thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
thesis - Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies ...
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Chapter 3. Data Selection Methodology<br />
projects, methods <strong>and</strong> tools that have not added sufficient value were<br />
rejected, while embracing approaches that have consistently provided<br />
additional value [215]. In a sense, this model <strong>of</strong> s<strong>of</strong>tware development<br />
has provided an ongoing validation <strong>of</strong> collaboration techniques<br />
that tend to work, are light-weight <strong>and</strong> provide the maximum return on<br />
invested effort [160, 207, 215, 233].<br />
Open Source S<strong>of</strong>tware projects due to their very nature <strong>of</strong>ten select licenses<br />
that do not place any restriction on the use <strong>of</strong> the s<strong>of</strong>tware as<br />
well as the information <strong>and</strong> knowledge that is generated during development<br />
[176, 262]. The use <strong>of</strong> these open licenses has opened up a<br />
rich data set <strong>of</strong> information that can be analyzed to underst<strong>and</strong> how<br />
developers tend to build such s<strong>of</strong>tware, how they collaborate, share information<br />
<strong>and</strong> distribute the outcome <strong>of</strong> their efforts. Further, the lack<br />
<strong>of</strong> restrictions on analysis <strong>and</strong> reporting <strong>of</strong> the findings has motivated<br />
an interest in open source s<strong>of</strong>tware for evolution research, including<br />
this work (see No Discrimination in Table 3.2). An advantage <strong>of</strong> focusing<br />
on Open Source S<strong>of</strong>tware projects is that the findings from research<br />
into these projects provides additional insight into the effectiveness <strong>and</strong><br />
value <strong>of</strong> the development methods as well as helping identify typical <strong>and</strong><br />
unusual evolution patterns. Given their increasing adoption in commercial<br />
projects [200, 202, 207, 262], an underst<strong>and</strong>ing <strong>of</strong> how these<br />
open source s<strong>of</strong>tware systems evolve is also <strong>of</strong> value to stakeholders<br />
outside <strong>of</strong> the Open Source community.<br />
3.3 Open Source Project Repositories<br />
Quantitative analysis starts with an identification <strong>of</strong> the sources that<br />
can be used to provide the raw data. We selected projects <strong>and</strong> collected<br />
data from public open source project repositories. The past decade has<br />
seen the development, <strong>and</strong> free availability <strong>of</strong> repositories like Sourceforge<br />
2 that provides a comprehensive set <strong>of</strong> online tools that allow developers<br />
to host <strong>and</strong> manage Open Source Projects. These repositories<br />
typically provide tools for version control, discussion boards, messag-<br />
2 Sourceforge is currently the largest Open Source Project repository<br />
http://www.sourceforge.com.<br />
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