Papers by Daniel Izquierdo-Cortázar
2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2009
Developer turnover can result in a major problem when developing software. When senior developers... more Developer turnover can result in a major problem when developing software. When senior developers abandon a software project, they leave a knowledge gap that has to be managed. In addition, new (junior) developers require some time in order to achieve the desired level of productivity. In this paper, we present a methodology to measure the effect of knowledge loss due to developer turnover in software projects. For a given software project, we measure the quantity of code that has been authored by developers that do not belong to the current development team, which we define as orphaned code. Besides, we study how orphaned code is managed by the project. Our methodology is based on the concept of software archaeology, a derivation of software evolution. As case studies we have selected four FLOSS (free, libre, open source software) projects, from purely driven by volunteers to company-supported. The application of our methodology to these case studies will give insight into the turnover that these projects suffer and how they have managed it and shows that this methodology is worth being augmented in future research.
2012 3rd International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics (WETSoM), 2012
Software evolution, and particularly its growth, has been mainly studied at the file (also someti... more Software evolution, and particularly its growth, has been mainly studied at the file (also sometimes referred as module) level. In this paper we propose to move from the physical towards a level that includes semantic information by using functions or methods for measuring the evolution of a software system. We point out that use of functionsbased metrics has many advantages over the use of files or lines of code. We demonstrate our approach with an empirical study of two Free/Open Source projects: a community-driven project, Apache, and a company-led project, Novell Evolution. We discovered that most functions never change; when they do their number of modifications is correlated with their size, and that very few authors who modify each; finally we show that the departure of a developer from a software project slows the evolution of the functions that she authored.
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2014
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 2009
Due to the open nature of Free/Libre/Open Source software projects, researchers have gained acces... more Due to the open nature of Free/Libre/Open Source software projects, researchers have gained access to a rich set of development-related information. Although this information is publicly available on the Internet, obtaining and analyzing it in a convenient way is not an easy task and many considerations have to be taken into account. In this paper we present the most important data sources that can be found in libre software projects and that are studied by the research community: source code, source code management systems, mailing lists and bug tracking systems. We will give advice for the problems that can be found when retrieving and preparing the data sources for a posterior analysis, as well as provide information about the tools that support these tasks.
ABSTRACT Thanks to the open nature of libre (free, open source) software projects, researchers ha... more ABSTRACT Thanks to the open nature of libre (free, open source) software projects, researchers have gained access to a rich set of data related to various aspects of software development. Although it is usually publicly available on the Internet, obtaining and analyzing the data in a convenient way is not an easy task, and many considerations have to be taken into account. In this chapter we introduce the most relevant data sources that can be found in libre software projects and that are commonly studied by scholars: source ...
The process of fixing software bugs plays a key role in the maintenance activities of a software ... more The process of fixing software bugs plays a key role in the maintenance activities of a software project. Ideally, code ownership and responsibility should be enforced among developers working on the same artifacts, so that those introducing buggy code could also contribute to its fix. However, especially in FLOSS projects, this mechanism is not clearly understood: in particular, it is not known whether those contributors fixing a bug are the same seeding it in the first place.
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2009
This paper presents work done in the QualOSS (Quality of Open Source Software) re-search project,... more This paper presents work done in the QualOSS (Quality of Open Source Software) re-search project, which aims at building a methodology and tools to help in the assessment of the quality of FLOSS (free, libre, open source software) endeavors1. In particular, we introduce the ...
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2010
... Daniel Izquierdo-Cortazar1, Jesús M. González-Barahona1, Gregorio Robles1, Jean-Christophe De... more ... Daniel Izquierdo-Cortazar1, Jesús M. González-Barahona1, Gregorio Robles1, Jean-Christophe Deprez2, and Vincent Auvray3 ... As further work, we should say that indicators must be polished by using new data from FLOSSMetrics (current status of the Melquiades database5 ...
2009 ICSE Workshop on Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Research and Development, 2009
... and JM Gonzalez-Barahona. Volunteers in large libre software projects: A quantitative analysi... more ... and JM Gonzalez-Barahona. Volunteers in large libre software projects: A quantitative analysis over time. In SK Sowe, IG Stamelos, and I. Samoladas, editors, Emerging Free and Open Source Soft-ware Practices, pages 124. Idea Group Publishing, Her-shey, Pennsylvania ...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009
We explore the use of mobile social network technology combined with modern mobile phone hardware... more We explore the use of mobile social network technology combined with modern mobile phone hardware as a platform for programming applications in the elder care area. An application that covers two use cases for outdoors monitoring and detecting disorientations of the elderly is introduced. The system leverages on standard mobile terminals (Android G1) equipped with GPS and compass devices and on Libre-GeoSocial, a mobile social framework we are developing.
IEEE Software, 2000
Free, open source software development communities may become large and complex. They may also be... more Free, open source software development communities may become large and complex. They may also be a focus of interest for competing companies relying on their outcomes, with their employees joining the development and maintenance effort. In those cases it is specially important for both companies and communities to understand how this collaboration is working, and how it matches their policies and expectations. In this paper we show two cases (OpenStack and WebKit) which we have studied using analytics techniques on the data obtained from their software development repositories. From them, we conclude that analytics on this data can improve the factual knowledge about how development communities are performing in aspects which are of interest to companies, and fundamental to ensure transparency and fairness.
Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) has an increasing importance for the software industry. Sim... more Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) has an increasing importance for the software industry. Similar to traditional (closed) software acquisition, F/OSS acquisition requires an assessment of whether its quality is sufficient for the intended purpose, and of whether the chances of being maintained and supported in the future, as well as of keeping certain quality standards over time, are sufficiently high. The first one of these aspects is strictly product related, and can be assessed using techniques that are not specific to F/OSS. The last two aspects, however, are related to the community developing the software, and require novel approaches to be evaluated properly.
Collaborative projects built around virtual communities on the Internet have gained momentum over... more Collaborative projects built around virtual communities on the Internet have gained momentum over the last decade. Nevertheless, their rapid growth rate rises some questions: which is the most effective approach to manage and organize their content creation process? Can these communities scale, controlling their projects as their size continues to grow over time? To answer these questions, we undertake a quantitative analysis of privileged users in FLOSS development projects and in Wikipedia. From our results, we conclude that the inequality level of user contributions in both types of initiatives is remarkably distinct, even though both communities present almost identical patterns regarding the number of distinct contributors per file (in FLOSS projects) or per article (in Wikipedia). As a result, totally open projects like Wikipedia can effectively deal with faster growing rates, while FLOSS projects may be affected by bottlenecks on committers who play critical roles.
This contribution presents initial results in the study of the relationship between size, effort,... more This contribution presents initial results in the study of the relationship between size, effort, duration and number of contributors in eleven evolving Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects, in the range from approx. 650,000 to 5,300,000 lines of code. Our initial motivation was to estimate how much effort is involved in achieving a large FLOSS system. Software cost estimation for proprietary projects has been an active area of study for many years. However, to our knowledge, no previous similar research has been conducted in ...
Open Source Software: New Horizons, 2010
Projects such as FLOSSmole and FLOSSMetrics are compiling huge quantities of data about libre (fr... more Projects such as FLOSSmole and FLOSSMetrics are compiling huge quantities of data about libre (free, open source) software development. The availability of these data in formats suitable for analysis by third parties are enabling researchers to focus on the study of the data, and not on data retrieval activities. This is fortunate, since data retrieval from software development repositories is becoming more and more complex, especially when reliable and detailed information from many projects is needed.
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Papers by Daniel Izquierdo-Cortázar