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Analysis and Characterization of Author Contribution Patterns in Open Source Software Development

Software development is a process fraught with unpredictability, in part because software is created by people. Human interactions add complexity to development processes, and collaborative development can become a liability if not properly understood and managed. Recent years have seen an increase in the use of data mining techniques on publicly-available repository data with the goal of improving software development processes, and by extension, software quality. In this thesis, we introduce the concept of author entropy as a metric for quantifying interaction and collaboration (both within individual files and across projects), present results from two empirical observational studies of open-source projects, identify and analyze authorship and collaboration patterns within source code, demonstrate techniques for visualizing authorship patterns, and propose avenues for further research.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-3970
Date02 March 2012
CreatorsTaylor, Quinn Carlson
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rightshttp://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

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