Chapter Review

Topic: - “Open Source Software Development”

Open-source software development is the process by which open-source software, or similar
software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software
project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source
license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source
software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC
media player. Open-source software development has been a large part of the creation of the
World Wide Web as we know it, with Tim Berners-Lee contributing his HTML code development
as the original platform upon which the internet is now built.

Starting an open-source project: -

There are several ways in which work on an open-source project can start:
1. An individual who senses the need for a project announces the intent to develop a
project in public.
2. A developer working on a limited but working codebase, releases it to the public as the
first version of an open-source program.
3. The source code of a mature project is released to the public.
4. A well-established open-source project can be forked by an interested outside party.
Eric Raymond observed in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar that announcing the intent
for a project is usually inferior to releasing a working project to the public.
It's a common mistake to start a project when contributing to an existing similar project would
be more effective (NIH syndrome). To start a successful project, it is very important to
investigate what's already there. The process starts with a choice between the adopting of an
existing project, or the starting of a new project. If a new project is started, the process goes to
the Initiation phase. If an existing project is adopted, the process goes directly to the Execution
phase.

Types of Open Source Software: -

Several types of open-source projects exist. First, there is the garden variety of software
programs and libraries, which consist of standalone pieces of code. Some might even be
dependent on other open-source projects. These projects serve a specified purpose and fill a
definite need. Examples of this type of project include the Linux kernel, the Firefox web browser
and the LibreOffice office suite of tools.
Distributions are another type of open-source project. Distributions are collections of software
that are published from the same source with a common purpose. The most prominent example
of a "distribution" is an operating system. There are many Linux distributions (such
as Debian, Fedora Core, Mandriva, Slackware, Ubuntu etc.) which ship the Linux kernel along
with many user-land components. There are other distributions, like ActivePerl, the Perl
programming language for various operating systems, and Cygwin distributions of open-source
programs for Microsoft Windows.

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Other open-source projects, like the BSD derivatives, maintain the source code of an entire
operating system, the kernel and all of its core components, in one revision control system;
developing the entire system together as a single team. These operating system development
projects closely integrate their tools, more so than in the other distribution-based systems.
Finally, there is the book or standalone document project. These items usually do not ship as part
of an open-source software package. The Linux Documentation Project hosts many such projects
that document various aspects of the GNU/Linux operating system. There are many other
examples of this type of open-source project.

Process-Data Model for open-source software development

Methods: -
It is hard to run an open-source project following a more traditional software development
method like the waterfall model, because in these traditional methods it is not allowed to go
back to a previous phase. In open-source software development, requirements are rarely
gathered before the start of the project; instead they are based on early releases of the software
product, as Robbins describes.] Besides requirements, often volunteer staff is attracted to help
develop the software product based on the early releases of the software. This networking effect
is essential according to Abrahamsson et al.: “if the introduced prototype gathers enough
attention, it will gradually start to attract more and more developers”. However, Abrahamsson

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et al. also point out that the community is very harsh, much like the business world of closed-
source software: “if you find the customers you survive, but without customers you die”.
Fuggetta argues that “rapid prototyping, incremental and evolutionary development, spiral
lifecycle, rapid application development, and, recently, extreme programming and the agile
software process can be equally applied to proprietary and open source software”. He also
pinpoints Extreme Programming as an extremely useful method for open source software
development. More generally, all Agile programming methods are applicable to open-source
software development, because of their iterative and incremental character. Other Agile method
are equally useful for both open and closed source software development: Internet-Speed, for
example is suitable for open-source software development because of the distributed
development principle it adopts. Internet-Speed Development uses geographically distributed
teams to ‘work around the clock’. This method, mostly adopted by large closed-source firms,
(because they're the only ones which afford development centers in different time zones), works
equally well in open source projects because a software developed by a large group of volunteers
shall naturally tend to have developers spread across all time zones.

Communication channels
Developers and users of an open-source project are not all necessarily working on the project in
proximity. They require some electronic means of communications. E-mail is one of the most
common forms of communication among open-source developers and users. Often, electronic
mailing lists are used to make sure e-mail messages are delivered to all interested parties at once.
This ensures that at least one of the members can reply to it. In order to communicate in real
time, many projects use an instant messaging method such as IRC. Web forums have recently
become a common way for users to get help with problems they encounter when using an open-
source product. Wikis have become common as a communication medium for developers and
users.

Version Control System: -

In OSS development the participants, who are mostly volunteers, are distributed amongst
different geographic regions so there is need for tools to aid participants to collaborate in the
development of source code.
During early 2000s, Concurrent Versions System (CVS) was a prominent example of a source code
collaboration tool being used in OSS projects. CVS helps manage the files and codes of a project
when several people are working on the project at the same time. CVS allows several people to
work on the same file at the same time. This is done by moving the file into the users’ directories
and then merging the files when the users are done. CVS also enables one to easily retrieve a
previous version of a file. During mid-2000s, The Subversion revision control system (SVN) was
created to replace CVS. It is quickly gaining ground as an OSS project version control system.
Many open-source projects are now using distributed revision control systems, which scale
better than centralized repositories such as SVN and CVS. Popular examples are git, used by
the Linux kernel, and Mercurial, used by the Python programming language.

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Bug Trackers and task lists: -
Most large-scale projects require a bug tracking system to keep track of the status of various
issues in the development of the project. Some bug trackers include:
• Bugzilla – a web-based bug tracker from Mozilla.
• Mantis Bug Tracker – a web-based PHP/MySQL bug tracker.
• Trac – integrating a bug tracker with a wiki, and an interface to the Subversion version
control system.
• Redmine – written in Ruby, integrates issue tracking, wiki, forum, news, roadmap, Gantt
project planning and interfaces with LDAP user directory.
• Request tracker – written in Perl. Given as a default to CPAN modules.
• Source Forge and its forks provide a bug tracker as part of its services. As a result, many
projects hosted at SourceForge.net and similar services default to using it.
• JIRA – Web-based project management and issue tracking tool from Atlassian.

Testing and Debugging Tools: -

Since OSS projects undergo frequent integration, tools that help automate testing during system
integration are used. An example of such tool is Tinderbox. Tinderbox enables participants in an
OSS project to detect errors during system integration. Tinderbox runs a continuous build process
and informs users about the parts of source code that have issues and on which platform(s) these
issues arise.
A debugger is a computer program that is used to debug (and sometimes test or optimize) other
programs. GNU Debugger (GDB) is an example of a debugger used in open-source software
development. This debugger offers remote debugging, what makes it especially applicable to
open-source software development.
A memory leak tool or memory debugger is a programming tool for finding memory
leaks and buffer overflows. A memory leak is a particular kind of unnecessary memory
consumption by a computer program, where the program fails to release memory that is no
longer needed. Examples of memory leak detection tools used by Mozilla are
the XPCOM Memory Leak tools. Validation tools are used to check if pieces of code conform to
the specified syntax. An example of a validation tool is Splint.

Package Management
A package management system is a collection of tools to automate the process of installing,
upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages from a computer. The Red Hat
Package Manager (RPM) for .rpm and Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) for .deb file format, are
package management systems used by a number of Linux distributions.