Guest Editorial Open source software: investigating the software engineering, psychosocial and economic issues

In its first year, the minitrack on Open Source Software (OSS) Development will provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of a fascinating and increasingly important mode of software development. OSS is a broad term used to embrace software that is developed and released under some sort of “open source” license. There are thousands of OSS projects, spanning a range of applications, operating system (e.g, Linux, BSD), Internet infrastructure (e.g., the Apache Web Server, sendmail, bind), user applications (e.g., the GIMP, OpenOffice), programming languages (e.g., Perl, Python, gcc) and games (e.g., Paradise). A key feature of OSS development is the participation of a community of developers and active users primarily via the Internet. This mode of interaction creates new challenges to software development, as team members work in a distributed environment and often as volunteers rather than employees. The empirical literature on software engineering, programmers and the social and technical aspects of software development suggests that such teams would face insurmountable difficulties in developing code, yet in fact some of these teams have been remarkably successful. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to the phenomenon of OSS as an intriguing and successful form of Internetsupported work. Understanding how these teams work is important because a digital society entails an increased use of Internet-supported distributed teams for a wide range of knowledge work. This minitrack brings together nine papers addressing various aspects of the OSS phenomenon. The minitrack starts with the paper “The Mysteries of Open Source Software: Black and White and Red All Over” by Brian Fitzgerald and Par Agerfalk. This paper offers a general discussion of the OSS concept, noting a number of “contradictions, paradoxes and tensions throughout”. The session continues with two papers discussing community issues in OSS project teams in more detail. The first, “Collaboration, Leadership, Control, and Conflict Negotiation in the Netbeans.org Open Source Software Development Community” by Chris Jensen and Walt Scacchi, examines leadership and control sharing across organizations and individuals, in and between communities, using the Netbeans.org community as an example. The second paper, “Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects” by Joel West and Siobhan O'Mahony, contrasts the lifecycles of two kinds of OSS projects, community-founded vs. spinouts from an organization, and discusses in particular the problems of building a community in the later case. The second session includes three papers that focus on the internal workings of OSS projects. The first, “Effective work practices for FLOSS development: A model and propositions” by Kevin Crowston, Hala Annabi, James Howison and Chengetai Masango, develops a set of propositions about the performance of FLOSS teams based on Hackman’s model of effectiveness of work teams. The second paper, “Discussion of a Large-Scale Open Source Data Collection Methodology” by Michael Hahsler and Stefan Koch, presents a set of research areas that could be studied by collecting data on a large number of open source software projects from a single project repository. The final paper in the session, “A Preliminary Analysis of the Influences of Licensing and Organizational Sponsorship on Success in Open Source Projects” by Katherine J. Stewart, Anthony P. Ammeter and Likoebe M. Maruping, develops a model of the impact of licensing restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship on the popularity and vitality of open source software (OSS) development projects and tests it using data from Freshmeat.net and OSS project home pages. The final session includes two papers that consider relations between projects. The first of these, “A Topological Analysis of the Open Source Software Development Community” by Jin Xu, Yongqin Gao, Scott Christley and Gregory Madey, uses social network data about SourceForge developers to examine the topology and evolution of the OSS development community. The second, “Shifting the Creative Effort: Knowledge Reuse in Open Source Software Development” by Stefan Haefliger and Sebastian Spaeth, examines the forms and extent of knowledge reuse from a sample of six open source software projects. The final paper in the minitrack, “Exploring Usability Discussions in Open Source Development” by Michael B. Twidale and David M. Nichols, examines bug reports from several projects to characterize how developers address and resolve issues concerning user interface and interaction design. These nine papers provide a cross-section of the current state of the research on Open Source Software development. We thank all authors who submitted papers and the reviewers for their contributions to the mini-track.

Something Happened on the Way to the ©

Full Papers.- A Framework for Evaluating Managerial Styles in Open Source Projects.- Forging A Community - Not: Experiences On Establishing An Open Source Project.- Mapping Linux Security Targets to Existing Test Suites.- Overview on Trust in Large FLOSS Communities.- PMLite: An Open Source Solution for Process Monitoring.- Requirements Acquisition in Open Source Development: Firefox 2.0.- Analysis of Coordination Between Developers and Users in the Apache Community.- Lost and Gained in Translation: Adoption of Open Source Software Development at Hewlett-Packard.- Mining for Practices in Community Collections: Finds From Simple Wikipedia.- Open to Grok. How do Hackers' Practices Produce Hackers?.- Social Dynamics of FLOSS Team Communication Across Channels.- Towards a Global Research Infrastructure for Multidisciplinary Study of Free/Open Source Software Development.- Update Propagation Practices in Highly Reusable Open Source Components.- Using Social Network Analysis Techniques to Study Collaboration between a FLOSS Community and a Company.- Empirical Analysis of the Bug Fixing Process in Open Source Projects.- The Total Growth of Open Source.- Adoption of Open Source in the Software Industry.- Migration Discourse Structures: Escaping Microsoft's Desktop Path.- The SQO-OSS Quality Model: Measurement Based Open Source Software Evaluation.- Short Papers.- An Open Integrated Environment for Transparent Fuzzy Agents Design.- Archetypal Internet-Scale Source Code Searching.- Channeling Firefox Developers: Mom and Dad Aren't Happy Yet.- Continuous Integration in Open Source Software Development.- Extracting Generally Applicable Patterns from Object-Oriented Programs for the Purpose of Test Case Creation.- Social Networking Technologies for Free-Open Source E-Learning Systems.- The Networked Forge: New Environments for Libre Software Development.- To What Extent Does It Pay to Approach Open Source Software for a Big Telco Player?.- A Framework to Abstract The Design Practices of e-Learning System Projects.- Assessing Innovation in the Software Sector: Proprietary vs. FOSS Production Mode. Preliminary Evidence from the Italian Case.- Detecting Agility of Open Source Projects Through Developer Engagement.- Facilitating Social Network Studies of FLOSS using the OSSNetwork Environment.- Reflection on Knowledge Sharing in F/OSS Projects.- Usability in Company Open Source Software Context - Initial Findings from an Empirical Case Study.- Willingness to Cooperate Within the Open Source Software Domain.- Open Source Project Categorization Based on Growth Rate Analysis and Portfolio Planning Methods.- Applying Open Source Development Practices Inside a Company.- Towards The Evaluation of OSS Trustworthiness: Lessons Learned From The Observation of Relevant OSS Projects.- Open Source Reference Systems for Biometric Verification of Identity.- eResearch Workflows for Studying Free and Open Source Software Development.- Panels.- Panel: Opportunities and Risks for Open Source Software in Industry.- Posters and Demonstrations.- Open Source Environments for Collaborative Experiments in e-Science.

Open Source Software (OSS) development challenges traditional software engineering practices. In particular, OSS projects are managed by a large number of volunteers, working freely on the tasks they choose to undertake. OSS projects also rarely rely on explicit system-level design, or on project plans or schedules. Moreover, OSS developers work in arbitrary locations and collaborate almost exclusively over the Internet, using simple tools such as email and software code tracking databases (e.g. CVS). All the characteristics above make OSS development akin to weaving a tapestry of heterogeneous components. The OSS design process relies on various types of actors: people with prescribed roles, but also elements coming from a variety of information spaces (such as email and software code). The objective of our research is to understand the specific hybrid weaving accomplished by the actors of this distributed, collective design process. This, in turn, challenges traditional methodologies used to understand distributed software engineering: OSS development is simply too “fibrous” to lend itself well to analysis under a single methodological lens. In this paper, we describe the methodological framework we articulated to analyze collaborative design in the Open Source world. Our framework focuses on the links between the heterogeneous components of a project’s hybrid network. We combine ethnography, text mining, and socio-technical network analysis and visualization to understand OSS development in its totality. This way, we are able to simultaneously consider the social, technical, and cognitive aspects of OSS development. We describe our methodology in detail, and discuss its implications for future research on distributed collective practices.

Open Source, Anarchy, and the Utopian Impulse

In open source software (OSS) development domain (a largely volunteer driven, geographically distributed, web based form of software development), it is mainly the OSS developers who are responsible for overseeing and managing the develop-mental activities. Existing OSS literature, based on qualitative analysis of web-based artifacts (e.g. data on discussion forums, issue databases) of a few OSS projects, report that requirements generation in OSS development is largely informal and ad hoc. But there is lack of an empirical study involving the practitioners themselves i.e. the OSS developers. We conducted a web-based survey among OSS developers in order to gain insights in to how they actually practice requirements engineering activities and what are their perceptions about it. For 57 requirements engineering practices obtained from closed source software development (CSSD) literature, the respondents indicated whether they currently used those practices in their OSS projects and whether those practices were useful for OSS development. The analysis of survey responses revealed that OSS developers used requirements engineering practices (from CSSD) significantly less in their developmental activities than what they believed they should have, indicated through usefulness ratings. We also asked participating OSS developers to indicate their perceptions about the usage of five informal requirements generation activities re-ported in OSS literature (e.g. developers simply asserting the requirements instead of eliciting). Subsequent analysis revealed that OSS developers used informal requirements generation activities significantly more than requirements elicitation practices (from CSSD) in their developmental activities. We use the survey findings to discuss implications for practice and research.

How Free Became Open and Everything Else under the Sun

Methodology for Public Administrators for selecting between open source and proprietary software

Cloud computing, where scalable, on-demand compute cycles and storage are available as a service, has the potential to accelerate mass spectrometry-based proteomics research by providing simple, expandable, and affordable large-scale computing to all laboratories regardless of location or information technology expertise. We present new cloud computing functionality for the Trans-Proteomic Pipeline, a free and open-source suite of tools for the processing and analysis of tandem mass spectrometry datasets. Enabled with Amazon Web Services cloud computing, the Trans-Proteomic Pipeline now accesses large scale computing resources, limited only by the available Amazon Web Services infrastructure, for all users. The Trans-Proteomic Pipeline runs in an environment fully hosted on Amazon Web Services, where all software and data reside on cloud resources to tackle large search studies. In addition, it can also be run on a local computer with computationally intensive tasks launched onto the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud service to greatly decrease analysis times. We describe the new Trans-Proteomic Pipeline cloud service components, compare the relative performance and costs of various Elastic Compute Cloud service instance types, and present on-line tutorials that enable users to learn how to deploy cloud computing technology rapidly with the Trans-Proteomic Pipeline. We provide tools for estimating the necessary computing resources and costs given the scale of a job and demonstrate the use of cloud enabled Trans-Proteomic Pipeline by performing over 1100 tandem mass spectrometry files through four proteomic search engines in 9 h and at a very low cost.

