Control Objectives in Open Source Projects

Many studies on Open Source Software Development (OSSD) have been published in the past years. In these studies, OSSD has received positive comments and is proposed as a new way of developing software. We investigate how project management is used in Open Source Software (OSS) projects to exercise control of development activities. Project management in OSSD is worth studying, because research has shown that project management is a critical success factor in traditional software development. We use the COBIT framework to audit project management practices commonly found in OSS projects with the aim of determining which practices are currently missing or can be further improved upon. The framework identifies several potential threats to the long term continuity of OSS projects.