The impact of project licence and operating system on the effectiveness of the defect-fixing process in open source software projects Online publication date: Tue, 30-Sep-2014
by Amir Hossein Ghapanchi; Aybuke Aurum
International Journal of Business Information Systems (IJBIS), Vol. 8, No. 4, 2011
Abstract: Open source software (OSS) products have been widely adopted by commercial as well as government organisations. However, despite their increased adoption, many OSS projects still fail in responding to users' quality needs such as resolving software defects. Hence, this paper investigates the responsiveness of OSS projects to users' needs in terms of resolving software defects. To do so, we develop and test a model of antecedents to the effectiveness of the defect-fixing process for OSS projects. Data gathered for this study from 1481 OSS projects confirms that OSS projects that apply a less restrictive licence are less dependent on their team to operate their defect-fixing process. It is also demonstrated that OSS projects developed to run on a broader range of operating systems are more likely to have an effective defect-fixing. The study provides practitioners with insightful recommendations on project characteristics and defect-fixing effectiveness.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Business Information Systems (IJBIS):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook