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Conference paper
Measurement of failure rate in widely distributed software
Abstract
The failure rate of widely distributed software products as a function of severity, release and time is reported. The measurement technique develops a direct link between failures and faults, providing an opportunity to study and describe the failure process. Two metrics, the fault weight, corresponding to the number of failures due to a fault, and the failure window, measuring the length of time between the first and last fault, are defined and characterized.