Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of F/OSS Volunteer Participation in Defect Management

Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) is an incredible and innovative opportunity of software development in the area of software engineering. An F/OSS project evolves by receiving submissions from various sources to address different aspects of the project like bug identification, feature request, support request, translation request, source code, documentation etc. The present paper delves into a multi-case study of F/OSS projects to evaluate volunteer participation in defect management quantitatively as well as qualitatively. The relevant defect data has been retrieved from a research collaboratory.