Mathematics – Statistics Theory
Scientific paper
2006-09-06
Statistical Science 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2, 167-178
Mathematics
Statistics Theory
Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000141 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Insti
Scientific paper
10.1214/088342306000000141
This paper explores the application of functional data analysis (FDA) as a means to study the dynamics of software evolution in the open source context. Several challenges in analyzing the data from software projects are discussed, an approach to overcoming those challenges is described, and preliminary results from the analysis of a sample of open source software (OSS) projects are provided. The results demonstrate the utility of FDA for uncovering and categorizing multiple distinct patterns of evolution in the complexity of OSS projects. These results are promising in that they demonstrate some patterns in which the complexity of software decreased as the software grew in size, a particularly novel result. The paper reports preliminary explorations of factors that may be associated with decreasing complexity patterns in these projects. The paper concludes by describing several next steps for this research project as well as some questions for which more sophisticated analytical techniques may be needed.
Daniel Sherae L.
Darcy David P.
Stewart Katherine J.
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