Free/Libre Open Source Software Research Articles

Institutional Repositories in the Linked Open Data Cloud

We believe that the wealth of digital humanity research resources that is available in Institutional Repositories in Southern Africa is largely over-looked because it is not machine explorable as defined by Berners-Lee (2006). We argue that extracting research from Institutional Repositories, which Berners-Lee (2006) describes as One-Star Linked Data, and then enriching this research and storing it as tuples in a triple store (RDF data store) will expose the research to a greater audience; make it machine explorable; and integrate it with a broader network of Linked Data, known as the Linked Open Data Cloud (LODC). Our approach is to utilize software building blocks licensed under Free (Libre) Open Source Software (FLOSS) licences and to create a pipeline that can potentially transform any Institutional Repository into into a triple store, which can be published on the Internet as part of the LODC. Our transformation process embraces under-resourced institutions by utilizing FLOSS com- ponents and utilizing digital resources already published on the internet in order to promote the research from One-Star Linked data to Five-Star Linked Data in Berners-Lee (2006) taxonomy of linked data.

Managing Episodic Volunteers in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Communities

We draw on the concept of episodic volunteering (EV) from the general volunteering literature to identify practices for managing EV in free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) communities. Infrequent but ongoing participation is widespread, but the practices that community managers are using to manage EV, and their concerns about EV, have not been previously documented. We conducted a policy Delphi study involving 24 FLOSS community managers from 22 different communities. Our panel identified 16 concerns related to managing EV in FLOSS, which we ranked by prevalence. We also describe 65 practices for managing EV in FLOSS. Almost three-quarters of these practices are used by at least three community managers. We report these practices using a systematic presentation that includes context, relationships between practices, and concerns that they address. These findings provide a coherent framework that can help FLOSS community managers to better manage episodic contributors.

Using Open Source, Open Data, and Civic Technology to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic and Infodemic.

SummaryObjectives : The emerging COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the world’s worst health disasters compounded by social confusion with misinformation, the so-called “Infodemic”. In this paper, we discuss how open technology approaches - including data sharing, visualization, and tooling - can address the COVID-19 pandemic and infodemic. Methods : In response to the call for participation in the 2020 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook theme issue on Medical Informatics and the Pandemic, the IMIA Open Source Working Group surveyed recent works related to the use of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) for this pandemic. Results : FLOSS health care projects including GNU Health, OpenMRS, DHIS2, and others, have responded from the early phase of this pandemic. Data related to COVID-19 have been published from health organizations all over the world. Civic Technology, and the collaborative work of FLOSS and open data groups were considered to support collective intelligence on approaches to managing the pandemic. Conclusion : FLOSS and open data have been effectively used to contribute to managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and open approaches to collaboration can improve trust in data.

Participation in community-based free/libre open source software development tasks: the impact of task characteristics

PurposeThis paper explores how task characteristics in terms of trigger type and task topic influence individual participation in community-based free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development by considering participation in individual tasks rather than entire projects.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative study was designed using choose tasks that were carried out via the email discourse on the developers' email fora in five FLOSS projects. Choice process episodes were selected as the unit of analysis and were coded for the task trigger and topic. The impact of these factors on participation (i.e. the numbers of participants and messages) was assessed by regression.FindingsThe results reveal differences in participation related to different task triggers and task topics. Further, the results suggest the mediating role of the number of participants in the relationships between task characteristics and the number of messages. The authors also speculate that project type serves as a boundary condition restricting the impacts of task characteristics on the number of participants and propose this relationship for future research.Research limitations/implicationsEmpirical support was provided to the important effects of different task characteristics on individual participation behaviors in FLOSS development tasks.Practical implicationsThe findings can help FLOSS participants understand participation patterns in different tasks and choose the types of tasks to attend to.Originality/valueThis research explores the impact of task characteristics on participation in FLOSS development at the task level, while prior research on participation in FLOSS development has focused mainly on factors at the individual and/or project levels.

Is it feasible to detect FLOSS version release events from textual messages? A case study on Stack Overflow.

