Free open source communities sustainability: Does it make a difference in software quality?

Context Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities’ ability to stay viable and productive over time is pivotal for society as they maintain the building blocks that digital infrastructure, products, and services depend on. Sustainability may, however, be characterized from multiple aspects, an...

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Veröffentlicht in:Empirical software engineering : an international journal Jg. 29; H. 5; S. 114
Hauptverfasser: Alami, Adam, Pardo, Raúl, Linåker, Johan
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: New York Springer US 01.09.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Schlagworte:
Code quality
Codes (symbols)
Community sustainability
Compilers
Complexity
Computer Science
Computer software selection and evaluation
Data analysis
Defects
Free and open source community
Free and open source software sustainability
Free and open source softwares
Impact analysis
Interpreters
Open source communities
Open source software
Open systems
OSS
Probability distributions
Programming Languages
Quality metrices
Quality standards
Regression coefficients
Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Software Quality
Statistical analysis
Sustainability
Sustainability metrics
Sustainable development
Free and Open Source Communities
Health
Sustainability
OSS
FOSS sustainability
Software quality
ISSN:1382-3256, 1573-7616, 1573-7616
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Zusammenfassung:Context Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities’ ability to stay viable and productive over time is pivotal for society as they maintain the building blocks that digital infrastructure, products, and services depend on. Sustainability may, however, be characterized from multiple aspects, and less is known how these aspects interplay and impact community outputs, and software quality specifically. Objective This study, therefore, aims to empirically explore how the different aspects of FOSS sustainability impact software quality. Method 16 sustainability metrics across four categories were sampled and applied to a set of 217 OSS projects sourced from the Apache Software Foundation Incubator program. The impact of a decline in the sustainability metrics was analyzed against eight software quality metrics using Bayesian data analysis, which incorporates probability distributions to represent the regression coefficients and intercepts. Results Findings suggest that selected sustainability metrics do not significantly affect defect density or code coverage. However, a positive impact of community age was observed on specific code quality metrics, such as risk complexity, number of very large files, and code duplication percentage. Interestingly, findings show that even when communities are experiencing sustainability, certain code quality metrics are negatively impacted. Conclusion Findings imply that code quality practices are not consistently linked to sustainability, and defect management and prevention may be prioritized over the former. Results suggest that growth, resulting in a more complex and large codebase, combined with a probable lack of understanding of code quality standards, may explain the degradation in certain aspects of code quality.
Bibliographie:ObjectType-Article-1
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ISSN:1382-3256
1573-7616
1573-7616
DOI:10.1007/s10664-024-10529-6