Development of Open Source Software, a Qualitative View in a

Knowledge Management Approach

Luã Marcelo Muriana¹, Cristiano Maciel² and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia¹

Institute of Computing, Federal Fluminense University UFF, Voluntários da Pátria Street, Niterói, Brazil

Department of Computing, Federal University of Mato Grosso – UFMT, Cuiabá, Brazil

Keywords: Collective Intelligence, Open Source, Knowledge Management, Quality Assurance, Software Engineering,

Community.

Abstract: Open Source Software (OSS) is software that users have freedom to modify and share it with no cost

whatever their intentions. A major feature of this kind of software is its development in public, where the

collective intelligence (CI) is applied and the knowledge is shared. The communication is a fundamental

activity to these settings of development. To support the communication process, knowledge management

(KM) stimulates the communication and the information sharing among people. This way, a good

communication among users that are stimulated and coordinated addresses the final quality of the open

source project. This work surveys how KM stimulates quality assurance in developing open source settings.

It focuses on users, on the communication among them, and on the documentation they can help to write.

1 INTRODUCTION

In a traditional process of software development,

people stay in the same place developing activities

inherent to its process. But, in the last years

Distributed Software Development (DSD) emerged,

in which various organizations started to develop

software with a team of people from different

geographical areas.

In addition to this concept there is another one of

CI, that for Malone et al. (2009) means that different

groups work together on a way that seem intelligent.

CI has a new meaning in the last years,

especially with the advance on the web application

2.0. The diffusion of these simple and easy

technologies lets users interact. Currently, the users’

contributions are treated as a valuable factor for CI.

Users are also encouraged to contribute with

content, interact with other

users and exchange

knowledge (Hwang et al., 2009). For DSD, the

organizations follow standards established by

themselves and traditional software engineering. In

contradiction to that, CI in Information Technology

area emerges in a scenario that OSS is highlighted.

OSS software is made available to the users to

change and distribute the software for any purpose,

and with no cost (GNU, 2013). Free software is the

type of software that the author can attain a license

for operation, copy, change and distribution. These

licenses are called copyleft. Copyleft is less

restrictive than copyright license, but various free

licenses impose restrictions on free code; for

example the joint use with closed code; or the

imposition of obligations as “changes on distributed

code should be available as source code”.

One of the characteristics of free software is the

public development, using CI.

However, when people think of Distributed

Development of OSS (DDOSS) some issues about

the software engineering emerge: How is the process

of software engineering executed? For Audy and

Priklandnicki (2008) the methods of software

engineering are structured approaches that give

details of ‘how’ develop good software. For the

authors, the methods involve a set of steps: planning

and project estimation, requirements analysis, data

structure design, architecture and program algorithm

processing, coding, testing, maintenance, and others.

But in environments of DDOSS, according to

Noll and Liu (2010) and Scacchi (2002), traditional

software engineering is not applied.

If classic software engineering is not applied in

open source development process, standards of

quality in software would be rarely followed in

these. For Shaikh and Ceron (2007), communication

and effective management, programming language

391

Marcelo Muriana L., Maciel C. and Cristina Bicharra Garcia A..

Development of Open Source Software, a Qualitative View in a Knowledge Management Approach.

DOI: 10.5220/0004962903910399

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 391-399

ISBN: 978-989-758-028-4

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

and the choice of test strategy are three factors

which most affect the quality of OSS.

Communication, the focus of this research, can

be regarded as a fundamental activity for

development environments. But, as it does not

happen in the physical presence, it should be

encouraged and facilitated, once it is one of the

problems of CI and, consequently, the understanding

of information (Hwang et al., 2009). These problems

affect the quality of the final product developed.

The management of knowledge, aiming to

support this

communication process, encourages the

communication and information sharing. Good

communication with users who are encouraged and

coordinated, affects the final quality of the open

source project.

This study therefore aims to analyze through

literature research, how OSS can be developed

throughout the process practices to assist the quality

assurance of software and how to tailor it to the

reality of these communities. The focus of this

analysis is the study of what the authors consider the

basis of open source communities, users and

communication among them. Then, this analysis

about the quality is based on KM, a subject which

encourages the diffusion of knowledge.