Topic Detection and Tracking (TDT) is a very active research question within the area of text mining, generally applied to news feeds and Twitter datasets, where topics and events are detected. The notion of "event" is broad, but typically it applies to occurrences that can be detected from a single post or a message. Little attention has been drawn to what we call "micro-events", which, due to their nature, cannot be detected from a single piece of textual information. The study investigates the feasibility of micro-event detection on textual data using a sample of messages from the Stack Overflow Q&A platform and Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) version releases from Libraries.io dataset. We build pipelines for detection of micro-events using three different estimators whose parameters are optimized using a grid search approach. We consider two feature spaces: LDA topic modeling with sentiment analysis, and hSBM topics with sentiment analysis. The feature spaces are optimized using the recursive feature elimination with cross validation (RFECV) strategy. In our experiments we investigate whether there is a characteristic change in the topics distribution or sentiment features before or after micro-events take place and we thoroughly evaluate the capacity of each variant of our analysis pipeline to detect micro-events. Additionally, we perform a detailed statistical analysis of the models, including influential cases, variance inflation factors, validation of the linearity assumption, pseudo R2 measures and no-information rate. Finally, in order to study limits of micro-event detection, we design a method for generating micro-event synthetic datasets with similar properties to the real-world data, and use them to identify the micro-event detectability threshold for each of the evaluated classifiers.

On the prediction of long-lived bugs: An analysis and comparative study using FLOSS projects

Software evolution and maintenance activities in today’s Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) rely primarily on information extracted from bug reports registered in bug tracking systems. Many studies point out that most bugs that adversely affect the user’s experience across versions of FLOSS projects are long-lived bugs. However, proposed approaches that support bug fixing procedures do not consider the real-world lifecycle of a bug, in which bugs are often fixed very fast. This may lead to useless efforts to automate the bug management process. This study aims to confirm whether the number of long-lived bugs is significantly high in popular open-source projects and to characterize the population of long-lived bugs by considering the attributes of bug reports. We also aim to conduct a comparative study evaluating the prediction accuracy of five well-known machine learning algorithms and text mining techniques in the task of predicting long-lived bugs. We collected bug reports from six popular open-source projects repositories (Eclipse, Freedesktop, Gnome, GCC, Mozilla, and WineHQ) and used the following machine learning algorithms to predict long-lived bugs: K-Nearest Neighbor, Naïve Bayes, Neural Networks, Random Forest, and Support Vector Machines. Our results show that long-lived bugs are relatively frequent (varying from 7.2% to 40.7%) and have unique characteristics, confirming the need to study solutions to support bug fixing management. We found that the Neural Network classifier yielded the best results in comparison to the other algorithms evaluated. Research efforts regarding long-lived bugs are needed and our results demonstrate that it is possible to predict long-lived bugs with a high accuracy (around 70.7%) despite the use of simple prediction algorithms and text mining methods.

Desarrollo Floss y gobernanza de pares: el caso del entorno de escritorio Gnome

Objective of the study: The article analyzes the case of GNOME, one of the most popular Free/ Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects, started in 1997. The concept of peer governance describes the interaction and convergence of companies, foundations, voluntary users and professionals in its development.Methodology/ approach: The research is based on the documentary method and an organizational history approach. For this, primary and secondary digital sources were collected: institutional and FLOSS sites, blogs, community lists, documents and platforms.Originality/ Relevance: The work allows progress, from a sociotechnical perspective, in understanding FLOSS developments and the coevolution of their technical components and community dynamics.Main results: Three levels of governance are identified: 1. the software itself; 2. the community; 3. the ecosystem. Development cycles; community participation and organization; actors and business models, definitions and controversies, are analyzed. GNOME's trajectory is marked by the confluence of interests and coopetition between corporate actors and the FLOSS ecosystem. The life cycle shows a constant activity, which implies redefinition of its components, technological infrastructure and leadership. It is not exempt from controversies and bifurcations, similar to those evidenced in projects of this type.Theoretical/ methodological contributions: It contributes to the concept of peer governance and its usefulness for case analysis. Reflection on data sources and research resources on the Internet is promoted.Social/ managerial contributions: It contributes to the understanding of new forms of management and decision-making in technological development projects.

