Open Source Project Categorization Based on Growth Rate Analysis and Portfolio Planning Methods

In this paper, we propose to arrive at an assessment and evaluation of open source projects based on an analysis of their growth rates in several aspects. These include code base, developer number, bug reports and downloads. Based on this analysis and assessment, a well-known portfolio planning method, the BCG matrix, is employed for arriving at a very broad classification of open source projects. While this approach naturally results in a loss of detailed information, a top-level categorization is in some domains necessary and of interest.