The other part of this study is structured as

follows: in Section 2 some studies related to these

issues are presented; Section 3 considers open

source communities; Section 4 discusses software

engineering and the documentation on the

development environment; Section 5 deals with

social media tools and how it supports the

communication among people; and Section 6

discusses quality assurance of software based on

KM and members of open source communities.

2 RELATED STUDIES

This study had the aim to analyze open source

communities and to know how to assure quality of

software considering KM on communication process

among users. For that purpose many studies have

been carried out.

Zhao and Elbaum (2000) conducted a survey that

aimed to: i) find out techniques of quality assurance

used in open source development, ii) determine

factors that affect quality assurance activities; iii)

understand the perception of open source developers

regarding quality assurance. The study was limited

to the process activities as the whole process, instead

of each step, being focused on software tests.

Tosi and Tahir (2013) analyzed 33 open source

projects well known to understand how developers

develop quality assurance on their open source

projects. However, as with Zhao and Elbaum (2000)

the focus was on Software Test.

Michlmayr et al. (2005) although, presented

factors that contribute to quality assurance, as

problems that interfere on its practice, the focus was

on the process as itself. The communication among

the users and the information sharing among them

was not considered as an important factor for quality

assurance.

Spinellis and Szyperski (2004) conducted a study

concerning how the reuse of coding can contribute

to quality assurance because this practice promotes

more developers to see the same code, detecting

problems and then correcting it.

Shaikh and Ceron (2007) investigated factors

that have influence on open source quality and the

relation among these factors. From this study,

authors mentioned three main factors about basic

characteristics of OSS quality: access quality,

development quality and design quality. Although

some criteria as availability and document updating

have been mentioned, the authors did not report the

importance of user participation and the

communication process among them for this

activity.

Aberdour (2007) presented an overview

concerning the assurance quality process during

whole open source development. However, KM was

not mentioned.

Concerning the quality, no other study was found

that considered the basis of open source community,

users and communication, or KM as a fundamental

theory for these communities.

3 OPEN SOURCE

COMMUNITIES

OSS is a type of software which users can change

and distribute with/without cost for any purpose

(GNU, 2013). In a developer’s perspective, Spinellis

and Szyperski (2004) says that OSS is the

combination of two important properties: visibility

of source code, and the right to derive the product

from the original. OSI (2013) commented that open

source does not mean that the user owns the access

to the source code of one software. In accordance

with GNU (2013), OSI (2013) says that a program is

free software when users may execute it for any

purpose and study how the program works and adapt

it to their needs. Also, users may redistribute copies

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of the program.

Totally disagreeing to closed codes, and joining

the criteria defined by OSI (2013), groups of people

started to discuss the development of OSS in

communities created exclusively for this purpose.

Open Source Development is a revolutionary

development model (Bayrak and Davis, 2003)

because it allows people that are geographically

distributed to work simultaneously, or if they wish,

to work on the same project with common interests.

It can therefore be concluded that open source

communities use the concept of CI as a tool to

develop a joint work (Malone et al., 2009). For

Porruvecchio et al. (2010), OSS can be seen as a

result of sharing knowledge among people from a

community. In many existing characteristics of

communities that use CI as knowledge source,

Hintikka (2008) and Hwang et al. (2009) highlight:

the opinion diversity among people who join the

group, existing tools that support knowledge

sharing, participant independence and

decentralization, which is linked to DDS.

However, open source communities are not

focused on software documentation, and because of

this the documents tend to be incomplete. The

biggest focus of these communities is the universe

around the code

development (Porruvecchio et al.,

2010). Therefore, the documentation needs to exist.

It is not necessary to describe the whole system, but

it needs to be able to clarify users doubts (Berglund

and Priestley, 2001).

4 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

FOR OSS

Sommerville (2007) says that the process of

software development consists of four basic steps:

software specification, software development,

software validation and the evolution of the

software. Although, Noll and Liu (2010), Scacchi

(2002) and Noll (2008) affirm that supporters of

open source development do not use all the basic

steps. Some studies have then been made to

understand how the activities of software

engineering are made on open source development,

when the traditional process is not applied.