Single- and Double-Loop Learning

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers often make a single contribution to a project and then no more, making project management difficult. To improve understanding around why developers leave, this work explores the relationship between FLOSS developer motivations and their attitudes and behavior related to projects. In particular, we add insight to the current understanding of these issues by proposing single- and double-loop learning as intervening mechanisms that connect developer motivations to outcomes and thereby help clarify when developer motivations have negative and positive impacts for the project. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 132 FLOSS developers. We find that intrinsic motivations (motivation to learn) and social motivations (motivation to collaborate) positively influence single- and double-loop learning while extrinsic motivations negatively impact both types of learning. We further find that single- and double-loop learning have differential impacts on contribution to the focal project and other projects. While single-loop learning is associated with lower turnover intentions, double-loop learning is associated with higher turnover intentions. Implications of our findings for research and management are provided in the discussion.

The diatomic molecular spectroscopy database

MotivationThe spectroscopy of diatomic molecules is an important research area in chemical physics due to its relevance in astrochemistry, combustion chemistry, and ultracold physics. However, there is currently no database where the user can easily retrieve, in a useful format, the spectroscopic constants of a given molecule. A similar situation appears concerning the vibrational Franck–Condon factors for diatomic molecules, a crucial parameter to infer laser cooling prospects for molecules. To address this problem, and inspired by the idea that data should be open and freely accessible, we have developed a user-friendly website (https://rios.mp.fhi.mpg.de) where the user can retrieve spectroscopic constants and Franck–Condon factors in useful formats.ImplementationIn this database, the spectroscopic constants of the ground states and first excited states of the diatomic molecules are accessible from the website and can be retrieved in readable formats. The website is implemented within the LAMP web service stacks. In particular, using Linux as the operative system, Apache as the HTTP Server, MySQL as the database management system, and PHP as the programming language for the web. Furthermore, the user can register and upload new data. This project is licensed under the Free-Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) license Apache License 2.0 which allows free and open access to the codes as well as efficient collaboration in the maintenance of the software.Conclusions and impactThe present data-driven website presents essential information in a user-friendly manner and may help the chemical physics community to identify molecules that should be explored through spectroscopic techniques.

Digital Transformation and Governance Innovation for Public Biobanks and Free/Libre Open Source Software Using a Blockchain Technology.

Digitalization and digital health are transforming research practices, while economic growth is increasingly driven by the information commons. In the case of biological sciences, information commons, such as public biobanks and free/libre open source software (FLOSS), are of paramount importance for both research and the bioeconomy. In a time of digitalization, however, information commons are vulnerable to violations, such as the free-rider problem, that render the commons unsustainable. Consequently, it has been argued that the enclosure of the informational common resources is the only means to effectively exploit them. Given the social and economic importance of the information commons, the new digital environment in biology and health requires governance innovation that will regulate the social embedding of the commons and their relationship to the free market, that is, a new political economy is needed. In this context, the need for a core common infrastructure, stretching from the physical to the logical and content layer of the information environment, that will guarantee the protection of the commons from both violations and enclosures, has been highlighted. Focusing on the interaction between two biological/bioinformatics commons, namely public biobanks and the FLOSS, we have set up an ecosystem relying on a blockchain technology. The proposed governance mechanism protects the information commons from the free-rider problem and guarantees their sustainability without hampering their operational framework. Our model demonstrates the interdependence and protection of the information commons not as an abstract theoretical exercise, but rather as a physical reality on the digital ontological matrix.

Open Source Adoption Factors—A Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, Free/Libre/OpenSource Software (FLOSS) is becoming a strategic option for many organizations in the public and the private sector. The lack of well defined guidelines for IT managers may jeopardize the FLOSS adoption process. FLOSS adoption procedures are developed ad-hoc in every organization, hence, leading to potential wheel reinvention situations. Identifying factors that influence and determine adoption is crucial. In this article, we survey existing literature through systematic review methodologies to make visible the technical, organizational and economic factors that must be evaluated in the adoption process. We also provide hints for researchers on publications and the type of research that already covered this topic in the past. We studied almost 500 papers from which we selected a final set of 54 primary studies directly related to FLOSS adoption. We found twenty-two different adoption factors categorized as technical (nine), organizational (nine) and economic (four). This article aims to provide the basic building blocks to step into the creation of a guide for the FLOSS adoption. All the data we used in this study is available at this online repository: https://github.com/jagalindo/rea.victor.19-foss and doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2632543.

