Usability Bugs in Open Source Software and Online Forums

Authors

Arif Raza, National University of Science and Technology - PakistanFollow
Luiz Fernando Capretz, University of Western OntarioFollow
Faheem Ahmed, Thompson River UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2012

Volume

6

Issue

3

Journal

IET Software

First Page

226

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1049/iet-sen.2011.0105

Last Page

230

Notes

The unlimited number of open-source software (OSS) users and the importance of end users’ experience in determining software quality make usability an even more critical quality attribute for OSS than it is for proprietary software. The research model of this study establishes the relationship between usability errors in OSS and online public forums. The results of this empirical analysis provide evidence about active management of usability-related issues in OSS. To conduct this research, the authors used a dataset consisting of 1753 OSS projects, covering a broad range of categories. The results of the study show that online forums play a significant role in identifying and fixing usability bugs in OSS.

Citation of this paper:

@article{DBLP:journals/ewc/RazaCA12, author = {Arif Raza and Luiz Fernando Capretz and Faheem Ahmed}, title = {Users' perception of open source usability: an empirical study}, journal = {Eng. Comput. (Lond.)}, volume = {28}, number = {2}, year = {2012}, pages = {109-121}, ee = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00366-011-0222-1}, bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de} }