Determinism and evolution

Subscribe (Full Service)


	Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide

	Feedback

Determinism and evolution

Full text

Pdf (1.59 MB)

Source

International Conference on Software Engineering archive
Proceedings of the 2008 international working conference on Mining software repositories table of contents

Leipzig, Germany

SESSION: Mining 1 table of contents

Pages 1-10

Year of Publication: 2008

ISBN:978-1-60558-024-1

Authors

Israel Herraiz	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
Gregorio Robles	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
ACM: Association for Computing Machinery

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 13, Downloads (12 Months): 67, Citation Count: 0

Additional Information:

abstract references index terms collaborative colleagues

Tools and Actions:	Review this Article Save this Article to a Binder Display Formats: BibTex EndNote ACM Ref

DOI Bookmark:	Use this link to bookmark this Article: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1370750.1370752 What is a DOI?

ABSTRACT

It has been proposed that software evolution follows a Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) dynamics. This fact is supported by the presence of long range correlations in the time series of the number of changes made to the source code over time. Those long range correlations imply that the current state of the project was determined time ago. In other words, the evolution of the software project is governed by a sort of determinism. But this idea seems to contradict intuition. To explore this apparent contradiction, we have performed an empirical study on a sample of 3, 821 libre (free, open source) software projects, finding that their evolution projects is short range correlated. This suggests that the dynamics of software evolution may not be SOC, and therefore that the past of a project does not determine its future except for relatively short periods of time, at least for libre software.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	I. Antoniades, I. Samoladas, I. Stamelos, L. Aggelis, and G. L. Bleris. Dynamical simulation models of the Open Source development process. In S. Koch, editor, Free/Open Source Software Development, pages 174--202. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, 2004.
	2	G. Antoniol, G. Casazza, M. D. Penta, and E. Merlo. Modeling clones evolution through time series. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance, 2001.
	3	K. Beecher, C. Boldyreý, A. Capiluppi, and S. Rank. Evolutionary success of open source software: an investigation into exogenous drivers. In Third International ERCIM Symposium on Software Evolution. ERCIM, 2007.
	4	A. Capiluppi and M. Michlmayr. Open Source development, adoption and innovation, chapter From the Cathedral to the Bazaar: An Empirical Study of the Lifecycle of Volunteer Community Projects, pages 31--44. IFIP: International Federation for Information Processing. Springer Boston, 2007.
	5	F. Caprio, G. Casazza, M. D. Penta, and U. Villano. Measuring and predicting the Linux kernel evolution. In Proceedings of the International Workshop of Empirical Studies on Software Maintenance, Florence, Italy, 2001.
	6	J.-M. Dalle and P. A. David. The allocation of software development resources in Open Source production mode. Technical report, SIEPR Policy paper No. 02-027, SIEPR, Stanford, USA, 2003. http://siepr.stanford.edu/papers/pdf/02-27.pdf.
	7	A. R. Fasolino, D. Natale, A. Poli, and A. Alberigi-Quaranta. Metrics in the development and maintenance of software: an application in a large scale environment. Journal of Software Maintence: Research and Practice, 12:343--355, 2000.
	8	M. Godfrey and Q. Tu. Evolution in Open Source software: A case study. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 131--142, San Jose, California, 2000.
	9	M. Godfrey and Q. Tu. Growth, evolution, and structural change in open source software. In Internation Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution, Vienna, Austria, September 2001.
	10	I. Herraiz, J. M. Gonzalez-Barahona, and G. Robles. Forecasting the number of changes in Eclipse using time series analysis. In International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories. IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
	11	I. Herraiz, J. M. Gonzalez-Barahona, G. Robles, and D. M. German. On the prediction of the evolution of libre software projects. In IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 405--414. IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
	12	J. Howison, M. Conklin, and K. Crowston. FLOSSMole: a collaborative repository for FLOSS research data and analyses. International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering, 1(3):17--26, July-September 2006.
	13	C. F. Kemerer and S. Slaughter. An empirical approach to studying software evolution. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 25(4):493--509, 1999.
	14	S. Koch. Evolution of Open Source Software systems - a large-scale investigation. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Open Source Systems, Genova, Italy, July 2005.
	15	M. M. Lehman and L. A. Belady, editors. Program Evolution. Processes of Software Change. Academic Press Inc., 1985.
	16	M. M. Lehman, J. F. Ramil, and U. Sandler. An approach to modelling long-term growth trends in software systems. In Internation Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 219--228, Florence, Italy, November 2001.
	17	M. M. Lehman, J. F. Ramil, P. D. Wernick, D. E. Perry, and W. M. Turski. Metrics and laws of software evolution - the nineties view. In METRICS '97: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Software Metrics, page 20, nov 1997.
	18	N. H. Madhavji, J. Fernandez-Ramil, and D. E. Perry, editors. Software Evolution and Feedback. Theory and Practice. Wiley, 2006.
	19	Y. Peng, F. Li, and A. Mili. Modeling the evolution of operating systems: An empirical study. The Journal of Systems and Software, 80(1):1--15, 2007.
	20	E. S. Raymond. The cathedral and the bazar. First Monday, 3(3), March 1998. http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3 3/raymond/.
	21	G. Robles, J. J. Amor, J. M. Gonzalez-Barahona, and I. Herraiz. Evolution and growth in large libre software projects. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Principles in Software Evolution, pages 165--174, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2005.
	22	G. Robles, J. J. Merelo, and J. M. Gonzalez-Barahona. Self-organized development in libre software: a model based on the stigmergy concept. In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Software Process Simulation and Modeling (ProSim 2005), St.Louis, Missouri, USA, May 2005.
	23	R. H. Shumway and D. S. Stoýer. Time Series Analysis and Applications. With R Examples. Springer Texts in Statistics. Springer, 2006.
	24	W. M. Turski. Reference model for smooth growth of software systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 22(8):599--600, 1996.
	25	W. M. Turski. The reference model for smooth growth of software systems revisited. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 28(8):814--815, 2002.
	26	J. Wu. Open Source Software evolution and its dynamics. PhD thesis, University of Waterloo, 2006.
	27	J. Wu, R. Holt, and A. E. Hassan. Empirical evidence for SOC dynamics in software evolution. In IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 244--254. IEEE Computer Society, 2007.
	28	C. C. H. Yuen. An empirical approach to the study of errors in large software under maintenance. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance, 1985.
	29	C. C. H. Yuen. A statistical rationale for evolution dynamics concepts. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance, 1987.
	30	C. C. H. Yuen. On analyzing maintenance process data at the global and detailed levels. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance, pages 248--255, 1988.