Assuring quality and usability in open source software development

Abstract

This paper reviews literature on quality and usability assurance in open source software (OSS) development, focusing specifically on OSS that is targeted at a large user population, which does not consist only of OSS developers anymore. In this type of OSS development, the 'naive', non computer professional users should be taken into account and usability of OSS improved. Furthermore, software quality becomes a very relevant issue to be assured. We contrast OSS literature on quality and usability with prescriptive literatures derived from the fields of software engineering and human computer interaction. We present a summary of the current practices utilized to assure quality and usability in OSS development, and recommend practices to be used in this context. We also point out limitations in the existing research and suggest paths for future work.