  Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades, but
relatively few analyses were performed on open source software (OSS). As OSS
has become very popular in our daily life, many researchers have been keen on
the quality practices in this area. Although quality management presents
distinct patterns compared with those in closed-source software development,
some widely used OSS products have been implemented. Therefore, quality
assurance of OSS projects has attracted increased research focuses. In this
paper, a survey is conducted to reveal the general quality practices in open
source communities. Exploratory analysis has been carried out to disclose those
quality related activities. The results are compared with those from
closed-source environments and the distinguished features of the quality
assurance in OSS projects have been confirmed. Moreover, this study suggests
potential directions for OSS developers to follow.
