Putting it all in the trunk: incremental software development in the FreeBSD open source project

Software development in the FreeBSD project is incremental in the sense that a stream of contributions, including bugfixes and minor and major new features, go into a single branch in the repository, the development branch (or “trunk”), and are required to preserve the software in a working state. This creates a succession of development releases, akin to the practice of frequent releasing argued by Eric S. Raymond in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar to be the key to the success of Linux and other open source projects. The positive and negative impact of this approach is discussed based on a survey involving 72 project participants. On the positive side, the data indicate that it creates a highly motivating “see bug, fix bug, see bug fixed in new release” life cycle, and helps integrate bugfixing with new development. On the negative side, the data indicates that the highly incremental model does not support the development of complex new features.