Hacking the MOOC: Towards a Postdigital Pedagogy of Critical Hope

This article contributes to a praxis of critical hope by combining recent critical political economic (CPE) analyses of postdigital education with the inspiring experimental practices emerging from the new field of critical digital pedagogy (CDP). I argue that CDP offers hope to educators looking for practical ways beyond capitalist exploitation and alienation, but lacks the analytical foundations needed to contribute to the liberation of our ‘general intellect.’ I highlight the emergence of the Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS) movement and ‘hacker class’ as exemplars of a more dialectically conscious praxis. Conversely, I encourage CPE scholars of the postdigital to contribute to developing both intellectual tools for understanding our position within capitalism and practical tools for hacking for our liberation. Throughout the article, I use a historical materialist lens to emphasise that we can identify the conditions of and elaborate the strategies for achieving our emancipation in the dialectic of the historically specific contradictions generated by specific class antagonisms. It is in this dialectic that we find a critical hope.

Measuring Non Monetary Innovation In Software: a case study in floss firms from Argentina

This paper presents a critical review of the design of innovation surveys that follow the Oslo Manual standards, based on a series of case studies in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) companies. The main objective of the paper is to contribute to identify the specificities of innovation in FLOSS firms that traditional innovation surveys usually omit, to improve current innovation measures and metrics in the software sector. We applied a qualitative analysis based on seven case studies in FLOSS firms from Argentina, mainly through semi-structured interviews to key informants. Such analysis was aimed to elucidate the nature and particularities of the innovation processes and outcomes in the firms, the characteristics of the collaboration with the community and its role in the business model and innovation strategy of the organizations.

A Review of the International FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Innovation Surveys

Given the substantial growth that software and IT sector has had in the last decade, it becomes relevant to measure the impact that this expansion has had on the development of emerging economies. Specifically, the study of the FLOSS production activity is relevant given its contribution to the Knowledge Intensive Services Sector. The aim of this study is to design an innovation survey for the software sector that considers the FLOSS activity separately. Moreover, the paper describes an extensive systematization, evaluation and analysis of diverse technological surveys carried out on the software activity and the FLOSS surveys available specified at a firm level, as a way to collect all the possible background which allows proposing a questionnaire that measures the particularities of FLOSS.

Revolution remixed? The emergence of Open Content Film-making as a viable component within the mainstream film industry

ABSTRACTOur previous study of the Open Content Film-making (OCF) community Revolution Postponed? Tracing the development and limitations of open content filmmaking, Information, Communication & Society, (10.1080/1369118X.2018.1464590) had shown how early expectations that Creative Commons (CC) licences would enable a viable alternative to mainstream film production, comparable to free/libre open source software (FLOSS), were challenged, in particular, by the difficulties experienced in establishing viable livelihoods with OCF. A narrative of the apparent failure of OCF may be premature, however. This paper reports on a subsequent study of how OCF practices became adopted as mundane elements in a film production and distribution system that itself has been, and continues to be, dramatically changed by digitisation. These developments broke down the dichotomy that had been drawn between existing commercial practices and visions of a new system of decentralised, non-proprietary, peer production. First, we show that OCF practices are conceptualised by our informants in relation to the mainstream independent film industry. Second, we account for how OCF tools and practices become adopted within the mainstream independent film production/distribution system. These observations highlight that limiting the scope of investigation (e.g., by only undertaking short term ‘snapshot’ studies, limited to particular settings or groups) may yield flawed interpretations based on narrow viewpoints and premature judgements. Instead, we flag the need to extend research – both longitudinally and across a range of settings/viewpoints – applying methodological templates from the Biography of Artefacts and Practices perspective (Hyysalo, 2010; Pollock & Williams, 2008).

