An empirical study on software development with open source components in the chinese software industry

  • Authors:

  • Weibing Chen;Jingyue Li;Jianqiang Ma;Reidar Conradi;Junzhong Ji;Chunnian Liu

  • Affiliations:

  • Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of Multimedia and Intelligent Software Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, China;Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway;Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway;Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway;Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of Multimedia and Intelligent Software Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, China;Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of Multimedia and Intelligent Software Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, China

  • Venue:
  • Software Process: Improvement and Practice - Advances in Software Process Improvement
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Chinese software companies are increasingly using open sourcesoftware (OSS) components in software development. Development withOSS components faces challenges with respect to componentselection, component integration, licensing compliance, and systemmaintenance. Although these issues have been investigated in theindustry in other countries, few similar studies have beenperformed in China. It is therefore difficult for Chinese softwarecompanies to be aware of their special issues and to make thenecessary improvements. This article describes aquestionnaire-based survey of software development with OSScomponents in Chinese software companies. Data from 47 completeddevelopment projects in 43 companies were collected. The resultsshow that the main motivation behind using OSS components was theirmodifiability and low license cost. Using a web search engine wasthe most common method of locating OSS components. Localacquaintance and compliance requirements were the major decisivefactors in choosing a suitable component. To avoid legal exposure,the common strategy was to use components without licensingconstraints. The major cost of OSS-based projects was the cost tolearn and understand OSS components. Almost 84% of the componentsneeded bug fixing or other changes to the code. However, closeparticipation with the OSS community was rare. Copyright ©2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.