Understanding the Requirements for Developing and Designing Open Source Software

1
Understanding the Requirements for Developing and
Designing Open Source Software

• Walt Scacchi
• Institute for Software Research
• University of California, Irvine
• Irvine, CA 92697-3425
• Wscacchi_at_ics.uci.edu
• UCI ISR-NSF Workshop on Continuous Design of Open
  Source Software
• 23 September 2003
• http//www.ics.uci.edu/wscacchi/Presentations/Wor
  kshop2003/OSS-Req-Design-Process

2
Overview

• Research methodology
• Open source processes for Requirements
• Software development informalisms
• Implications
• Conclusions

3
Research methodology

• Prior empirical (case) studies of Open Source
  Software Development (OSSD) Projects
• Mockus, Fielding, Herbsleb, 2000, 2002, Apache
  httpd server
• Reis and Fortes, 2002, Mozilla Web browser
• Schach et al., 2002 Holt et al., 2000, Linux
  Kernel
• Koch and Schneider 2001 German 2002, GNOME User
  Interface
• Jorgensen, 2001, FreeBSD operating system
• Garg et al., 2002, OSSD (progressive open
  source) within HP

4
Research methodology

• Individual case studies significant details, but
  limited (and premature) generalization, little/no
  comparative analysis
• No studies that examine multiple OSSD projects in
  multiple domains
• Such studies would offer higher degree of
  comparative analyses and generalization of results

5
(No Transcript)
6
Research methodology

• Comparative case studies
• Multiple open software development projects
• Within and across multiple communities
• Qualitative (grounded theory) techniques
• Analyzing and modeling
• development processes
• work practices and roles
• development artifacts and tools
• community structures and process dynamics

7
OSS processes for Requirements

• Post-hoc assertion of requirementsdesign after
  implementation
• Reading, sense-making, accountability
• Continually emerging webs of discourse
• Condensing and hardening discourse
• Global access to this discourse

8
OSS processes for Requirements/Design

• OSS Requirements/Designs are
• not explicit
• not formal
• OSS Requirements/Designs are embedded within
  informalisms
• Example OSS informalisms follow

9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)
15
Traditional vs. OSS processes for Requirements

• Elicitation
• Analysis
• Specification and modeling
• Validation
• Communicating and managing

• Post-hoc assertion
• Reading, sense-making, accountability
• Continually emerging webs of discourse
• Condensing and hardening discourse
• Global access to discourse

16
Software Informalisms

• Community communications
• Threaded discussion forums
• Email (list servers)
• Newsgroups
• IRChat/Instant messages
• Community digests (Kernel Cousins)

17
Software Informalisms

• Scenarios of Usage as linked Web pages

18
Software Informalisms

• How-To guides, To-Do lists, FAQs
• Traditional software user documentation
• Unix/Linux man pages
• External publications
• trade articles
• scholarly research papers
• books (cf. OReilly Books)

19
Software Informalisms

• Open Software Web Sites
• Community Web sites
• Community Software Web sites
• Project Web sites
• Source code Webs/Directories

20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
(No Transcript)
23
Software Informalisms

• Software bug reports
• Ad hoc report Web
• Bugzilla (database tracking)
• Issue tracking
• Issuezilla

24
(No Transcript)
25
Software Informalisms

• Software extension mechanisms
• Inter-application scripting
• Csh, Perl, Python, Tcl, scripting
• Pipelines (cf. CXCDS)
• Intra-application scripting (e.g., UnrealScript)
• Plug-in architectures
• Apache server architecture

26
Software Informalisms

• Free/OSS licenses institutionalizing F/OSS
  culture (values, norms, and beliefs)
• GNU Public License (GPL)
• and 35 more (http//opensource.org)
• Creative Commons Project at Stanford Law School
  developing public license framework

27
(No Transcript)
28
Implications

• Software informalisms are the media of software
  requirements/design
• Software informalisms are the subject of software
  requirements/design
• OSS requirements/design tasks are implied
  activities or capabilities
• (Re)reading, reviewing, and reinterpreting
  informalisms is a prerequisite to writing OSS.

29
Implications

• Developing open software requirements is a
  community building process
• not just a technical development process
• OSS peer review creates a community of peers
• OSSD processes often iterate daily versus
  infrequent singular (milestone) SLC events
• frequent, rapid cycle time (easier to improve)
  vs. infrequent, slow cycle time
  (hard to improve)

30
Implications

• Determining the quality of OSS requirements/design
  s
• not targeted to consistency, completeness,
  correctness
• instead focusing attention to community building,
  freedom of expression, ease of informalism
  navigation (traceability), implicit vs. explicit
  informalism structuring

31
Conclusions

• Developing OSS requirements is different than
  requirements engineering
• not better, not worse, but different and new
• more social, more accessible, more convivial
• OSS systems dont need and probably wont benefit
  from classic software requirements engineering.

32
Acknowledgements

• Project collaborators
• Mark Ackerman, UMichigan, Ann Arbor
• Les Gasser, UIUC
• John Noll, Santa Clara University
• Margaret Ellliot, Chris Jensen, UCI-ISR
• Julia Watson, The Ohio State University
• Funding support
• National Science Foundation, IIS-0083075,
  ITR-0205679, ITR-0205724, and IIS-0350754.

33
References

• W. Scacchi, Understanding the Requirements for
  Developing Open Source Software, IEE
  Proceedings--Software, 149(1), 24-39, 2002.
• W. Scacchi, Open EC/B A Case Study in Electronic
  Commerce and Open Source Software Development,
  Final Report, July 2002.
• W. Scacchi, Free/Open Source Software Development
  Practices in the Computer Game Community, IEEE
  Software, Special Issue on Open Source Software,
  (to appear, 2004).
• W. Scacchi, Understanding Free/Open Source
  Software Evolution Applying, Breaking and
  Rethinking the Laws of Software Evolution,
  revised version to appear in N.H. Madhavji, M.M.
  Lehman, J.F. Ramil and D. Perry (eds.), Software
  Evolution, John Wiley and Sons Inc, New York,
  2004.