On Open Source Software Research Articles

Open Business Models and Venture Capital Finance

Do entrepreneurial ventures that adopt an open business model obtain VC finance from higher quality VC investors in comparison with entrepreneurial ventures that adopt a closed business model? Are VC investments in open business model ventures are more likely to be syndicated and more frequently staged? In this paper we consider these questions on a sample of 6,555 VC investments in 514 software entrepreneurial ventures that received the first round of VC finance in the period 1994-2008. Of these ventures, 124 adopted an open business model based on open source software (OSS) and the remaining ventures adopted a closed business model based on the development and sale of proprietary software. Our findings indicate that OSS entrepreneurial ventures received funding from higher quality VC investors, with VC quality being measured by general experience, industry-specialization, IPO success, raised capital and connectedness in syndication network. Also, VC investments in OSS entrepreneurial ventures were more frequently staged. Conversely, we do not find any difference between OSS and proprietary software entrepreneurial ventures as number of VC participated in syndication.

Network ties and the success of open source software development

Prior network-based research on open source software (OSS) development has focused on the benefit of network ties and assumed all network ties play the same role. We adopt a fine-grained view of network relations to investigate the impact of network ties on the success of OSS development. Through examining the development of OSS projects hosted by SourceForge, we find that co-membership among project teams is an effective mechanism for building network ties, through which knowledge and expertise flows across projects in OSS community and, therefore, contributes to the success of OSS development. However, network ties among projects not only confer benefit, but also incur various cost, and due to the different growth patterns of cost and benefit, network ties have a diminishing return to project success. In addition, we find network ties of leader–follower type and follower–leader type are more beneficial to OSS success than other types of ties, and network ties connecting to projects of later development stages are more beneficial than those connecting to projects of earlier stages. Our study provides useful guidelines and suggestions as to how to leverage the knowledge and expertise of others for successful development of OSS projects.

ENGLISH

This paper aims to present an experimental prototype model developed using DSpace for the design ofa web portal which provides access to space science grey literature. Grey literature is that which is notreadily available as other information and which is difficult to identify and access. The system is based onopen source software (Java SDK, Apache, Tomcat, Apache Ant, PostgreSQL, and Dspace). SpaceGL is animportant and ground-breaking example of an alternative method of delivering current research results to manypotential users. It can act as a central hub which collects and disseminates space science grey literatureproduced in India through a single user interface. It can also be a showcase which provides continuouslyupdated information on space science-related projects, initiatives, and events etc. produced in India. Thisexperience shows that development of institutional repository system (SpaceGL) resting on open sourcesoftware, framework and application program interfaces could lead to impressive results, in a short amountof time and with minimum of investment. In spite of being a prototype model, the SpaceGL aims to benefit fromnation wide exposure on full-fledged development. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.32.4.2528

Functional Analysis of Open Source Erp Systems - An Exploratory Analysis

Previous research on Open Source Software (OSS) has primarily focused on the motivation of contributors, the innovation process itself, and the competitive dynamics. Only marginal attention has been given to OS enterprise systems, an area where most companies have started implementations of packaged software and which has a direct link to business value. This paper addresses this gap. In fact, successful implementation stories are reported from small and mid-sized enterprises (SME). However, OS Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) are far away from being widespread and the literature focuses specific aspects. This research aims to enhance the understanding of OS ERP systems regarding their business functionality and the evaluation process. Among the results are strengths and weaknesses of OS ERP systems as well as insights regarding their potential. Finally, an agenda for further research is presented.

Toward an Enacted Approach to Understanding OSS Developer’s Motivations

A large part of the existing literature on Open Source Software (OSS) projects identifies the motivation factors predicting the participation level of members. However, the effective satisfaction of developers toward their project still remains a managerial and theoretical challenge. So, it is also consistent to assess how the effective participation of developers in OSS projects makes sense of their own motivations. This article uses the enactivist approach and considers that motivations are not simple antecedents to actions but are shaped by actions as well. The empirical analysis delivers the results of a survey administrated to participants of business OSS projects. The results reveal reputation, reciprocity and expected professional opportunities as the most positively influenced variables. However, learning motivations and ideology toward open source beliefs and values are the lesser influenced ones. These results counterbalance prior empirical researches which have observed a strong predicting power of both variables on expected participation level of participants. This study suggests that participation seems to make sense regarding motivations for which developers have some visible indicators of their personal achievement.

The Influence of Open Source Software Volunteer Developers’ Motivations and Attitudes on Intention to Contribute

This study differs from previous studies on open source software (OSS) developer motivation by drawing upon theories of volunteerism and work motivation to investigate the motives and attitudes of OSS volunteer developers. The role of commitment is specifically interesting, which is well established in the volunteerism and work motivation literature as a predictor of turnover and positively related to work performance, but has been overlooked by OSS researchers. The authors have developed a research model relating motivations, commitment, satisfaction, and length of service to intention to contribute to OSS projects in the future. The research model is evaluated using data from an online survey of 181 OSS volunteer developers. The research results and more discussion of these areas of interest will be evaluated and discussed further in the article.

