A Perfect Symbiosis?}, booktitle = {Open Source Software: New Horizons}, series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology}, volume = {319}, year = {2010}, note = {"We apply experimentally our method to the most downloaded projects of SourceForge{\textquoteright}s history crawled through the FLOSSMole repository."}, pages = {252-267}, publisher = {Springer Boston}, organization = {Springer Boston}, abstract = {Software usage by end-users is one of the factors used to evaluate the success of software projects. In the context of open source software, there is no single and non-controversial measure of usage, though. Still, one of the most used and readily available measure is data about projects downloads. Nevertheless, download counts and averages do not convey as much information as the patterns in the original downloads time series. In this research, we propose a method to increase the expressiveness of mere download rates by considering download patterns against software releases. We apply experimentally our method to the most downloaded projects of SourceForge{\textquoteright}s history crawled through the FLOSSMole repository. Findings show that projects with similar usage can have indeed different levels of sensitivity to releases, revealing different behaviors of users. Future research will develop further the pattern recognition approach to automatically categorize open source projects according to their download patterns.}, keywords = {flossmole, oss2010, sourceforge}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_20}, author = {Rossi, Bruno and Russo, Barbara and Succi, Giancarlo}, editor = {{\r A}gerfalk, P{\"a}r and Boldyreff, Cornelia and Gonz{\'a}lez-Barahona, Jes{\'u}s and Madey, Gregory and Noll, John} } @book {1249, title = {Open Source Software Developer and Project Networks}, series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication TechnologyOpen Source Software: New Horizons}, volume = {319}, year = {2010}, note = {no information on data gathering procedures}, pages = {407 - 412}, publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, organization = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, address = {Berlin, Heidelberg}, abstract = {This paper outlines complex network concepts and how social networks are built from Open Source Software (OSS) data. We present an initial study of the social networks of three different OSS forges, BerliOS Developer, GNU Savannah, and SourceForge. Much research has been done on snapshot or conflated views of these networks, especially SourceForge, due to the size of the SourceForge community. The degree distribution, connectedness, centrality, and scale-free nature of SourceForge has been presented for the network at particular points in time. However, very little research has been done on how the network grows, how connections were made, especially during its infancy, and how these metrics evolve over time. }, keywords = {berlios, savannah, sourceforge}, isbn = {978-3-642-13244-5}, issn = {1861-2288}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_39}, author = {Madey, G. and van Antwerp, M.}, editor = {{\r A}gerfalk, P{\"a}r and Boldyreff, Cornelia and Gonz{\'a}lez-Barahona, Jes{\'u}s M. and Madey, Gregory R. and Noll, John} } @book {1250, title = {Warehousing and Studying Open Source Versioning Metadata}, series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology Open Source Software: New Horizons (OSS 2010)}, volume = {319}, year = {2010}, pages = {413 - 418}, publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, organization = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, address = {Berlin, Heidelberg}, abstract = {In this paper, we describe the downloading and warehousing of Open Source Software (OSS) versioning metadata from SourceForge, BerliOS Developer, and GNU Savannah. This data enables and supports research in areas such as software engineering, open source phenomena, social network analysis, data mining, and project management. This newly-formed database containing Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and Subversion (SVN) metadata offers new research opportunities for large-scale OSS development analysis. The CVS and SVN data is juxtaposed with the SourceForge.net Research Data Archive [5] for the purpose of performing more powerful and interesting queries. We also present an initial statistical analysis of some of the most active projects. }, keywords = {berlios, cvs, savannah, scm, sourceforge, srda, subversion, svn}, isbn = {978-3-642-13244-5}, issn = {1861-2288}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_40}, author = {van Antwerp, M. and Madey, G.