Keynote: Judith Bishop

An operating system is frequently the largest and most fundamental piece of software on a computer. From its installation, it rapidly transforms into an individualized ecosystem, based on its connections to other software, compilers, drivers, intranet and user habits. Companies such as Microsoft are no longer maintaining one operating system, but billions of individual versions of it. So how does a company face up to the issues of reliability and maintenance in this context? What do we do with the bug reports that flood in in their billions? Can we predict where problems will occur before they do? In this talk, we present case studies of research into Windows and Visual Studio maintenance over the past decade. Issues of scale, globalization and system complexity are discussed and some surprising figures given. We´ll end with some future directions in bug prediction that might help stem the tide.