Research Experiment: Creating Software Bugs to Android Applications

As an Android developer, have you seen and fixed any bugs (formally, we call them software faults) in your applications? Do you still remember what they look like? +++ General Task: This research project invites you to create bugs (software faults) to the Android applications attached. They can be any bugs that you have seen or fixed before, or any bugs you think that are very common in Android applications. In other word, the Android applications attached do not have bugs (well… I cannot guarantee). Your task in this Freelancer project is to creating/seeding/injecting bugs to these android applications, to make them become faulty versions of the original applications. +++ What is a bug? A bug might be in one line of the source code, or located in multiple lines or places. So, you are free to make any changes to the application to create a bug, as long as it makes the application produce unexpected and incorrect behaviors. Please make sure the faulty version application you created is able to be launched. If a bug makes the application crash immediately after launched, it is considered too trivial to be used in our research. Bugs that make the application only crash after certain inputs are welcomed. To avoid any possible threats to the validity of our research, I cannot provide any examples of how to create a bug, or what a bug looks like. +++ How many bugs are needed? For each experiment Android application, please create at most 25 bugs; Overall, each freelancer please create at most 100 bugs in total (you can skip those applications you do not like, or only create a couple for them). +++ What to submit? Please submit the following deliverables for each bug you create: 1. Description of the bug you create, i.e. where and what changes have you made to the original application? Any incorrect behaviors? 2. What kind of test can find this bug? (the test can be in the form of test code, or simple description, e.g. rotate the screen, type “abc” in the first text area, tap on the first green button.) +++ How do you get paid? I really appreciate everyone who offers help to us. This is a non-profit scientific research project. Freelancers will get paid according to the number of the bugs they created. Each valid bug will be paid for $1 USD. +++ Important: Please create and separate each bug as one single faulty version, i.e. do not mix multiple bugs in one faulty version. Please note that these Android applications were developed with Eclipse and ANT, instead of Android Studio and Gradle. So experience with Eclipse and ANT is required.