Open source projects have resulted in numerous high-quality, widely used products,1 such as the Apache Web server, Mozilla Web browser, and Linux kernel, although they followed a nontraditional development method (see the “Software Quality in the Open Source Context” sidebar). Understanding the defect-handling strategies such projects employ can help us use the publicly accessible defect data from these projects to provide valuable quality-improvement feedback and to better understand the defect characteristics for a wider variety of software products. We conducted a survey to understand defect handling in selected open source projects and compared the particular approaches taken in different projects. Our respondents consisted of 119 individuals who contributed to 52 medium and large open source projects.
We focused on defect handling instead of the broader quality assurance activities other researchers have previously reported. Our results provided quantitative evidence about the current practice of defect handling in an important subset of open source projects.