Free/Libre Open Source Software Research Articles

Adoption of free/libre open source software in public organizations: factors of impact

PurposeIn this paper the authors aim to investigate the importance of factors for the adoption of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) in the public sector. They seek to evaluate how different factors impact during the initiation and implementation phases of the adoption process.Design/methodology/approachThe authors base the methodological approach on two exploratory case studies with a contrasting result logic. They build a multi‐level framework grounded both on literature review, and feedback from stakeholders. They then apply the framework to two case studies to better frame the findings. They consider phases of adoption (initiation, implementation) and the levels of adoption (technological, organizational, environmental, individual).FindingsIn the case studies, the authors found the importance of a strong and decision‐centric management board to give the impulse for the initiation phase of the process. As perceived by the stakeholders, a strong governmental support is of paramount importance to increase the adoption at the public level, although in the case studies examined the initiation stage started from the impulse of a championing management. Both case studies passed the initiation phase successfully. Continuous employees' training, organizational objectives consensus, and business process reengineering have been found important for the implementation phase. In the case study in which these factors were not in place, the implementation phase of adoption failed. Environmental factors – although relevant for the initiation of the adoption process – are less significant during the actual implementation of the adoption process, as the contrasting result logic from the case studies shows.Research limitations/implicationsThe study refers to two public organizations in a specific environmental setting. No causality among factors has been inferred. Quantitative objective data have been used to determine the success of adoption, for qualitative data multiple sources have been used when possible to limit threats to validity.Practical implicationsThe framework can be used by stakeholders in public organizations to better frame their adoption strategies and to compare results across institutions. Lessons learnt from the case studies can be useful to drive future adoptions of FLOSS.Originality/valueThe framework combines phases of adoption and levels making it possible to frame the analysis of the case studies. It has been operationalized with a set of metrics, and with a protocol for the case studies to increase replicability value.

Division of Effort, Productivity, Quality, and Relationships in FLOSS Virtual Teams: Evidence from the FreeBSD Project

Research in virtual teams and distributed work argues that the lack of collocation places an overhead on the performance potential of large, globally distributed teams. In this paper, we revisit this tenet through a case study of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development to demonstrate how globally dispersed FLOSS communities manage to overcome the problem of geographic separation of their members. Our results show that successful FLOSS teams demonstrate a truly global distribution of members, who perform different types of work so as to achieve consistent round-the-clock development, without any apparent ill effects on team productivity and the quality of the resulting outcomes. Cooperation between team members is abundant, especially at more complex work items, and does not seem to be affected by distance; only mentoring relationships appear in some cases to be easier to cultivate between individuals living closer together. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom of research in distributed work, in cases where virtual teams consist of highly skilled and motivated individuals, who leverage the power of communication technologies to overcome problems associated with physical distance.

Effort estimation of FLOSS projects: a study of the Linux kernel

Empirical research on Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) has shown that developers tend to cluster around two main roles: “core” contributors differ from “peripheral” developers in terms of a larger number of responsibilities and a higher productivity pattern. A further, cross-cutting characterization of developers could be achieved by associating developers with “time slots”, and different patterns of activity and effort could be associated to such slots. Such analysis, if replicated, could be used not only to compare different FLOSS communities, and to evaluate their stability and maturity, but also to determine within projects, how the effort is distributed in a given period, and to estimate future needs with respect to key points in the software life-cycle (e.g., major releases). This study analyses the activity patterns within the Linux kernel project, at first focusing on the overall distribution of effort and activity within weeks and days; then, dividing each day into three 8-hour time slots, and focusing on effort and activity around major releases. Such analyses have the objective of evaluating effort, productivity and types of activity globally and around major releases. They enable a comparison of these releases and patterns of effort and activities with traditional software products and processes, and in turn, the identification of company-driven projects (i.e., working mainly during office hours) among FLOSS endeavors. The results of this research show that, overall, the effort within the Linux kernel community is constant (albeit at different levels) throughout the week, signalling the need of updated estimation models, different from those used in traditional 9am–5pm, Monday to Friday commercial companies. It also becomes evident that the activity before a release is vastly different from after a release, and that the changes show an increase in code complexity in specific time slots (notably in the late night hours), which will later require additional maintenance efforts.

Foresighting FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) from a developing country perspective: The case of Turkey

Since free/libre open source software (FLOSS) promotes collaboration and contributions from different parties in software production and innovation processes, it can create a unique opportunity for developing countries, by generating an innovative capability in software technology. To benefit from this opportunity, it is important to understand the strategic factors and future trends that affect the development of an efficient FLOSS economy in developing countries. This paper aims to examine the strategic factors and future trends that are likely to affect the development and deployment of FLOSS in Turkey. Based on the internal and external factors identified through the practice of technological foresight, a SWOT analysis will be carried out to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for Turkey in creating a competitive software industry that can benefit from the advantages of FLOSS. Accordingly, with regard to the required technical infrastructure, an innovative/competitive business climate, skilled human resources and support for institutional structures, policy suggestions are outlined here that could be usefully implemented by government, industry and universities.

