A Simplified Model for Evaluating Software Reliability at the Developmental Stage

The use of open source software is becoming more and more predominant and it is important that the reliability of this software are evaluated. Even though a lot of researchers have tried to establish the failure pattern of different packages a deterministic model for evaluating reliability is not yet developed. The present paper details a simplified model for evaluating the reliability of the open source software based on the available failure data. The methodology involves identifying a fixed number of packages at the start of the time and defining the failure rate based on the failure data for these preset number of packages.