This posted to both the SLUG and ACS open source SIG lists ... I just heard about this, and thought people may be interested (curtesy of John Leany at UTS).
Rather frustratingly, I'm not available on the 5th May - darn. All the best, Bruce -----Forwarded Message----- >FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH SEMINAR, UTS > >THREE UNEXPECTED RESULTS IN EMPIRICAL OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING > >Date and time: 2pm, 5/5/2004 >Location: 10.4.460 (Building 10, Floor 4, Room 460) >Presenter: Associate Professor Stephen R. Schach, Vanderbilt University > >ABSTRACT: >We present the results of three research projects in empirical open-source >software engineering. > >First, we consider Linus's Law ("Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are >shallow"), named in honor of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux >operating system. We show that Linus's Law does not hold for Mozilla, >Gnome, or Apache. On the contrary, between 70 and 90 percent of faults in >the versions we examined were corrected by the members of the small core >group (the inner circle of software developers), rather than by the >"eyeballs" of the hundreds of thousands of worldwide users who have >downloaded the software. > >Second, we give a new categorization of common coupling within the context >of software product lines, and use it to show that Linux will become >extremely hard to maintain in the future. > >Third, in 1978, Lientz, Swanson, and Tomkins ("LST") published data that >seemed to demonstrate that less than 20% of maintenance is performed in >order to correct a defect. However, when we examined 60 versions of the >Linux kernel and 15 versions of GCC, we found that over 50% of the >maintenance was corrective in nature. We also query the validity of the >original LST data. > > >BIOGRAPHY: >Stephen R. ("Steve") Schach is an associate professor of computer science >and computer engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and >Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. Steve is the author of some >115 refereed publications and 12 books. The Sixth Edition of his textbook >Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering will be published in >June 2004 by McGraw-Hill. His current research is in the area of >empirical software engineering, with particular application to open-source >software. > >SEMINAR LOCATION: >The Faculty is located in Building 10 (the Fairfax Building) in Jones >Street off Broadway. Maps are available at: >http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/bway.html >or >http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/citymap.html > >PRESENTATION SLIDES: >Presentation slides of past Faculty Research Seminars are available at: >http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~laurel/Research/ResearchSeminarshtm.htm > > > >Dr Laurel Evelyn Dyson, CCNA CCAI >Lecturer and Assessor >Department of Information Systems >Faculty of Information Technology >University of Technology, Sydney >PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 > >Building 10, Floor 4, Room 324 >Phone: 9514 4493 >Webpage: www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~laurel/ > >UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html