1. An Empirical Study on Selection of Open Source Software yvind Hauge, Thomas sterlie, Carl-Fredrik Srensen, Marinela Gerea [email_address] yvind Hauge, Thomas sterlie, Carl-Fredrik Srensen and Marinela Gerea, An Empirical Study on Selection of Open Source Software - Preliminary Results, in: Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Research and Development (FLOSS 2009), May 18th, Vancouver, Canada, pages 42-47, IEEE Computer Society, 2009 Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FLOSS.2009.5071359

2. Main findings

Situation-specific constraints are far more important than general product-specific evaluation criteria

3. Software is selected based on 'first fit' rather than 'best fit' 4. This motivates a shift of focus from normative evaluation methods to the situation where the selection is performed 5. CBSD and Software selection 6. 7. Normative selection efforts

Many COTS and OSS methods and evaluation schema

8. Engineering approach

Expects predefined requirements

9. Evaluation of several alternatives to find the best match 10. Weighted scoring calculates the best match 11. A few challenges

Lack of/too many/the wrong/overlapping metrics

12. Information not always available or reliable 13. Lack of user guides 14. Time consuming 15. Few candidate components 16. Strong ties to a provider 17. Do not reflect the context 18. The study

How do developers select OSS components?

19. Semi-structured interviews 20. Developers in 16 companies 21. Overweight of web applications 22. Identification

Experience

23. Recommendations 24. Monitoring familiar communities 25. Unstructured searches 26. Selection

Internal experience

27. External feedback/reputation 28. Prototyping 29. Situational selection

A few situation-specific constraints areverydecisive

30. Developer dependent

High focus onexperience

31. Rely on recommendations, familiar communities and user experiences Technology dependent 32. 33. 'First fit' rather than 'best fit'

Evaluation starts during the identification

34. If a likely component is found

• Evaluated and tested

35. Adopted if it is 'good enough' or rejected if it is not

Knowledge from one evaluation is used in the search for and evaluation of the next component

36. 37. Implications Shift of focus

The most important constraints in each situation and their impact on candidate components

38. Evaluating whether a component is 'good enough' rather than 'the best' 39. Informal experiences from other people 40. Make the experiences of others more available