Free and Open Source Software Quality Assurance

During the past two decades, the free and open source software community has been developing high quality software that proved to be a serious rival to proprietary software produced by commercial companies. However, in spite of its considerable success within the developers´ community, F/OSS did not attract many enthusiasts from outside this community. Claims against the adoption of F/OSS are usually rooted in the apparent lack of quality assurance mechanisms required to guarantee the protection of users´ interests. The objective of this study is to promote higher adoption of F/OSS artefacts outside the developers´ community by exploring possibilities to provide appropriate assurances that F/OSS artefacts will meet the quality levels expected by users