Evolution in open source software: a case study

TL;DR: The authors explore the evolution of the Linux kernel both at the system level and within the major subsystems, and they discuss why they think Linux continues to exhibit such strong growth.

Abstract: Most studies of software evolution have been performed on systems developed within a single company using traditional management techniques. With the widespread availability of several large software systems that have been developed using an "open source" development approach, we now have a chance to examine these systems in detail, and see if their evolutionary narratives are significantly different from commercially developed systems. The paper summarizes our preliminary investigations into the evolution of the best known open source system: the Linux operating system kernel. Because Linux is large (over two million lines of code in the most recent version) and because its development model is not as tightly planned and managed as most industrial software processes, we had expected to find that Linux was growing more slowly as it got bigger and more complex. Instead, we have found that Linux has been growing at a super-linear rate for several years. The authors explore the evolution of the Linux kernel both at the system level and within the major subsystems, and they discuss why they think Linux continues to exhibit such strong growth.