Measuring the Usage of Open Source Software

Abstract

The rapid pace of development of software products, particular in Open Source Software (OSS), generates an increasing number of product releases. The success of such product releases relies on several factors, e.g. strategic timing, functionality, usability, market focus. In the end, what can often be measured is the number of users downloading the software product. Measuring the usage of OSS, enables mapping the exact functionality exploited by users, thereby assisting developers to improve the product. Tailoring of the product based on user statistics, could optimize the product to its market. One option to optimize the product is removing sparsely used functionality and focusing on the elements central to the user. Following the same line of thought, potential investors of OSS can estimate the potential market of a software product by receiving statistical information on the usage of the software. For acquiring feedback on the usage of an OSS product, this Master Thesis Study provides a proposal for a system measuring the usage of OSS. The proposal includes an investigation of usage in both traditional software -and open source development, breaking down the findings to measurable points, analyzing the most common interests of open source project stakeholders, and combining this into usage metrics specific for the proposed platform. In addition, a system infrastructure is created containing requirements, architecture and thorough analysis of important system qualities are performed. The result is a proposal for a platform, capable of measuring the end users usage of OSS. This provides open source project stakeholders with statistics. The interests of open source project stakeholders will be investigated to determine appropriate measurement factors from both commercial software and OSS.