Studies carried out by Noll and Liu (2010) and

Noll (2008) aimed to understand how the

requirements are elicited, documented, accepted and

validated in small open source projects. Through the

analysis of elicitation in the web browser Firefox, it

was found that the majority of the characteristics are

elicited by developers based on their own

experiences, or the knowledge of the users’ needs.

The authors highlighted that requirements are

informally discussed and its validations happen

through discussion between the developers, and

rarely include users. The authors say also that the

documentation consists of only discussion files.

Scacchi (2002) focused on how requirement

engineering is applied on OSS development. The

study analyzed four open source communities and in

its results realized that many types of activities that

are used on this kind of development are equivalent

to traditional requirement engineering. However, to

support these activities, the authors mentioned web

applications such as email and boards are used as

support tools. The authors highlight the use of

informal language to describe the requirements.

They allege that participants of the development

community comprehend and easily condense the

idea when the information is written in a succinct

and informal manner. Lethbridge et al. (2003)

confirmed this observation saying that as the more

abstract the passages of the documents are, the more

valuable and useful they are considered by the users.

Therefore, there is no process of open source

development that is accepted worldwide (Acuna et

al., 2012). Each community open source uses its

peculiarity for the process, even though all of them

have the user as an important source of knowledge.

4.1 Software Documentation

To obtain high quality software, even if there are

documents to support the process, is not easy.

However, the documentation can improve the

quality of software code and the communication

between the members of a community (Dagenais

and Robillard, 2010).

It is highlighted that, in this study, when

documentation is mentioned it can refer to

traditional documentation of software engineering

and to documents as manuals which describes how

to use a specific product.

To understand in which circumstances the

documentation of open source communities are

created and kept, Dagenais and Robillard (2010)

analyzed 19 documentations of ten open source

projects and interviewed writers and readers of those

documents. The first proviso is that creating and

keeping these documents represents a big effort,

because it is not known which factors are considered

when documents are used and how these documents

influence the project.

For Treude and Storey (2011), developers had a

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negative view of the documentation once written, it

only occurred because of the necessary official

requirements, and then it was almost always

incomplete and not actualized. In addition, Parnin et

al. (2005) said that when a document is written it

quickly becomes old and is therefore distrusted by

the users who do not use it.

To aggravate the situation, Lethbridge et al.

(2003) regarded that sometimes the documents are

not updated. The changes are registered only when

the alterations present a big difference from the

actual documentation

As an attempt to reduce the problems of an

incomplete or delayed documentation, Berglund and

Priestley (2001) said that even the documentation is

of a specific activity, it can be opened to the

community involved on that software through email

lists and forums, where readers and writers can

debate and dialogue questions. As many users are

involved in this writing process, the discussions

performed have more probability to be a source for

new requirements to be elicited, letting the

documentation evolve. Parnin et al. (2005) reported

that people are capable to produce a great source of

content and that this documentation is seen by many

users.

Therefore, the key factor for documentation and

for the whole process of OSS development is the

communication. In open source communities the

communication is fundamental to improve the group

work (Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

5 SOCIAL MEDIA AND

COMMUNICATION

In a study analyzed by Parnin et al. (2005), the

authors highlighted that because of an incomplete

documentation the users search for interactive media

on the web to try to solve problems that arise during

the development and/or use of some tool.

For Begel et al. (2010), social media has changed

the way that people collaborate and share

information. According to the authors, the traditional

process of software engineering involves a big time

spent at work for communication developers. In an

attempt to decrease this problem, some web

applications (email, file sharing, and communities)

have the ability to improve workers’

communication. With web 2.0, the use of social

relations expanded the production and sharing

information.

For the sharing information process, the

communication between the members has a

fundamental role, increasing and improving the

work group, promoting a collaborative environment.

The collaboration occurs in all levels of community

participants and has as an advantage the diversity of

skills, proposals and suggestions, and the

development of higher quality software

(Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

However, open source development requires a

framework that allows the community to cooperate,

develop and capture the qualities of this type of

development (Berglund and Priestley, 2001). The

communication in these groups can occur supported

by various tools: chats, forums, wikis, email lists and

others. These tools support idea exchange, helping

request and information sharing, as an important

indicator for the success of open source projects

(Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

Through social media, a new way for knowledge

exchange emerged (Treude et al., 2011). A diversity

of studies analyzed various tools of web 2.0 which

are highlighted under software engineering view, as

follows:

 Blog: a website where structure is quickly

updated from additions that are called articles.

