I love bugs. I work on automatic software repair. Hence, I am constantly looking for empirical knowledge on bugs.
Here are the main papers on this topic. I you know more of them, please drop me an email.
–Martin Monperrus
An analysis of errors and their causes in system programs # TSE 1975
An experiment in software error data collection and analysis # TSE 1979
Software errors and complexity. An empirical investigation # CACM 1984
A study of software failures and recovery in the MVS operating system # IEEE Tr. on Computers 1984
Collecting and categorizing software error data in an industrial environment. # JSS 1984
An empirical study of software interface faults # 1987
The errors of TeX # SPE 1989
Toward a theory of computer program bugs: an empirical test # IJMMM 1989
A case history analysis of software error cause-effect relationships # TSE 1991
Software Defects and Their Impact on System Availability A Study of Field Failures in Operating Systems # FTC 1991
A comparison of software defects in database management systems and operating systems # FTC 1992
Orthogonal defect classification-a concept for in-process measurements # TSE 1992
Software faults in evolving a large, real-time system: a case study # ESEC 1993
My hairiest bug war stories # CACM 1997
Error and failure analysis of a unix server # 1998
Quantitative analysis of faults and failures in a complex software system # TSE 2000
Whither generic recovery from application faults A fault study using open-source software # FTCS 2000
An empirical study of operating systems errors # SOSP 2001
Seven pernicious kingdoms: A taxonomy of software security errors # S&P 2005
Have things changed now?: an empirical study of bug characteristics in modern open source software # 2006
Emulation of software faults: a field data study and a practical approach # TSE 2006
Learning from mistakes: a comprehensive study on real world concurrency bug characteristics # ASPLOS 2008
Common trends in software fault and failure data # TSE 2009
The secret life of bugs: Going past the errors and omissions in software repositories # ICSE 2009
Common trends in software fault and failure data # TSE 2009
An empirical investigation of fault types in space mission system software # DSN 2010
A study of the internal and external effects of concurrency bugs # DSN 2010
Characterizing failures in mobile OSes: A case study with android and symbian # ISSRE 2010
An empirical study of reported bugs in server software with implications for automated bug diagnosis # ICSE 2010
A large-scale study of failures in high-performance computing systems # IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2010
High-impact defects: a study of breakage and surprise defects # FSE 2011
Faults in Linux: ten years later # SOSP 2011
How do fixes become bugs? # FSE 2011
Security versus performance bugs: a case study on firefox # MSR 2011
Understanding and detecting real-world performance bugs # PLDI 2012
Exploring the missing link: an empirical study of software fixes # STVR 2013
Bug characteristics in open source software # EmSE 2013
An Empirical Analysis of Bug Reports and Bug Fixing in Open Source Android Apps # CSMR 2013
CoREBench: Studying Complexity of Regression Errors # ISSTA 2014
Correlations between bugginess and time-based commit characteristics # EmSE 2014
An Empirical Study of Dormant Bugs # MSR 2014
Simple testing can prevent most critical failures: an analysis of production failures in distributed data-intensive systems # USENIX 2014
Taxdc: A taxonomy of non-deterministic concurrency bugs in data-center distributed systems # 2016
Bug characteristics in blockchain systems: a large-scale empirical study # MSR 2017
A Study of Causes and Consequences of Client-Side JavaScript Bugs # TSE 2017
Towards Understanding Bugs in An Open Source Cloud Management Stack: An Empirical Study of OpenStack Software Bugs # JSS 2019
Not All Bugs Are the Same:Understanding, Characterizing, and Classifying Bug Types # JSS 2019
A large-scale empirical study of compiler errors in continuous integration. # ESEC-FSE 2019
Using Orthogonal Defect Classification to Characterize NoSQL Database Defects # JSS 2019
No Strings Attached: An Empirical Study of String-related Software Bugs # ASE 2020