Measuring Open Source Quality

There is an ample debate over the quality of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) with mixed research results. The authors show that a reason for these mixed results is that quality is being defined, measured, and evaluated differently. They report the most popular approaches including software structure measures, process measures, and maturity assessment models. The way researchers have built their samples has also contributed to the mixed results with different project properties being considered and ignored. Because FLOSS projects evolve with each release, their quality does too, and it must be measured using metrics that take into account their communities’ commitment to quality rather than just the structure of the resulting code. Challenges exist in defining what constitutes a defect or bug, and the role of modularity in affecting FLOSS quality. The authors suggest three considerations for future research on FLOSS quality models: (1) defect resolution rate, (2) kind of software product, and (3) modularity—both technical and organizational.

Adopting Free/Libre/Open Source Software Practices, Techniques and Methods for Industrial Use

Today’s software companies face the challenges of highly distributed development projects and constantly changing requirements. This paper proposes the adoption of relevant Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) practices in order to improve software development projects in industry. Many FLOSS projects have proven to be very successful, producing high quality products with steady and frequent releases. This study aims to identify FLOSS practices that can be adapted for the corporate environment. To achieve this goal, a framework to compare FLOSS and industrial development methodologies was created. Three successful FLOSS projects were selected as study targets (the Linux Kernel, the FreeBSD operating system, and the JBoss application server), as well as two projects from Ericsson, a large telecommunications company. Based on an analysis of these projects, FLOSS best practices were tailored to fit industrial development environments. The final results consisted of a set of key adoption opportunities that aimed to improve software quality and overall development productivity by importing best practices from the FLOSS environment. The adoption opportunities were then validated at three large corporations.

Floss firms, users and communities: a viable match?

The participation of firms in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities is growing and is increasingly debated among scholars. As Ousterhout (1999) explained, “FLOSS needs profit” and we do not know of any successful FLOSS products without firms in their ecosystem, either through the financial support of foundations (Eclipse, Linux) or the commercial supply of products or services (MySQL, Red Hat Linux). Various views of these phenomena have been proposed, but scholars have usually studied either the involvement of firms in a community or the integration of FLOSS into their market strategy, but not both. In this article, we argue for a more structured and global analysis, based on concepts of industrial economics, and thus starting from the basic conditions of the computer market and demand. This conceptual framework helps to distinguish the different roles firms may play in the FLOSS ecosystem and, more specifically, the different ways they are involved in development.JEL Codes: L11, L15, L22, L86

Exploring the Interplay Between FLOSS Adoption and Organizational Innovation

Growing research on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) has addressed a variety of questions focusing on aspects ranging from open source development processes and developer motivation, to economic and policy-making implications. Nevertheless, a few authors have examined the adoption of FLOSS and its impact on organizational change and innovation. Adoption studies represent a particularly promising area for information system researchers to investigate the relationship between the specific properties of FLOSS and the processes of implementation and use. The goal of this article is to contribute to this field of research by discussing a former multi-targeted research agenda and by defining an empirically grounded framework for studying FLOSS adoption, drawing on the outcomes of an exploratory multiple case study involving sixteen Italian public administrations.

Weaving the “mobile web” in the context of ICT4D: A preliminary exploration of the state of the art

This paper considers the recent development-related initiatives championed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). More specifically, it examines the mandate of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) and Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D) interest group with respect to their connections with the broader Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) movement, and, to a lesser extent, the concurrent focus on Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS). Through a close review and discussion of the technical literature, and an evocation of critical perspectives related to ICT4D, foundational material is introduced towards considering the emancipatory potential of these initiatives as a core research question. Ultimately, it is argued (albeit tentatively given the evolving nature of these very-current projects) that this work remains important to the research community, but its integration within the broader agenda for international development requires further consideration. Accordingly, the paper concludes with a series of questions that can further inform research in this field.

