Quality enhancement in OSS development process: a quantitative framework approach

Evaluating the quality of Open Source Software (OSS) on the basis of quantitative success indicators is critically important for project maintainers to assess their performance as well as for businesses and individuals to verify that the software meets their unique requirements. Owing to the unrestricted access to source code, version control information, and bug tracking database, a comprehensive study on the Development Process associated with an OSS project is feasible. In the present research study, a comparison framework has been developed to quantitatively assess and compare the quality of the Development Process of a multitude of OSS projects on the basis of various project dimensions. Five multi-criteria decision analysis techniques have been employed to apply the framework on ten OSS projects and the results are compared with an existing quality assessment model. The findings of the comparative analysis reveal that along with conforming to the results produced by the existing assessment model, the proposed framework provides an opportunity for a detailed analysis of the OSS projects, benefiting potential adopters in aligning their needs to the projects and aiding maintainers in strategic resource allocation to weaker areas of the project.