Assessing the efficacy of user and developer activities in the development of projects

Although the development of open source software (OSS) projects is known to be critically dependent on many key factors, the precise contribution of the various user and developer activities toward the development of an OSS project is unknown. Therefore, an empirical study is performed to examine the correlation between the user/developer activities and the state of development of an OSS project. It is shown that certain user/developer activities have a particular efficacy in facilitating OSS project development. The results presented in this study provide an effective approach useful in observing and evaluating the development of OSS projects.