How Many Eyeballs Does a Bug Need? An Empirical Validation of Linus' Law

摘要

Linus' Law reflects on a key characteristic of open source software development: developers' tendency to closely work together in the bug resolution process. In this paper we empirically examine Linus' Law using a data-set of 1,000+ Android bugs, owned by 70+ developers. Our results indicate that encouraging developers to work closely with one another has nuanced implications; while one form of contact may help reduce bug resolution time, another form can have quite the opposite effect. We present statistically significant evidence in support of our results and discuss their relevance at the individual and organizational levels.