Intensive Metrics for the Study of the Evolution of Open Source Projects

Abstract

Starting with the empirical evidence that the ratio of email messages received to commits has remained relatively constant along the history of the Apache Software Foundation, we look for the use of such a metric to compare projects irrespective of their size or growth. The behaviour of this ratio, and also of similar metrics like the ratio of developer messages or issue tracker related messages to commits, is studied for several projects. The ratios are independent of the size of the project, in terms of rate of messages, commits, active developer number, etc. and remains relatively independent of the technology or functional area of the project. It looks related to the technical effervescence or popularity of the projects.