Linux.com: Michlmayr Advocates Time-Based Release Management for FOSS Projects

"Former Debian Project Leader Martin Michlmayr is completing his doctoral thesis at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. Entitled 'Quality Improvement in Volunteer, Free, and Open Source Project: Exploring the Impact of Release Management,' his thesis is based on case studies of major free and open source software (FOSS) project, including Debian, GNOME, the Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, Plone, and X.org. A supporter of the open access movement, which tries to make academic work as widely available as possible, Michlmayr is blogging and discussing his work as often as possible. He also plans to make the final version of his thesis available on the Internet. As part of his efforts, Michlmayr talked to Linux.com about why he concludes that regularly scheduled releases are desirable in large FOSS projects.

"Michlmayr says that FOSS projects have two characteristics that make them unique in software development. First, their members are geographically dispersed, which delays communication..."

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