Flat for the Few, Steep for the Many

A discrepancy exists between the emphasis posed by practitioners on decentralized and non-hierarchical communication in Free Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities and empirical evidence of their hierarchical structure. To explain this paradox, it is hypothesized firstly that in FLOSS communities local sub-groups exist and are less hierarchical, more decentralized than the whole social network. Secondly, it is hypothesized that the bulk of communication exchanges taking place in the community happens inside local sub-groups formed by the most active community members. The recollection that practitioners have of FLOSS communities to which they participate would then be influenced by the position that they occupy inside those sub-groups. A measure of structural cohesion based on network node connectivity is proposed as an effective method to test whether FLOSS communication networks can be decomposed in nested hierarchies of progressively less centralized sub-groups. The recently introduced measure of weighted rich-club effect is adopted to test for the tendency of the most active community members to control communication by interacting more intensely with each other than with other members of the network. Results from a case study that are consistent with the hypotheses are presented and discussed.

Can Open Source Projects Succeed When the Producers are Not Users? Lessons from the Data Processing Field.

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) proposes an original way to solve the incentive dilemma for the production of information goods, based on von~Hippel (1988)'s user-as-innovator principle: as users benefit from innovation, they have incentive to produce it, and as they can expect cumulative innovation on their own proposition, they have incentive to share it. But what is the incentive for producers when they are not users? We discuss this question via a quantitative study of FLOSS projects in “algorithm-based industries”. We find that in that case producers hardly participate in such projects.

A longitudinal analysis of trajectory changes in the software industry: the case of the content management application segment

The software industry is changing as a result of the rising influence both of packaged and of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), but the change trajectory of the industry is still not well understood. This paper aims to contribute to clarifying software industry evolution through a longitudinal study, using Industry Change Trajectory Theory to explain and predict the evolution of the Content Management Systems (CMS) segment and the extent to which its results can be generalized to the overall software industry. Our data analysis shows that CMS players are experiencing a modification of their segments’ change trajectory. While McGahan in 2004 recognized that the software industry was in a creative change trajectory, it has subsequently faced strong competition on its core assets, (i.e. applications) and the empirical results of our longitudinal study from 2002 to 2007 show the CMS segment is now in a radical change trajectory, due to the rapid obsolescence of its core activities. Changes affecting the segment include the continuous development of CMS applications, the faster extension of functions for FLOSS CMS than for packaged CMS, the diffusion of the practice of providing services as well as delivering of software solutions.

What Makes Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Projects Successful? An Agent-Based Model of FLOSS Projects

The last few years have seen a rapid increase in the number of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Some of these projects, such as Linux and the Apache web server, have become phenomenally successful. However, for every successful FLOSS project there are dozens of FLOSS projects which never succeed. These projects fail to attract developers and/or consumers and, as a result, never get off the ground. The aim of this research is to better understand why some FLOSS projects flourish while others wither and die. This article presents a simple agent-based model that is calibrated on key patterns of data from SourceForge, the largest online site hosting open source projects. The calibrated model provides insight into the conditions necessary for FLOSS success and might be used for scenario analysis of future developments of FLOSS.

Handbook of Research on Open Source Software: Technological, Economic, and Social Perspectives (St. Amant, K. and Still, B., Eds.; 2007) [Book review

This reference book brings together papers that address the whole range of topics in the area of open source software (OSS). The book is divided into seven sections, and each section contains five to ten chapters. Some of the topics covered include: a historical and contextual overview of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and OSS; development models and methods for open source software production; laws and licensing practices; public policy, the public sector and government perspectives; business approaches and applications; and educational perspectives. The book does contain copyediting errors and an incomplete index, but despite the flaws, it is a rich source of research topics that can be used in any computer-related curriculum. It is recommended for every technical library.

Tools to Fight Boredom: FLOSS and GNU/Linux for Artists Working in the Field of Generative Music and Software Art

This article takes a look at the impact the operating system, programming languages and software, as a whole, have on the practice of artists working in the field of generative music and software art. Proprietary operating systems lack the openness needed to create an environment that fulfills the specific needs of artists and musicians who program and programmers who produce art and music. ‘Hackability’, the possibility to take things apart, modify, adjust, and improve, is an ever more important aspect that software artists and electronic musicians seek to include in their production environment. GNU/Linux and Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) possess this feature, and many more, providing artists with a truly creative and open environment, free of unnecessary technical limitations, predetermined interaction, lack of control over the work environment and dependence on software companies.

Teaching Software Engineering with Free/Libre Open Source Projects

One of the major problems in software engineering education is the involvement of students in real world software projects. Industry projects are a solution, but in many cases they are hard to find and student participation can be problematic due to cultural, familiarization and other practical reasons. The abundance of Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects is a neat solution, offering multi-lingual, multicultural environments in virtually every application domain, at different levels of project size, maturity, organization etc. The paper analyzes how acquisition of practical experience on several basic and advanced software engineering topics can be achieved by working in a FLOSS project. The kind of skills that can be acquired are those requested by the Overview Report for Computing Curricula by ACM and topics examined are those of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, by IEEE. Also software engineering areas that require special care or that may not prove suitable for such treatment are identified. Various isolated teaching cases pertaining to this approach are presented and discussed.

