Requirements Acquisition in Open Source Development: Firefox 2.0

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.