An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project

Dror G. Feitelson; Gillian Z. Heller; Stephen R. Schach

doi:10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12

An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project

Dror G. Feitelson^*, Gillian Z. Heller, Stephen R. Schach

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceeding contribution › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice
Place of Publication	Piscataway, NJ
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Pages	363-368
Number of pages	6
Volume	2006
ISBN (Print)	0769525512, 9780769525518
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12
Publication status	Published - 2006
Event	2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Sydney, Australia Duration: 18 Apr 2006 → 21 Apr 2006

Other

Other	2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006
Country/Territory	Australia
City	Sydney
Period	18/04/06 → 21/04/06

Keywords

Distribution of downloads
Open-source software
SourceForge repository
Success criterion
Zipf-like distribution

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10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12

Cite this

Feitelson, D. G., Heller, G. Z., & Schach, S. R. (2006). An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project. In Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice (Vol. 2006, pp. 363-368). Article 1615069 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). https://doi.org/10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12

Feitelson, Dror G. ; Heller, Gillian Z. ; Schach, Stephen R. / An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project. Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice. Vol. 2006 Piscataway, NJ : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2006. pp. 363-368

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Feitelson, DG, Heller, GZ & Schach, SR 2006, An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project. in Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice. vol. 2006, 1615069, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Piscataway, NJ, pp. 363-368, 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006, Sydney, Australia, 18/04/06. https://doi.org/10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12

An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project. / Feitelson, Dror G.; Heller, Gillian Z.; Schach, Stephen R.
Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice. Vol. 2006 Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2006. p. 363-368 1615069.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceeding contribution › peer-review

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Feitelson DG, Heller GZ, Schach SR. An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project. In Proceedings - 2006 Australian Software Engineering Conference, ASWEC 2006 - Taming Complexity through Research and Practice. Vol. 2006. Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 2006. p. 363-368. 1615069 doi: 10.1109/ASWEC.2006.12

An empirically-based criterion for determining the success of an open-source project

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