Life cycle of defects in Open Source software projects

Abstract

We studied the maintenance process from the viewpoint of defect management and the defect life cycle. First, we outline a model for the defect life cycle based on ISO/IEC standards, the Framework for Open Source maintenance process, and the Bugzilla defect management system. Thereafter, we analyze defects from two Open Source software projects. The aim of the study was support the maintenance reliability. However, we found that most of the defects did not follow the life-cycle model. Defects were usually directly resolved from initial state without being assigned. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.