Many subjects can be discussed and readers can

provide feedback. Feedback helps to improve

software. Treude and Storey (2011) said that

blogs are easily created and kept, but are not

always enough.

 Social Networks: social structures composed by

people or organizations, linked themselves by

one or many kind of relations, who share

common values and objectives.

 Communities Q & A (Questions and Answers):

Consists in environments focused on questions

and answers. Websites Q & A became

knowledge databases distributed among many

people, differently skilled and specialized

(Treude et al., 2011). Q&A environments are

tools which help the discussion process for the

development of software as a product. Parnin et

al. (2005) highlighted that the speed to get

answers on these environments is very quick.

Regarding software development, this kind of

website promotes the knowledge exchange

among programmers via the internet, and

according to the authors it can substitute the

documentation when it is scarce or non-existent

(Treude et al., 2011).

 Wikis: A specific kind of document collection in

hypertext or collaborative software used to create

it. Dagenais and Robillard (2010) said that

among many advantages of this tool, it is an easy

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way to create documentation which allows

anyone to contribute to the documentation.

However, through prior studies, authors affirm

that wikis are abandoned by the users because

they are not controlled environments compared

to others and, consequently, allow SPAM and

information inconsistency.

Beside the applications mentioned before,

Berglund and Priestley (2001) mentioned email lists

that as Q&A environments help the discussion

process for the development of software. Begel et al.

(2010) also highlighted the use of microblogs that

have reduced the number of characters in each

interaction, and because of that it is a tool used by

the participants to share links, make appointments,

keep the developers aware of the activities, etc

Social media present various advantages on

software engineering (Begel et al., 2010):

 Social networks normally provide a complete

environment for communication.

 On these social media, work teams of software

engineers expose their goals and ideas.

 Users who join social networks would know how

to communicate and coordinate to develop a

product successfully, requiring tools that assist

the management and transfer of knowledge, and

let mutual collaboration occur. The idea is that

the community increases because the knowledge

distribution becomes more efficient and quick,

minimizing misleading information among

coworkers who cannot meet in person.

The authors said that a condition for social media

to bring benefits is the planned use of those tools.

In open source communities, KM is knowledge

sharing and free access to information. For the

sharing step, the communication among the

members has a fundamental role, increasing and

improving the work group and then promoting a

collaborative environment (Porruvecchio et al,

2010).

6 SOFTWARE QUALITY IN

OPEN SOURCE

DEVELOPMENT

Each open source project is different from the others

and has its own particulars (Porruvecchio et al,

2010). However, the basis of these projects is the

same: users and communication among them. By the

way, the authos affirmed that users should be

competent to understand and contribute with the

highest level of details on these projects. Then, KM

aims sharing of knowledge and mutual help.

6.1 Knowledge Management

KM is an activity supported by learning processes

by capturing and reusing past experiences. It is a

unique activity because of the focus on each person

and his/her ability, which are systematically shared

in the organization (Parnin et al., 2005).

In the context of OSS development, sharing is

the way that more people can assist the development

process of software (Rus and Lindvall, 2002).

The knowledge can be captured in many ways:

traditional manuals, videos, wikis, blogs etc. (Treude

and Storey, 2011).There are many kinds of

knowledge, and then a variety of tools should be

used to deal with this great source of knowledge.

In a study carried out by Porruvecchio et al.

(2010), an email list of developers of 70 Open

source projects that were hosted on SourceForge.net

was analyzed. The authors said that the

understanding of communication of members of this

group can help to improve efficiency and quality of

projects. The results showed that each member

communicates to at least one other user, that there

are one or two developers who assume the main

roles on the project and that there is one user who

communicated to the whole community. The last

user has the role of managing the knowledge among

all community members once the virtual

environment became a learning space through

requests for explanations and/or others members’

assistance.

Therefore, the authors checked the importance of

peer support on these communities. Peer support

consists on a mutual helpful relation between two

members. Endres et al. (2007) affirmed that peer

support is fundamental for open source communities

and report its essentiality to increase knowledge

sharing.

