%0 Book %B IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology Open Source Software: Quality Verification %D 2013 %T Is It All Lost? A Study of Inactive Open Source Projects %A Khondu, Jymit %A Capiluppi, Andrea %A Stol, Klaas %E Petrinja, Etiel %E Succi, Giancarlo %E Ioini, Nabil %E Sillitti, Alberto %K sourceforge %X Open Source Software (OSS) proponents suggest that when developers lose interest in their project, their last duty is to “hand it off to a competent successor.” However, the mechanisms of such a hand-off are not clear, or widely known among OSS developers. As a result, many OSS projects, after a certain long period of evolution, stop evolving, in fact becoming “inactive” or “abandoned” projects. This paper presents an analysis of the population of projects contained within one of the largest OSS repositories available (SourceForge.net), in order to describe how projects abandoned by their developers can be identified, and to discuss the attributes and characteristics of these inactive projects. In particular, the paper attempts to differentiate projects that experienced maintainability issues from those that are inactive for other reasons, in order to be able to correlate common characteristics to the “failure” of these projects. %B IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology Open Source Software: Quality Verification %I Springer Berlin Heidelberg %C Berlin, Heidelberg %V 404 %P 61 - 79 %@ 978-3-642-38928-3 %U http://staff.lero.ie/stol/files/2013/03/2013-Is-It-All-Lost-A-Study-of-Inactive-Open-Source-Projects.pdf %R 10.1007/978-3-642-38928-3_5 %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/2013-Is-It-All-Lost-A-Study-of-Inactive-Open-Source-Projects.pdf %0 Journal Article %J Journal of Systems and Software %D 2009 %T Identifying exogenous drivers and evolutionary stages in FLOSS projects %A Karl Beecher %A Capiluppi, Andrea %A Boldyreff, Cornelia %K developers %K forge %K forges %K repositories %K repository %K scm %K software repositories %K sourceforge %K success %K users %X The success of a Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) project has been evaluated in the past through the number of commits made to its configuration management system, number of developers and number of users. Most studies, based on a popular FLOSS repository (SourceForge), have concluded that the vast majority of projects are failures. This study's empirical results confirm and expand conclusions from an earlier and more limited work. Not only do projects from different repositories display different process and product characteristics, but a more general pattern can be observed. Projects may be considered as early inceptors in highly visible repositories, or as established projects within desktop-wide projects, or finally as structured parts of FLOSS distributions. These three possibilities are formalized into a framework of transitions between repositories. The framework developed here provides a wider context in which results from FLOSS repository mining can be more effectively presented. Researchers can draw different conclusions based on the overall characteristics studied about an Open Source software project's potential for success, depending on the repository that they mine. These results also provide guidance to OSS developers when choosing where to host their project and how to distribute it to maximize its evolutionary success. %B Journal of Systems and Software %V 82 %P 739 - 750 %U http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V0N-4TVTJFS-1/2/e32ecee1bcb54bd4a5dff6d5e3daca8d %R DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2008.10.026 %0 Journal Article %J Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science %D 2009 %T Quality Factors and Coding Standards - a Comparison Between Open Source Forges %A Capiluppi, Andrea %A Boldyreff, Cornelia %A Karl Beecher %A Paul J. Adams %K artefacts %K artifacts %K coding standards %K coding style %K complexity %K forge %K forges %K kde %K metrics %K quality %K source code %K sourceforge %X Enforcing adherence to standards in software development in order to produce high quality software artefacts has long been recognised as best practice in traditional software engineering. In a distributed heterogeneous development environment such those found within the Open Source paradigm, coding standards are informally shared and adhered to by communities of loosely coupled developers. Following these standards could potentially lead to higher quality software. This paper reports on the empirical analysis of two major forges where OSS projects are hosted. The first one, the KDE forge, provides a set of guidelines and coding standards in the form of a coding style that developers may conform to when producing the code source artefacts. The second studied forge, SourceForge, imposes no formal coding standards on developers. A sample of projects from these two forges has been analysed to detect whether the SourceForge sample, where no coding standards are reinforced, has a lower quality than the sample from KDE. Results from this analysis form a complex picture; visually, all the selected metrics show a clear divide between the two forges, but from the statistical standpoint, clear distinctions cannot be drawn amongst these quality related measures in the two forge samples. %B Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science %V 233 %P 89 - 103 %U http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B75H1-4VXDKRV-7/2/abcc2be2c4c3998e4bc9b53473ca2d81 %R DOI: 10.1016/j.entcs.2009.02.063 %0 Conference Paper %B Proceedings of the 2nd ICSE Workshop on Open Source %D 2002 %T Characterizing the OSS process %A Capiluppi, Andrea %A Patricia Lago %A Maurizio Morisio %K bugs %K change log %K classification %K cvs %K downloads %K freshmeat %K metadata %K patches %K popularity %K project success %K release history %K sourceforge %K vitality %X The Open Source model of software development has gained the attention of both the business, the practitioners’ and the research communities. The Open Source process has been described by the seminal paper by Eric Raymond [4] and [5]. However, sound empirical studies are still very limited [3], [6]. Our goal is to investigate the OS process by empirical means, to analyze, characterize it, and possibly model it with quantitative models. It should be noted that the Open Source process provides open process and product data, and therefore is a rare opportunity for empirical research. Our initial research focus is on the characterization of the process, starting from the evolution of OS projects. In traditional projects, a significant number of releases in a short time is usually considered an instability factor [7] and [8], while in the OSS community, it is an evidence of vitality, shows the commitment of the authors and the power of attraction of other programmers [9]. Is it possible to characterize the vitality of projects? And, can vitality be traced to some other characteristics of a project? %B Proceedings of the 2nd ICSE Workshop on Open Source %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CapiluppiLagoMorisio.pdf