STOCHASTIC DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION MODELS CONSIDERING JUMP DIFFUSION PROCESS FOR AN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Many open source softwares have been developed in all parts of the world, e.g., Firefox, Apache HTTP server, Linux, Android, etc. Open source software is now attracting attention as the next-generation software development paradigm because of the cost reduction, quick delivery, and work saving. This paper focuses on the irregular fluctuation of version upgrade and the total track of fault data for the open source software. A new approach to software reliability assessment is presented by using a jump diffusion process based on the stochastic differential equations in order to consider the change of requirements specification and the irregular fluctuation of version upgrade. Also, a set of actual software fault-count data is analyzed in order to show numerical examples of software reliability assessment. In particular, several reliability assessment measures are derived from our jump diffusion model. Moreover, this paper shows that the proposed method of reliability analysis can assist quality improvement for the open source software project.