Rus and Lindvall (2002) said that organizations

should use knowledge learned from past projects to

decrease time and cost in the development process

of new products. Although the authors noted this

affirmation for organizations of software

development, it can be applied to open source

communities once individual experience of users can

be converted to knowledge for the development of

new projects.

Therefore, KM has a fundamental role in

practices of open source communities (Endres et al.,

2007), improving quality of performance, since they

promote an important contribution to build common

knowledge basis (Porruvecchio et al, 2010).

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6.2 Users

A basic element for open source communities is the

user. It is through the users and their interests that

these communities develop their projects.

Porruvecchio et al. (2010) said that certain groups of

people are always part of a community and

providing the bases around a growing project.

Although the authors stated that participation in

open source community is open to everyone who

wishes, they highlight that control it is necessary.

One method pointed by them is the distribution of

levels of participation in the community: some users

have more permissions than others, but anyone who

wants to join the community is allowed. Then, a

social structure is pointed as a tool to accomplish

this control (Berglund and Priestley, 2001).

Porruvecchio et al. (2010) separated user group

into five levels: Users, Advanded Users, Errors

Repairers, Developers, and Manager.

Along the same creating thoughts of a social

structure in an open source community Spinellis and

Szyperski (2004) reports the Onion Model, which

divides users into four levels: common users, error

reporters, developers and core team?

Regardless of the social structure adopted in an

open source community, it is important to realize the

role of these users in those groups. Porruvecchio et

al. (2010) said that the developers discuss problems

they find during the development of a particular

feature or during a bug repair, or while users request

help to solve difficulties of using the software, or

warn about errors and bugs. Therefore, dealing with

such a wide variety of contributors, there is a great

sharing of knowledge and, consequently, the project

tends to be more powerful (Khanjani and Sulaiman,

2011).

According to Porruvecchio et al. (2010) and

Khanjani and Sulaiman (2011), the participation of

all kinds of users is encouraged as a practice that

should be encouraged on development

environments, regardless of the reasons that lead the

user to interact in these communities.

In a study carried out by Parnin et al. (2005),

they proposed a model of crowd documentation in a

large group of contributors which collaborate to the

documentation of API, the authors showed that the

documentation can emerge from questions and

answers. This also happens because the proposed

model encourages the participation of users through

the idea of awarding the best answer. Therefore, it

supports the process of quality assurance.

According to Dagenais and Robillar (2010), in a

study about how OSS documentation is created and

kept, the community is encouraged to join the

written process through questioning. These

questions help to repair bugs and then update the

documentation. The authors stated that community

feedback is essential because it helps to localize

which part of the document needs to be clarified.

However, Khanjani and Sulaiman (2011)

highlighted that to have many volunteers in open

source development requires a centralized

organization to coordinate activities and do

maintenance on the product. The author also stressed

that users help to improve the quality with more

correctness, completeness, safety, and quality

requirements, which justify the use of a social

structure proposed by Porruvecchio et al. (2010) or

by (Spinellis and Szyperski, 2004).

Therefore, for users to share knowledge, and

together, support the quality of the final product, the

communication is the starting point to develop an

efficient team (Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

6.3 Quality Assurance

Currently, software has been one of the most

requested products on the market. “The concern

about quality has become an essential requirement.

This is a basic idea to ensure software functionality

with minimal errors, defects and greater satisfaction

on quality expectations” (Maia, 2003).

Pressman (2000) said that the quality of software

is defined as the conformity to explicit functional

requirements and specified performance, following

standards for development of documents and follow

good practice of software engineering.

For open source development, developing with

quality depends on two factors: code revision and

testing data (Khanjani and Sulaiman, 2011). For

Shaikh and Ceron (2007), the access to the code is

fundamental for open source development, as it

allows the developers to have a high quality

contribution and makes the code available for

anyone to analyze it and detect bugs. To support

quality the seeking of various tools as emails’ list

and tools of management settings can be used

(Khanjani and Sulaiman, 2011). However, the

authors say that when we think about quality, some

aspects should be considered: level of service to be

improved, productivity and satisfaction of final user.

