A survey on open source software trustworthiness

Trustworthiness is a crucial characteristic when it comes to evaluating any product. Despite the fact that Open Source Software has now begun to get more widely used, Open Source Software product trustworthiness is even more important than for many other products. We have carried out a survey to identify the reasons and motivations that lead software companies to adopt or reject Open Source Software, and we investigated and ranked according to their importance the specific trust factors that are taken into account when selecting an Open Source Software component or product. We surveyed people with different roles and responsibilities to have a complete picture. At any rate, there do not seem to be many significant differences across different groups of interviewees, so the overall results of our survey may apply to a wide group of Open Source Software stakeholders. In addition to prospective adopters of Open Source Software component and products, the motivations and importance ranking of factors may be useful for the developers of Open Source Software to make their products and components more interesting and useful for the other stakeholders.