The Economics of Community Open Source Software Projects: An Empirical Analysis of Maintenance Effort

摘要

Previous contributions in the empirical software engineering literature have consistently observeda quality degradation effect of proprietary code as a consequence of maintenance. Thisdegradation effect, referred to as entropy effect, has been recognized to be responsible for significantincreases in maintenance effort. In the Open Source context, the quality of code is a fundamentaldesign principle. As a consequence, the maintenance effort of Open Source applications may notshow a similar increasing trend over time. The goal of this paper is to empirically verify the entropyeffect for a sample of 4,289 community Open Source application versions. Analyses are based on thecomparison with an estimate of effort obtained with a traditional effort estimation model. Findingsindicate that community Open Source applications show a slower growth of maintenance effort overtime, and, therefore, are less subject to the entropy effect.