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Open Source Studies

Posted by michael on from the hitting-the-books dept.

e8johan writes "Avaya Labs Research has presented a paper studying the open source process in the cases of Apache and Mozilla. They reach a number of interesting conclusions, the ones I find most interesting are: * Open source projects tend to have a core team of 10-15 coders, producing almost all code. The next layer is a set of developers submitting new features and bugfixes. The next layer is a set of advanced users submitting bug reports. * Open source projects tend to have a lower bug-rate than commercial projects. * Open source projects are generally quicker to respond to user requests. The article also discusses the differences between projects that have always been open source (such as Apache) and projects having a proprietary history (such as Mozilla)."

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Conflict? by lseltzer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the authors, Roy Fielding, is on the Apache Board of Directors. I haven't read the paper yet and I'm sure he can be objective, but still.

  2. Re:Not to be obvious... by timeOday · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Yes, Apache and Mozilla are great products, but if there are so great, why aren't people dropping their closed source software and downloading their open source counterparts in droves? Hell, the two examples given are not only open source, but they're free!
    Apache seems an odd example for you to cite. It's the #1 webserver on the planet - in other words, people *are* downloading it in droves. As for Mozilla, remember that its entrenched competitor is also "free."