Punctuated Equilibrium in Software Evolution
Statistical Mechanics
2009-11-10 v1 Software Engineering
Abstract
The approach based on paradigm of self-organized criticality proposed for experimental investigation and theoretical modelling of software evolution. The dynamics of modifications studied for three free, open source programs Mozilla, Free-BSD and Emacs using the data from version control systems. Scaling laws typical for the self-organization criticality found. The model of software evolution presenting the natural selection principle is proposed. The results of numerical and analytical investigation of the model are presented. They are in a good agreement with the data collected for the real-world software.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0307201,
title = {Punctuated Equilibrium in Software Evolution},
author = {A. A. Gorshenev and Yu. M. Pis'mak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0307201},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, LaTeX, 2 Postscript figures