Revolution postponed? Tracing the development and limitations of open content filmmaking

ABSTRACTNetworked information technologies have brought about extensive changes in the production and distribution of creative cultural work. Inspired by the widespread success of Free-Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), many proponents of open access advocate reconceptualisation of existing legal protection frameworks in creative works. This paper traces the attempted appropriation of Creative Commons (CC) licences by filmmakers and the consequent formation of an Open Content Filmmaking (OCF) movement. OCF proponents articulated notions of technology-enabled transformation in content creation and distribution, similar to those that inspire the visions of FLOSS and CC advocates. It examines how these creators attempted to address the relevance of openness to their own activities and develop practical open models for filmmaking. Difficulties experienced in establishing viable livelihoods with OCF (as FLOSS developers had done), created tensions between those with a pragmatic or more ideological orientation. The initial vision of a consistent OCF movement, enabled by CC, thus became fragmented. In contrast to FLOSS, where many actors were able to find ways to develop sustainable careers within the industry while contributing to Open Source Software, such generic strategies have not readily emerged for OCF. Drawing insights from Sørensen’s (1996) Social Learning framework (Learning technology, constructing culture. Sociotechnical change as social learning: University of Trondheim, STS working paper 18/96) in this paper we untangle the elaborate but often messy strategies deployed by Open Content Filmmakers (OCFs) and trace the multiple and often partial ways they have worked out to utilise CC elements and tools in producing, monetising and distributing their films.

Inquiry into Turkey's Educational Technology, Governance, Situational Educational Policy

Investigating the sociology of educational technology can be approached through a series of deliberations based on the interaction between Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Proprietary Close Source Software (PCSS). This article consults public policy discourses of the Fatih project, which is the current educational technology project in Turkey, particularly focusing on discourses of politicians. This article argues that Turkey has been deploying an Anglo-Governance Model, which is based on an ‘experimental' and ‘strategic' governance, to be a dominating decision-maker in the technological singularity. However, without defining 'values' of FLOSS, any initiative(s) from Anglo-Governance Model will result in what could be referred to as an ‘PCSS-Based Polycentric System' in which the Government has ultimately became an unwelcome decision-maker and PCSS, particularly in such a way that giant corporations exercise dominance over the sociology of educational technology in Turkey.

One-Time Contributors to FLOSS

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects rely on a steady influx of newcomer volunteer developers to survive. As these projects, unlike traditional software projects, often do not pay their contributors to work on them, volunteers must be obtained instead. Once obtained, a volunteer goes through a lengthy process in order to join the project, including obtaining sufficient knowledge of the codebase and learning the rules of the community. However, some developers drop out after they make a single commit to the code database. These developers are knowledgeable enough to commit code and make it through the onboarding process, but leave the project rather than join, therefore depriving the project of potential talent. We propose to understand these One-Time code Contributors (OTCs) through surveys and through data-mining the projects? software repositories: if they are a unique demographic, why they only commit once, if anything can be done to assist them. Once they are determined as a separate demographic, the study pivots to examine other factors that might affect OTCs, including such factors as project governance and project architecture.

Joukkoistetun kotoistamisen luonteesta kääntämisenä

Web 2.0 has led to proliferation of crowdsourcing in many areas, not the least of which is translation and particularly localization. Another, simultaneous but unconnected phenomenon has been the proliferation of free/libre open source software (FLOSS). We use examples from a case of crowdsourced localization of FLOSS, the Finnish localization of KDE Plasma desktop environment. We discuss the role of the translator in FLOSS, the nature of crowdsourced localization as translation, and the ways in which crowdsourced localization may change the way we see some basic concepts of translation such as the source and target texts.

An empirical verification of a-priori learning models on mailing archives in the context of online learning activities of participants in free\libre open source software (FLOSS) communities

Free\Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) environments are increasingly dubbed as learning environments where practical software engineering skills can be acquired. Numerous studies have extensively investigated how knowledge is acquired in these environments through a collaborative learning model that define a learning process. Such a learning process, identified either as a result of surveys or by means of questionnaires, can be depicted through a series of graphical representations indicating the steps FLOSS community members go through as they acquire and exchange skills. These representations are referred to as a-priori learning models. They are Petri net-like workflow nets (WF-net) that provide a visual representation of the learning process as it is expected to occur. These models are representations of a learning framework or paradigm in FLOSS communities. As such, the credibility of any models is estimated through a process of model verification and validation. Therefore in this paper, we analyze these models in comparison with the real behavior captured in FLOSS repositories by means of conformance verification in process mining. The purpose of our study is twofold. Firstly, the results of our analysis provide insights on the possible discrepancies that are observed between the initial theoretical representations of learning processes and the real behavior captured in FLOSS event logs, constructed from mailing archives. Secondly, this comparison helps foster the understanding on how learning actually takes place in FLOSS environments based on empirical evidence directly from the data.