Applications
Developers get open-source quality tool
Alitheia out in alpha.
By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service | Published 10:48, 15 July 08
Developers are to be offered an open-source, quality-checking tool, courtesy of a European-Union funded body. The Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software (SQO-OSS) project has released an alpha version of the Alitheia Core tool.
The SQO-OSS project is being developed by a group of academic institutions, companies and open-source projects around Europe.
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"By analysing public data sources relating to open source projects (email, bug tracking data, code, version control metadata) the system utilises metric-based assessment techniques to assess quality characteristics," according to the project's website.
The initial release should be considered a "usable alpha," according to a press release: "Whilst core functionality is provided, performance issues remain and customisation is currently disabled." It is available under the two-clause BSD open-source licence.
Right now, a web interface is available, but the project plans to plug into the Eclipse environment as well.
Alitheia Core will serve as a counterpart to a growing industry around open-source software quality and usage within enterprises.
The tool may enjoy a slightly broader audience in Europe, at least for now. A recent Forrester Research study found that France and Germany had greater open-source adoption rates than the US and Canada, although the UK lagged behind those countries.
Forty-five percent of European companies had concerns about the security of open-source software, compared to 71 percent of North Americans surveyed.
Now read Glyn Moody's Open Enterprise blog: True Open Source Quality
