Comparing practices for reuse in integration-oriented software product lines and large open source software projects

• Published in: Software, practice & experience practice & experience, 2010-04, Vol.40 (4), p.285-312
• Main Authors: van Gurp, Jilles, Prehofer, Christian, Bosch, Jan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer programs; Freeware; Mathematical models; open source; Organizations; Software; Software development; software development practice; software product lines; Software reuse; Source code
• ISSN: 0038-0644; 1097-024X; 1097-024X
• DOI: 10.1002/spe.955

This article compares the organization and practices for software reuse in integration‐oriented software product lines (SPLs) and open source software projects. The main observation is that both approaches are successful regarding large variability and reuse, but differ widely in their practices and organization. To capture practices in large open source projects, we describe an open compositional model, which reflects their more decentralized organization of software development. We capture key practices and organizational forms for this and validate these by comparing four case studies of this model. Two of these studies are based on published SPL case studies, for the other two we analyze the practices in two large and successful open source projects based on their published developer documentation. Our analysis highlights key differences between the practices in the two open source organizations and the more integrational practices used in the other two cases. Finally, we discuss which practices are successful in which environment and how the current practices can move towards more open, widely scoped and distributed software development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.