Remote analysis and measurement of libre software systems by means of the CVSanaly tool

Libre (free, open source) software is one of the paradigmatic cases where heavy use of telematic tools and user-driven software development are key points. This paper proposes a methodology for measuring and analyzing remotely big libre software projects using publicly-available data from their version control repositories. By means of a tool called CVSAnalY that has been implemented following this methodology, measurements and analyses can be made in an automatic and non-intrusive way, providing real-time and historical data about the project and its contributors.