Abstract: Major key players in the software arena no longer view Open Source Software as simply a research subject or a type of software developed by groups of enthusiastic amateurs. Ethical and political reasons also motivate the use of Open Source Software. As a result, Open Source Software components are now at the core of many software systems that are widely used by large numbers of users. However, the quality of Open Source Software, notably its trustworthiness, is sometimes considered as an issue. Open Source Software provides both opportunities and challenges that may be relevant for quality assessment by software developers, companies, and final users.

The talk describes the approach used in the QualiPSo Project, a EU-funded initiative that specifically addresses the trustworthiness of Open Source Software. In addition to results that have been obtained so far, the talk will also point out a few issues that Open Source Software development communities should address to increase the opportunities and reduce the challenges related to Open Source Software quality assessment.

Short Bio: Sandro Morasca is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Insubria in Como, Italy. He was an Associate Professor and Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano in Milano, Italy. He was a Faculty Research Assistant and later a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Maryland at College Park. Sandro Morasca has been actively carrying out research in the Software Engineering field in Empirical Software Engineering, Specification of Concurrent and Real-time Software Systems, Software Verification, and Open Source Software, and has published about 20 journal papers and 50 conference papers. Sandro Morasca has been involved in a number of national and international projects. He is currently the Leader of the activity related to the trustworthiness of Open Source Software in the QualiPSo project, financed by the European Union. Sandro Morasca has served on the PC of a number of international software engineering conferences and serves on the Steering Committee of the international conference 'ESEM' and on the editorial board of 'Empirical Software Engineering: An International Journal,' published by Springer-Verlag.