Open Source Software Evolution

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review conducted to understand the Open Source Software (OSS) development process on the basis of evidence found in the empirical research studies. The study targets the OSS project evolution research papers to understand the methods and techniques employed for analysing the OSS evolution process. Our results suggest that there is lack of a uniform approach to analyse and interpret the results. The use of prediction techniques that just extrapolate the historic trends into the future should be a conscious task as it is observed that there are no long-term correlations in data of such systems. OSS evolution as a research area is still in nascent stage. Even after a number of empirical studies, the field has failed to establish a theory. There is need to formalize the field as a systematic and formal approach can produce better software.