Free and Proprietary Software in COTS-Based Software Development

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

Stol

2011

Abstract. A promising way of software reuse is Component-Based Software Development (CBSD). There is an increasing number of OSS products available that can be freely used in product development. However, OSS communities themselves have not yet taken full advantage of the "reuse mechanism". Many OSS projects duplicate effort and code, even when sharing the same application domain and topic. One successful counter-example is the FFMpeg multimedia project, since several of its components are widely and consistently reused into other OSS projects. This paper documents the history of the libavcodec library of components from the FFMpeg project, which at present is reused in more than 140 OSS projects. Most of the recipients use it as a blackbox component, although a number of OSS projects keep a copy of it in their repositories, and modify it as such. In both cases, we argue that libavcodec is a successful example of reusable OSS library of components.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Successful Reuse of Software Components: A Report from the Open Source Perspective

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

Stol

2011

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“…The reasons discovered by past works [34] are enough for developers to start their own project and duplicate efforts. This could mean also that the reuse of code written by others has to overcome similar obstacles, apart from the technical ones, as already evaluated by [20]. In terms of activity and code released, it was observed that the Arla project spans some 8 years of development, Gaim approximately 6.5 years, MPlayer 4.5, while XMMS 5 years.…”

Section: Case Studies -Evolutionary Analysismentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Other characteristics determine whether a module should be reused in another system. Apart from those already cited by [20], there could be inherent reasons for not reusing a specific module, even if its instability is low at the coupling level. It could be that it is too small, or that it is very complex (in terms of cyclomatic complexity, for instance).…”

Section: Conclusion Further Work and Threats To Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The research with the closest scope to the present work is presented in [20], where a framework is proposed for the reuse of components in the OSS environment. It points out some key aspects to consider carefully, and which could impede its implementation, such as the license types, the ego-boosting problems or the programming languages; these social aspects were previously stressed also in [34].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although much attention has already been focused on the study of reusable COTS, including OSS components in corporate software production, the reusability of software "from" OSS projects "in" other OSS projects has only started to draw the attention of researchers and practitioners in OSS communities [20]. While a huge amount of code is daily created, modified and stored in OSS repositories, software reuse is rarely perceived by OSS developers as a critical factor in their projects, nor is the source code of other projects considered as a potential way to build new OSS systems upon existing ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Identifying and Improving Reusability Based on Coupling Patterns

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

Abstract. Open Source Software (OSS) communitieshave not yet taken full advantage of reuse mechanisms. Typically many OSS projects which share the same application domain and topic, duplicate effort and code, without fully leveraging the vast amounts of available code. This study proposes the empirical evaluation of source code folders of OSS projects in order to determine their actual internal reuse and their potential as shareable, fine-grained and externally reusable software components by future projects. This paper empirically analyses four OSS systems, identifies which components (in the form of folders) are currently being reused internally and studies their coupling characteristics. Stable components (i.e., those which act as service providers rather than service consumers) are shown to be more likely to be reusable. As a means of supporting replication of these successful instances of OSS reuse, source folders with similar patterns are extracted from the studied systems, and identified as externally reusable components. The intended users are members of the OSS development community. Based on the empirical study of the OSS systems and observations made during the study, four practical courses of action are recommended in order to enhance the reusability of current folders that have not been identified as potentially reusable, both from an internal and external standpoint.

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Coupling Patterns in the Effective Reuse of Open Source Software

First International Workshop on Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development (FLOSS'07: ICSE Workshops 2007)

2007