Abstract
Code repositories on the Internet provide a tremendous amount of freely available open source code that can be reused for building new software. It has been argued that only software reuse can bring the gain of productivity in software construction demanded by the market. However, knowledge about the extent of reuse in software projects is only sparse. To remedy this, we report on an empirical study about software reuse in 20 open source Java projects with a total of 3.3 MLOC. The study investigates (1) whether open source projects reuse third party code and (2) how much white-box and black-box reuse occurs. To answer these questions, we utilize static dependency analysis for quantifying black-box reuse and code clone detection for detecting white-box reuse from a corpus with 6.1 MLOC of reusable Java libraries. Our results indicate that software reuse is common among open source Java projects and that black-box reuse is the predominant form of reuse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Basili, V., Briand, L., Melo, W.: How reuse influences productivity in object-oriented systems. Communications of the ACM 39(10), 116 (1996)
Clements, P., Northrop, L.M.: Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns, 6th edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading (2007)
Frakes, W., Kang, K.: Software reuse research: Status and future. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 31(7), 529–536 (2005)
Haefliger, S., Von Krogh, G., Spaeth, S.: Code Reuse in Open Source Software. Management Science 54(1), 180–193 (2008)
Hummel, B., Juergens, E., Heinemann, L., Conradt, M.: Index-Based Code Clone Detection: Incremental, Distributed, Scalable. In: ICSM 2010 (2010)
Hummel, O., Atkinson, C.: Using the web as a reuse repository. In: Morisio, M. (ed.) ICSR 2006. LNCS, vol. 4039, pp. 298–311. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Jacobson, I., Griss, M., Jonsson, P.: Software reuse: architecture, process and organization for business success. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1997)
Kelly, S., Tolvanen, J.-P.: Domain-Specific Modeling. Wiley, Chichester (2008)
Krueger, C.: Software reuse. ACM Comput. Surv. 24(2), 131–183 (1992)
Lee, N., Litecky, C.: An empirical study of software reuse with special attention to Ada. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 23(9), 537–549 (1997)
Lim, W.: Effects of reuse on quality, productivity, and economics. IEEE Software 11(5), 23–30 (2002)
Lindholm, T., Yellin, F.: Java virtual machine specification. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston (1999)
McIlroy, M., Buxton, J., Naur, P., Randell, B.: Mass produced software components. In: Software Engineering Concepts and Techniques, pp. 88–98 (1969)
Mili, H., Mili, A., Yacoub, S., Addy, E.: Reuse-Based Software Engineering: Techniques, Organizations, and Controls. Wiley Interscience, Hoboken (2001)
Mili, H., Mili, F., Mili, A.: Reusing software: Issues and research directions. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 21(6), 528–562 (1995)
Mockus, A.: Large-scale code reuse in open source software. In: FLOSS 2007 (2007)
Ravichandran, T., Rothenberger, M.: Software reuse strategies and component markets. Communications of the ACM 46(8), 109–114 (2003)
Sojer, M., Henkel, J.: Code Reuse in Open Source Software Development: Quantitative Evidence, Drivers, and Impediments. JAIS (to appear, 2011)
von Krogh, G., Spaeth, S., Haefliger, S.: Knowledge Reuse in Open Source Software: An Exploratory Study of 15 Open Source Projects. In: HICSS 2005 (2005)
Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M.: Experimentation in software engineering: An introduction. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Heinemann, L., Deissenboeck, F., Gleirscher, M., Hummel, B., Irlbeck, M. (2011). On the Extent and Nature of Software Reuse in Open Source Java Projects. In: Schmid, K. (eds) Top Productivity through Software Reuse. ICSR 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6727. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21347-2_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21347-2_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-21346-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-21347-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)