<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xml><records><record><source-app name="Biblio" version="6.x">Drupal-Biblio</source-app><ref-type>47</ref-type><contributors><authors><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Israel Herraiz</style></author></authors></contributors><titles><title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">A Statistical Examination of the Evolution and Properties of Libre Software</style></title><secondary-title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">25th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM)</style></secondary-title></titles><keywords><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">empirical studies</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">free software</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">open source</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">software development</style></keyword><keyword><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">software evolution</style></keyword></keywords><dates><year><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">2009</style></year><pub-dates><date><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">09/2009</style></date></pub-dates></dates><urls><web-urls><url><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">http://icsm2009.cs.ualberta.ca/</style></url></web-urls></urls><publisher><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">IEEE Computer Society</style></publisher><pub-location><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Edmonton, Canada</style></pub-location><pages><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">439-442</style></pages><isbn><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">978-1-4244-4897-5</style></isbn><language><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">English</style></language><abstract><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">How and why does software evolve? This question has been under study since almost 40 years ago, and it is still a subject of controversy. In the seventies, Meir M. Lehman formulated the laws of software evolution, a first attempt to characterize the dynamics of the evolution of software. With the raise of the libre (free / open source) software development phenomenon, some cases that do not fulfill those laws have appeared. Are Lehman's laws valid in the case of libre software development? Is it possible to design an universal theory for software evolution? And if it is, how? This thesis is a large-scale empirical and statistical approach to analyze the properties and evolution of libre software, using publicly available data sources, hence enabling repeatability of the results and third parties verification, fundamental aspects of any empirical study. The main results are that a small subset of basic size metrics are enough to characterize a software system, software systems are self-similar, and software evolution is a short range correlated (short memory) process.</style></abstract><notes><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">This work was done with the support of the funding provided by the Comunidad de Madrid (the regional government of Madrid) and the European Social Fund, under grant number 01/FPI/0582/2005, and the FP6 funded FLOSSMetrics (contract IST-5-033982) and QUALOSS (contract FP6-IST-5-033547) projects.</style></notes><research-notes><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Paper in the doctoral symposium of the conference.</style></research-notes></record></records></xml>