This paper investigates competition between open source and proprietary software. Open source software is divided into two types: free open source and commercial open source. Free open source software can be available from the not-for-profit community, and Commercial open source software is software product based on free open source software. The usability of both free and commercial open source software is assumed to be inferior to proprietary software. It finds that: (i) when commercial open source vendor faces competition from proprietary software and free open source software, it may still be able to obtain profits; (ii) commercial open source vendor's pricing (resp. share or profit) may still be much lower (resp. less) than that of proprietary vendor even if its software functionality is not inferior to proprietary software; (iii) commercial open source vendor's pricing and profit may not increase as its software usability increases; (iv) proprietary software's price decreases with the usability of commercial open source software. Index Terms—proprietary software, open source software, price competition, software features, software usability

Cyber security is a rapidly developing field and open-source software (OSS) is being led by a collaborative community and a transparent nature. This research intends to make a theoretical framework highlighting the symbiosis of community engagement models, governance models, and the security of open-source ecosystems. The significant purposes aim to investigate how community engagement affects open source software development, analyze the deployment of the governance systems in widely used open source projects, and create the theoretical model that brings the cybersecurity processes in those practices. The literature survey covers existing research on open-source software development, community engagement, governance models, and cybersecurity practices within the OSS ecosystem. Through literature review the basic concepts are investigated using conceptual analysis to determine which principles and mechanisms the Community Model Engagement and Governance models operate, influencing the security of Open Source Software. Open-source project policy recommendations are the foundation for the security of communities where members fully contribute to better governance. This includes developing a fundamental conceptual analysis to lay out the framework's principles and operation (mechanisms). This contributes to the overall development of the theoretical framework. This research expects to develop a standardized theoretical framework that tackles the community engagement-governance models-security software link from new and insightful perspectives. Practical policy recommendations to protect OSS projects will be presented to solve the cybersecurity problem easily and immediately. This study aims to add to the academic and practical discussions that focus on human and organizational components' critical roles in securing open-source software. The discussion of theoretical aspects gives this platform a unique angle that fits well into the technical approach while improving the understanding of a legally open cybersecurity community

Abstract. Open source software could emerge thanks to the development of the Internet, development tools, and computer literacy in general. The most attractive parameter of open source GIS software is a free license. The rapid pace of development, attracting developers from all over the world and high modularity stimulate the innovative nature of open source software. Here, the introduction of new technologies does not meet with opposition, but rather welcomes. These circumstances, as well as elucidation of the functional capabilities of such GIS, become very important in the search for means of providing the educational process with modern GIS software, which is traditionally an expensive proprietary software. Goal: Analysis of up-to-date GIS software protection and visual accessibility of the QGIS system in the first place with studying geoinformation systems.Quantum GIS (QGIS) is an open source software (GIS) geographic information system (GIS). Open software is one of the most interesting technological phenomena of the present, owing to its rapid growth in the development of the Internet, development tools and computer literacy in general. The key role in the creation, development and support of open source software is played, as a rule, by the community of developers forming around individual software products: commercial companies, groups of enthusiasts or research organizations. The term open source was proposed by Bruce Perens, one of the key leaders in the Open Source and Free Software movement, cofounder with Eric Raymind in 1998 of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), an open source software development organization that promotes and provides technical open source support. This open source term is used by OSI to determine whether a software license complies with open source standards. The main features of open source software as defined include free distribution, accessible source code, permission to modify this source code. At the same time, even successful open source software products require companies on the market ready to provide technical support and advice on issues related to the selected products. However, the number of companies providing support services for open source GIS software is still relatively small.

Free Stuff for Your Computer

Open source software (OSS) has been playing a fundamental role in not only information technology but also our social lives. Attracted by various advantages of OSS, increasing commercial companies are participating extensively in open source development, and this has had a broad impact. Enormous research efforts have been devoted to understanding this phenomenon and trying to pursue a win-win result. To characterize the current research achievement and identify challenges, this article provides a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of existing research on company participation in OSS. We collected 105 papers and organized them based on their research topics, which cover three main directions, i.e., participation motivation, contribution model, and impact on OSS development. We found that companies have diverse motivations from economic, technological, and social aspects, and no one study covered all the motivation categories. Existing studies categorize five main companies’ contribution models in OSS projects through their objectives and how they shape OSS communities. Researchers also explored how commercial participation affects OSS development, including companies, developers, and OSS projects. This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of commercial participation in OSS development. Based on our findings, we present a set of research challenges and promising directions for companies’ better participation in OSS.

An analysis of open source software licensing questions in Stack Exchange sites