Defining an Open Source Software Trustworthiness Model _camera_ready

In an ideal word, totally trustworthy software would provide an absolute guarantee that it will perform its required functions under all possible circumstances, will do so on time, and will never perform any actions that have hazardous consequences. In the real world, this hardly ever happens, since different software products have different degrees of trustworthiness. In this paper, we show how we set out to develop a trustworthiness model for Open Source Software, by identifying a few quality factors based on a GQM plan. Based on a large number of interviews, the factors that are believed to determine the trustworthiness of Open Source Software will be analyzed. Then, a set of repositories and projects will be identified and tested so as to gather information about their intrinsic characteristics and check if it is possible to measure the previously identified factors. Then, a number of tools will be developed to measure the factors for which there are no tools available. Finally, we will build and validate a trustworthinessbased model.