Developing 'Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS)' - A Market Driven Investment

Over the last few years, FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) has become a commercially viable reality of the first order. It is viewed as an extreme case of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003), and thus of a laboratory for analysing innovation production in Internet based/knowledge based industries.It the FLOSS field an increasing number of companies are getting involved in the communities of development (Lakhani & Wolf 2005). Scholars (see, for instance Dahlander & Wallin 2006) have analysed this as a way to control a complementary asset, without owning it (as defined by Teece 1986, Teece & al. 1997). In this article, we defend the idea that involvement can be of different intensity, from complementary to specific asset, and that this intensity depends of the market of the firm.To do so, we surveyed francophone companies (France, Belgium, Switzerland) affirming an utilization of FLOSS in their commercial activity. Based on roughly 500 companies concerned, we obtained 141 usable responses and, via an ascendant hierarchical clustering (AHC) we statistically verified a link between FLOSS commercial strategies and degree of involvement into communities. We propose a typology of commercial strategies explaining this differences in involvement.

Identifying exogenous drivers and evolutionary stages in FLOSS projects

The success of a Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) project has been evaluated in the past through the number of commits made to its configuration management system, number of developers and number of users. Most studies, based on a popular FLOSS repository (SourceForge), have concluded that the vast majority of projects are failures. This study’s empirical results confirm and expand conclusions from an earlier and more limited work. Not only do projects from different repositories display different process and product characteristics, but a more general pattern can be observed. Projects may be considered as early inceptors in highly visible repositories, or as established projects within desktop-wide projects, or finally as structured parts of FLOSS distributions. These three possibilities are formalized into a framework of transitions between repositories. The framework developed here provides a wider context in which results from FLOSS repository mining can be more effectively presented. Researchers can draw different conclusions based on the overall characteristics studied about an Open Source software project’s potential for success, depending on the repository that they mine. These results also provide guidance to OSS developers when choosing where to host their project and how to distribute it to maximize its evolutionary success.

Dynamics of innovation in an "open source" collaboration environment: lurking, laboring, and launching FLOSS projects on SourceForge

A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform (SF.net). This approach re-scales March's (1991) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation system” of a “distributed organization” of interacting agents in a virtual collaboration environment, rather than to innovation within a firm. March (1991) views the process of innovation at the organizational level as the coupling of sub-processes of exploration and exploitation. Correspondingly, the innovation system of the virtual collaboration environment represented by SF.net is an emergent property of two “coupled” processes: one involves the interactions among agents searching the locale for information and knowledge resources to use in designing novel software products (i.e., exploration), and the other involves the mobilization of individuals’ capabilities for application in the software development projects that become established on the platform (i.e., exploitation). The micro-dynamics of this system are studied empirically by constructing transition probability matrices representing the movements of 222,835 SF.net users among seven different activity states, which range from “lurking” (not contributing or contributing to projects without becoming a member) to “laboring” (joining one or more projects as members), and to “launching” (founding one or more projects) within each successive 6-month interval. The estimated probabilities are found to form first-order Markov chains describing ergodic processes. This makes it possible the computation of the equilibrium distribution of agents among the states, thereby suppressing transient effects and revealing persisting patterns of project joining and project launching. The latter show the FLOSS innovation process on SF.net to be highly dissipative: a very large proportion of the registered “developers” fail to become even minimally active on the platform. There is nevertheless an active core of mobile project joiners, and a (still smaller) core of project founders who persist in creating new projects. The structure of these groups’ interactions (as displayed within the 3-year period examined) is investigated in detail, and it is shown that it would be sufficient to sustain both the exploration and exploitation phases of the platform's global dynamics.

Free/Libre Open Source Software development in developing and developed countries: A conceptual framework with an exploratory study

We propose a conceptual framework to understand drivers of motivation for developers in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FL/OSS) development across geographic boundaries. We identify generic motivations (such as sharing and learning, financial and career concerns, and satisfying functional needs), and project-level preferences (such as preferences for large teams, modular and universal projects), as well as the links between the two types of preferences of FL/OSS developers in three regions — North America, China, and India. Our findings from an exploratory study indicate the presence of intrinsic motives in all three regions, with North American developers exhibiting stronger intrinsic motives such as sharing and learning. Project-level preferences differ considerably across the three samples. Finally, we observe that generic motivational factors are related to project-level preferences, although differently in the three regions. For instance, Chinese developers, who are driven by intrinsic motives, are drawn toward projects that are larger in scale, more modular, and universal in nature. In contrast, Indian developers with similar project preferences are mostly motivated by extrinsic motivations.