Copyright: The Linux Foundation
From the Introduction:
The Linux kernel is an interesting project to study for a number of reasons. It is one of the largest individual components on almost any Linux system. It also features one of the fastest-moving development processes and involves more developers than any other open source project. Since 2005, kernel development history is also quite well documented, thanks to the use of the Git source code management system. This paper takes advantage of that development history to look at how the process works, focusing on over four years of kernel history as represented by the 2.6.11 through 2.6.30 releases. This is the second version of the paper which was published in April, 2008, and covered development through the 2.6.24 kernel. A look at the six kernel releases which have happened since then shows that, while many things remain the same, others are changing. In particular, the pace of development of the Linux kernel continues to increase.
---
The Commenting Practice of Open Source
Copyright: Oliver Arafat & Dirk Riehle
From the Abstract:
The development processes of open source software are different from traditional closed source development processes. Still, open source software is frequently of high quality. This raises the question of how and why open source software creates high quality and whether it can maintain this quality for ever larger project sizes. In this paper, we look at one particular quality indicator, the density of comments in open source software code. We find that successful open source projects follow a consistent practice of documenting their source code, and we find that the comment density is independent of team and project size.
---
2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report
Copyright: Coverity
From the Description:
The 2009 Coverity Scan Open Source Report is the result of the largest public-private sector research project focused on open source software integrity. The findings provide an opportunity for the public and private sectors to examine software integrity trends from the world’s most commonly used open source packages, including Firefox, Linux, PHP, Ruby and Samba.