}, editor = {{\r A}gerfalk, P{\"a}r and Boldyreff, Cornelia and Gonz{\'a}lez-Barahona, Jes{\'u}s M. and Madey, Gregory R. and Noll, John} } @conference {595, title = {What Constitutes Open Source? A Study of the Vista Electronic Medical Record Software}, booktitle = {OSS2009: Open Source Ecosystems: Diverse Communities Interacting (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology }, year = {2009}, month = {2009///}, pages = {310 - 319}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, chapter = {27}, abstract = {Strictly speaking, Open Source Software is any program that is covered by an Open Source Software license. However, the notion of Open Source Software Development conjures images of high-quality, market dominating products developed by armies of volunteer programmers, who work only for the joy of programming. Certainly, banner projects like Apache, the Linux kernel, and Mozilla/Firefox resemble this notion, even if they do employ significant numbers of paid programmers. This paper examines three Open Source Software projects related to the Vista Electronic Medical Record system developed and maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and released to the public domain. While all three claim to be {\textquotedblleft}Open Source{\textquotedblright} projects, there is considerable deviation from the strong community-oriented model that Linux, Apache, and Mozilla represent. }, issn = {978-3-642-02031-5}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02032-2_27}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/What\%20Constitues\%20Open\%20Source.pdf}, author = {Noll, John} } @conference {533, title = {Requirements Acquisition in Open Source Development: Firefox 2.0}, booktitle = {OSS2008: Open Source Development, Communities and Quality (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing}, volume = {275/2008}, year = {2008}, month = {2008///}, pages = {69 - 79}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, chapter = {6}, abstract = {Open Source Software Development appears to depart radically from conventional notions of software engineering. In particular, requirements for Open Source projects seem to be asserted rather than elicited. This paper examines features of the latest major release of the Firefox web browser in attempt to understand how prevalent this phenomenon is. Using archives of mailing lists and issue tracking databases, these features were traced from first mention to release, to determine the process by which requirements are proposed, adopted, and implemented in Firefox. The results confirm the importance of user participation as developers of open source products. }, issn = {978-0-387-09683-4}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09684-1_6}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Requirements\%20Acquisition.pdf}, author = {Noll, John} } @conference {625, title = {Innovation in Open Source Software Development: A Tale of Two Features}, booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing }, volume = {234/2007}, year = {2007}, note = {"archives of project discussion forums were then examined to determine when the feature was first proposed, how it was debated, and when it was ultimately adopted"}, month = {2007///}, pages = {109 - 120}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, chapter = {9}, abstract = {Open Source Software Development appears to depart radically from conventional notions of software engineering. In particular, requirements for Open Source projects seem to be asserted rather than elicited. This paper examines two features of selected open source products: {\textquotedblleft}tabbed browsing{\textquotedblright} as realized in the Firefox web browser, and {\textquotedblleft}edge magnetism{\textquotedblright} found in the Gnome desktop environment{\textquoteright}s Metacity window manager. Using archives of mailing lists and issue tracking databases, these features were traced from first mention to release, in attempt to discover the process by which requirements are proposed, adopted, and implemented in their respective Open Source projects. The results confirm the importance of user participation in Open Source projects. }, keywords = {email, email archives, features, Firefox, gnome, mailing list, metacity, mozilla}, issn = {978-0-387-72485-0}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_9}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Innovation\%20in\%20OSS.pdf}, author = {Noll, John} } @conference {715, title = {Multi-Modal Modeling of Open Source Software Requirements Processes}, booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems }, year = {2005}, pages = {1-8}, abstract = {Understanding the context, structure, activities, and content of software development processes found in practice has been and remains a challenging problem. In the world of free/open source software development, discovering and understanding what processes are used in particular projects is important in determining how they are similar to or different from those advocated by the software engineering community. Prior studies however have revealed that the requirements processes in OSSD projects are different in a number of ways, including the general lack of explicit software requirements specifications. In this paper, we describe how a variety of modeling perspectives and techniques are used to elicit, analyze, and validate software requirements processes found in OSSD projects, with examples drawn from studies of the NetBeans.org project.}, url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/975}, author = {Walt Scacchi and Chris Jensen and Noll, John and Elliott, Margaret} }