The QualOSS open source assessment model measuring the performance of open source communities

Open Source Software (OSS) has an increasing importance for the software industry. Similar to traditional (closed) software acquisition, OSS acquisition requires an assessment of whether its quality is sufficient for the intended purpose, and whether the chances of being maintained and supported in the future, as well as of keeping certain quality standards over time, are sufficiently high. In this paper, we present an approach toward a comprehensive measurement framework for OSS projects, developed in the EU project QualOSS. This approach takes into account product quality as well as process maturity and sustainability of the underlying OSS community.