Of course, the collected measurements might be further analysed to improve the performance of the project and provide guidance for new open source projects.
It is clear however, that more empirical evidence is needed to support any claims about open source quality.Source code analysis should be performed across more than one open source projects, considering architectural evaluation as well. The adoption of certain programming practices (heuristics) that are considered to improve code quality should also be investigated (Deligiannis et al., 2001). Open source may require the definition of its own quality standards, and each significant open source project might have custom code quality requirements, as is the standard practice with advanced software organizations. More research is also needed to correlate user satisfaction and its components (usability, functionality, etc.) to internal quality characteristics. Open source will also benefit from the definition of a more formal process that will allow the development of innovative supporting techniques and tools.