If these aspects are considered in software

development, the system efficiency for users and

developers will increase, and productivity also, once

users and developers are motivated to develop better

products and to find problems on the code

developed.

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However, for Khanjani and Sulaiman (2011),

seeking process for quality assurance on this kind of

development has some problems:

 There is no formal design for OSS development

and poor designs have poor codes and therefore

poor quality. The authors state that the

communication process and an appropriate

structure are important, and it attracts developers

to cooperate, but it is necessary to be attractive;

 The lack of knowledge of community

participants to repair bugs;

 The quality can be affected by the lack of

documentation. The documentation is focused on

the programming style desired, which will assist

new users to know the system and understand the

modifications and evolution on the code.

Michlmayr et al. (2005) added problems of open

source development as lack of volunteers, whicj

consist in a problem that some projects need to deal,

mainly the unpopular ones. The majority of

volunteers are only aimed at the code development.

There are not many people who want to help with

tests. Besides, the communication is another

problem which brings negative impacts to quality,

for example when bugs are not correctly reported.

Regarding documentation on knowledge of

community members and communication among

users tend to help with solving previously reported

problems.

Berglund and Priestley (2001) said that the

written process of documentation of many projects

can be elaborated using discussion topics of users.

These topics guide the documentation providing

information and then the documentation obtained in

the final process is focused on the user and its

quality tends to increase. However, care must be

taken to not transform the documents on a

repository, hindering the user to find the desired

information.

As a development perspective that states free

code, the communication among the members of

these communities needs to be facilitated

(Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

The connection among the members creates a

network in which sharing information facilitates

goal achievement and problem resolution

(Porruvecchio et al., 2010). In this way, KM

becomes the basis to promote sharing information as

common practice in these environments. The

participants have a variety of roles in open source

communities, and their activities are

complementary: they trust each other to improve the

final product. It is important to maintain the contact,

share information and give/get feedback. Raymond

(1999) said that a high quality level must be

attributed to the level of relation between the

members of a community.

Management and knowledge transference are

challenging activities that are essential to integrate

new collaborators in a project (Treude and Storey,

2011). However the authors report a study which

says that the documentation is not always useful and

is almost always outdated, making knowledge

transference difficult.

The number of messages exchanged among the

members in a community is an indicator of success

for the project as it shows interest of the community

on its development. In this way, an effective

communication tool is fundamental in these

environments (Porruvecchio et al., 2010).

In a study carried out by Parnin and Treude

(2011), it was found that blogs are the most common

means of communication covering almost 90% of

the subjects of this theme. The authors analyzed the

types of posts and found that the majority were

regarding tutorials followed by experience reports.

The analysis of the posts also showed that 81% of

the posts contained comments, building

interrelationships between authors and users. This

interaction resulted in improvements on code and

documentation.

Therefore, the importance of KM in development

environments was shown because it encourages the

sharing of information and then the good

communication among the members. Rus and

Lindvall, (2002) affirmed that sharing knowledge is

a risk prevention strategy to that is generally

ignored.

7 CONCLUSIONS

This study aimed to present a discussion about free

software communities and KM in these

communities, concerning the process of open

source software and its peculiarities, to ensure the

quality of the product developed. The study was

based on the purpose of CI and KM, to input quality

throughout the process of software development on

factors that are considered primordial for this study,

users and communication among them.

Users are the main reason to open source

development exists. If they do not fell themselves

motivated and encouraged to make part of the open

source community, as mentioned, the final quality

can be affected. As many studies reported, it is

important to encourage users’ participation, and for

that, to create a hierarchy among the users to

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determine their participation and efficient ways to

promote good communication among the

community participants.

The communication among the community

members are fundamental to the DDS and thus, it

needs some ways to provide the interaction among

users. Through several social midias, users exchange

knowledge, and it can improve the quality of the

software. So, KM, besides just promoting the

communication among member of the community,

must support the knowledge exchange, which can be

used for diverse purposes, but it is worth

highlighting that do not mind its purpose, its

existence is a factor that assists the process of

quality assurance.

Quality Assurance is an activity that must be

considered throughout the development process, in

free or proprietary software. In this way,

mechanisms that promote the interaction among

users should be able to promote the exchange

knowledge.

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