Application of DEA to Measure the Efficiency of Open Source Software Projects

This paper evaluates the relative performance of open source software projects by evaluating multiple project inputs and multiple project outputs by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The DEA model produces an efficiency score for each project based on project inputs and outputs. One of the important issues in data envelopment analysis is ranking DMUs. In this paper, open source software projects (OSS) are considered as decision making units which consume inputs to generate outputs. In this article, three standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models are used to evaluate the open source software projects. Also, super-efficiency model are used for ranking. Due to the inability of the models to rank projects, the AP-super efficiency model (the most important and popular method for ranking units) has been used for ranking OSS projects. The result of this research is a practical model that can be used by OSS project developers in order to evaluate the relative performance of their projects and make decision for their sources. Also, OSS projects can now be adequately ranked and evaluated according to project performance.