2009 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Domain Drivers in the Modularization of FLOSS Systems
Author : Andrea Capiluppi
Published in: Open Source Ecosystems: Diverse Communities Interacting
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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The classification of software systems into types has been achieved in the past by observing both their specifications and behavioral patterns: the SPE classification, for instance, and its further supplements and refinements, has identified the S-type (
i.e.
, fully specified), the P-type (
i.e.
, specified but dependent on the context) and the E-type (
i.e.
, addressing evolving problems) among the software systems.
In order to detect types, and establish similarities, among Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) systems, this paper considers three modular characteristics (functions, files and folders) and their evolution: how they are evolving with size, if they are constant across systems, and whether recurring evolutionary patterns are observed. Using these various-grained characteristics, a set of models for the evolution of modularization are extracted from evolving systems, and then used to extract similarities and types from a wide sample of FLOSS projects.
This paper provides three contributions: first, it shows that several models are needed to encompass the variety of modularization patterns; second, it provides three types of models (uni-variate, bi-variate and tri-variate) for the evolution of modularization, with significant goodness-of-fit’s. Finally, it shows that two of these patterns alone can interpolate the modular characteristics of the vast majority of a random choice of FLOSS projects.