The Chase for OSS Quality

Author(s):  
Benno Luthiger ◽  
Carola Jungwirth

This chapter explains why software users have good reasons to trust in the quality of OSS, even if they might have internalised the rule “If something has no price, it also has no value!” We present the idea that a system of incentives of both private programmers with their different motives to participate and companies paying their programmers for contributing to OSS, are responsible for the software quality—even if all programmers do not pursue a common purpose. The chapter delivers a conceptual framework from an economic perspective showing that every stakeholder can provide valuable input to the success of an open source project. Crowding out between contributors with different motivations does not necessarily exist even if companies with monetary intentions participate. Therefore, we assume OSS as an attractive forum for different interests that can seminally intertwine, while quality software is generated nearly as a by-product.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-51
Author(s):  
Manar Abu Talib ◽  
Areej Alsaafin ◽  
Selma Manel Medjden

Open source software (OSS) has recently become very important due to the rapid expansion of the software industry. In order to determine whether the quality of the software can achieve the intended purposes, the components of OSS need to be assessed as they are in closed source (conventional) software. Several quality in-use models have been introduced to evaluate software quality in various fields. The banking sector is one of the most critical sectors, as it deals with highly sensitive data; it therefore requires an accurate and effective assessment of software quality. In this article, two pieces of banking software are compared: one open source and one closed source. A new quality in use model, inspired by ISO/IEC 25010, is used to ensure concise results in the comparison. The results obtained show the great potential of OSS, especially in the banking field.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana De Azevedo Santos ◽  
Paulo Henrique De Souza Bermejo ◽  
Heitor Costa

Although it is necessary, activities regarding quality assurance and maintenance of software are considered the longest and most complex in software development lifecycle. Taking advantage of this growing trend and of the benefits obtained from open-source initiative, researches on open-source software quality and maintainability have gained renewed interest. The use of robust statistical techniques, such as PLS-SEM to investigate and empirically validate software quality models has also been an efficient alternative to obtain information on open-source software quality. The aim of this study was evaluate and build a conceptual model to characterize the internal quality in Java open-source software in different domains, validated with the PLS-SEM technique. The study results indicate that there are domains with similarities among them and four factors can influence the internal quality of object-oriented software to present better maintainability (Complexity Reduce, Normalized Cohesion, Non-normalized Cohesion, and Increase of the Modularity Level). Besides, we identified some measures are more effective to evaluate internal quality in object-oriented open-source, such as, Fan-out (FOUT), Lack of Cohesion of Methods 2 (LCOM2), Response for Class (RFC), Tight Class Cohesion (TCC), and Loose Class Cohesion (LCC). Thus, this study aims at supporting software engineers and project managers to develop measurement strategies to ensure internal quality of source code and reduce maintenance costs.


Author(s):  
Manar Abu Talib ◽  
Areej Alsaafin ◽  
Selma Manel Medjden

Open source software (OSS) has recently become very important due to the rapid expansion of the software industry. In order to determine whether the quality of the software can achieve the intended purposes, the components of OSS need to be assessed as they are in closed source (conventional) software. Several quality in-use models have been introduced to evaluate software quality in various fields. The banking sector is one of the most critical sectors, as it deals with highly sensitive data; it therefore requires an accurate and effective assessment of software quality. In this article, two pieces of banking software are compared: one open source and one closed source. A new quality in use model, inspired by ISO/IEC 25010, is used to ensure concise results in the comparison. The results obtained show the great potential of OSS, especially in the banking field.


2010 ◽  
pp. 108-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Smotritskaya ◽  
S. Chernykh

The article analyzes the conceptual framework of public procurement system as an integral part of public regulation to ensure effective management of public resources. The authors consider the problems of transition to a new "quality" of the procurement system, increasing its innovative activity. They put forward proposals for institutional framework and mechanisms of regulating procurement, meeting the needs in innovative upgrading and modernization of the Russian economy.


Author(s):  
Himanshi Vashisht ◽  
Sanjay Bharadwaj ◽  
Sushma Sharma

Code refactoring is a “Process of restructuring an existing source code.”. It also helps in improving the internal structure of the code without really affecting its external behaviour”. It changes a source code in such a way that it does not alter the external behaviour yet still it improves its internal structure. It is a way to clean up code that minimizes the chances of introducing bugs. Refactoring is a change made to the internal structure of a software component to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify, without changing the observable behaviour of that software component. Bad smells indicate that there is something wrong in the code that have to refactor. There are different tools that are available to identify and emove these bad smells. A software has two types of quality attributes- Internal and external. In this paper we will study the effect of clone refactoring on software quality attributes.


Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen

This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, but more impressive contributions are easily neglected as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value and of no wider social uses whatsoever. This is what the book views as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science. This problem is far from ‘academic’. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to taxpayers. The book’s second part offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social science research, and drawing social science back, address the major problems and issues that face our societies.


SLEEP ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Menghini ◽  
Nicola Cellini ◽  
Aimee Goldstone ◽  
Fiona C Baker ◽  
Massimiliano de Zambotti

Abstract Sleep-tracking devices, particularly within the consumer sleep technology (CST) space, are increasingly used in both research and clinical settings, providing new opportunities for large-scale data collection in highly ecological conditions. Due to the fast pace of the CST industry combined with the lack of a standardized framework to evaluate the performance of sleep trackers, their accuracy and reliability in measuring sleep remains largely unknown. Here, we provide a step-by-step analytical framework for evaluating the performance of sleep trackers (including standard actigraphy), as compared with gold-standard polysomnography (PSG) or other reference methods. The analytical guidelines are based on recent recommendations for evaluating and using CST from our group and others (de Zambotti and colleagues; Depner and colleagues), and include raw data organization as well as critical analytical procedures, including discrepancy analysis, Bland–Altman plots, and epoch-by-epoch analysis. Analytical steps are accompanied by open-source R functions (depicted at https://sri-human-sleep.github.io/sleep-trackers-performance/AnalyticalPipeline_v1.0.0.html). In addition, an empirical sample dataset is used to describe and discuss the main outcomes of the proposed pipeline. The guidelines and the accompanying functions are aimed at standardizing the testing of CSTs performance, to not only increase the replicability of validation studies, but also to provide ready-to-use tools to researchers and clinicians. All in all, this work can help to increase the efficiency, interpretation, and quality of validation studies, and to improve the informed adoption of CST in research and clinical settings.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document