TY - GEN
T1 - An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project
AU - Feitelson, Dror G.
AU - Heller, Gillian Z.
AU - Schach, Stephen R.
PY - 2006
Y1 - 2006
N2 - In order to determine a success criterion for open-source software projects, we analyzed 122,205 projects in the SourceForge database. There were 80,597projects with no downloads at all. We restricted our analysis to the 41,608 projects that together were downloaded 704,897,520 times. Contrary to what we had expected, the distribution of the number of downloads of each project is not Zipf-like; only a portion of the log-log plot of the number of downloads and their rank appears to be a straight line. We performed leastsquares analysis (utilizing the Bayesian information criterion) to divide the plot into three segments. On the basis of the shapes of the corresponding curves and the locations of their boundary points, we categorized the projects as follows: 85 superprojects (highly successful projects with more than 1.1 million downloads); just over 10,000 successful projects (with more than 1680 downloads each); and struggling projects (with 1680 downloads or fewer). In terms of our criterion, only a quarter of the projects that have one or more downloads can be deemed to be successful.
AB - In order to determine a success criterion for open-source software projects, we analyzed 122,205 projects in the SourceForge database. There were 80,597projects with no downloads at all. We restricted our analysis to the 41,608 projects that together were downloaded 704,897,520 times. Contrary to what we had expected, the distribution of the number of downloads of each project is not Zipf-like; only a portion of the log-log plot of the number of downloads and their rank appears to be a straight line. We performed leastsquares analysis (utilizing the Bayesian information criterion) to divide the plot into three segments. On the basis of the shapes of the corresponding curves and the locations of their boundary points, we categorized the projects as follows: 85 superprojects (highly successful projects with more than 1.1 million downloads); just over 10,000 successful projects (with more than 1680 downloads each); and struggling projects (with 1680 downloads or fewer). In terms of our criterion, only a quarter of the projects that have one or more downloads can be deemed to be successful.
KW - Distribution of downloads
KW - Open-source software
KW - SourceForge repository
KW - Success criterion
KW - Zipf-like distribution
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33750129533&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12
DO - 10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontobookanthology.conference???
AN - SCOPUS:33750129533
SN - 0769525512
SN - 9780769525518
T3 - Proceedings of the Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC
SP - 363
EP - 368
BT - Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice
T2 - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006
Y2 - 18 April 2006 through 21 April 2006
ER -