Open Source Studies

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)."

Comments

Open source projects tend to have a lower bug-rate

[vlad_petric]

I quite agree for Apache, but Mozilla ?? Let's stay in the realm of reason.

The Raven

So what can MS do to respond?

[pubjames]

I am sure MS must be coming to the conclusion that an open development model is better. And they are masters of strategy. So what can there response to this be?

The things that Ballamer has said about their Shared-source initiative have been pretty dumb (that it proves that people don't want to see the source code, stuff like that), so it seems that at the top level they still don't get it. But they will. So what can they do? Obviously they can't GPL their stuff but is it possible for them to start using a more open development model and still maintain the leverage they currently have?

Personally I hope not. When it comes to developers developers developers, the OSS development model is currently winning and it's going to be difficult for MS to change that.