Open source software licenses: Strong-copyleft, non-copyleft, or somewhere in between?

Studies on open source software (OSS) have shown that the license under which an OSS is released has an impact on the success or failure of the software. In this paper, we model the relationship between an OSS developer's utility, the effort that goes into developing an OSS, his attitude towards the freedom to choose an OSS license, and the choice of OSS license. We find that the larger the effort to develop OSS, the more is the likelihood that the OSS license would be free from restrictions. Interestingly, the result holds even when all OSS developers prefer restrictive licenses or less-restrictive license. The results suggest that least-restrictive or non-copyleft license will dominate other types of OSS license when a large effort is required to develop derivative software. On the other hand, most-restrictive or strong-copyleft licenses will be the dominant license when minimal effort is required to develop the original OSS and the derivative software.

Development and implementation of an Integrated Water Resources Management System (IWRMS)

Abstract. One of the innovative objectives in the EC project BRAHMATWINN was the development of a stakeholder oriented Integrated Water Resources Management System (IWRMS). The toolset integrates the findings of the project and presents it in a user friendly way for decision support in sustainable integrated water resources management (IWRM) in river basins. IWRMS is a framework, which integrates different types of basin information and which supports the development of IWRM options for climate change mitigation. It is based on the River Basin Information System (RBIS) data models and delivers a graphical user interface for stakeholders. A special interface was developed for the integration of the enhanced DANUBIA model input and the NetSyMod model with its Mulino decision support system (mulino mDss) component. The web based IWRMS contains and combines different types of data and methods to provide river basin data and information for decision support. IWRMS is based on a three tier software framework which uses (i) html/javascript at the client tier, (ii) PHP programming language to realize the application tier, and (iii) a postgresql/postgis database tier to manage and storage all data, except the DANUBIA modelling raw data, which are file based and registered in the database tier. All three tiers can reside on one or different computers and are adapted to the local hardware infrastructure. IWRMS as well as RBIS are based on Open Source Software (OSS) components and flexible and time saving access to that database is guaranteed by web-based interfaces for data visualization and retrieval. The IWRMS is accessible via the BRAHMATWINN homepage: http://www.brahmatwinn.uni-jena.de and a user manual for the RBIS is available for download as well.

Exploratory Analysis of Quality Practices in Open Source Domain

Software quality assurance has been a heated topic for several decades, but relatively few analyses were performed on open source software (OSS). As OSS has become very popular in our daily life, many researchers have been keen on the quality practices in this area. Although quality management presents distinct patterns compared with those in closed-source software development, some widely used OSS products have been implemented. Therefore, quality assurance of OSS projects has attracted increased research focuses.In this paper, a survey is conducted to reveal the general quality practices in open source communities. Exploratory analysis has been carried out to disclose those quality related activities. The results are compared with those from closed-source environments and the distinguished features of the quality assurance in OSS projects have been confirmed. Moreover, this study suggests potential directions for OSS developers to follow.

Testing the theory of relative defect proneness for closed-source software

Recent studies on open-source software (OSS) products report that smaller modules are proportionally more defect prone compared to larger ones. This phenomenon, referred to as the Theory of Relative Defect Proneness (RDP), challenges the traditional QA approaches that give a higher priority to larger modules, and it attracts growing interest from closed-source software (CSS) practitioners. In this paper, we report the findings of a study where we tested the theory of RDP using ten CSS products. The results clearly confirm the theory of RDP. We also demonstrate the useful practical implications of this theory in terms of defect-detection effectiveness. Therefore, this study does not only make research contributions by rigorously testing a scientific theory for a different category of software products, but also provides useful insights and evidence to practitioners for revising their existing QA practices.

The Penguin Has Entered the Building: The Commercialization of Open Source Software Products

Previous literature on open source software (OSS) mostly analyzes organizational issues within communities of developers and users. This paper focuses on for-profit organizations that release software products under OSS licenses, and argues that variations in their endowments of intellectual property rights, namely patents and trademarks, help to determine which firms will tend to incorporate OSS into commercial products. We explain whether and under what conditions preexisting stocks of intellectual property rights can be useful complementary assets that allow firms to benefit directly or indirectly from commercializing OSS products, and test our hypotheses on a novel data set built on firms' announcements of OSS product releases in the specialized press between 1995 and 2003. We find three robust results: (a) firms with large stocks of software patents are more likely to release OSS products; (b) firms with large stocks of software trademarks are less likely to release OSS products; (c) firms with large stocks of hardware trademarks are more likely to release OSS products.

A Fistful of Dollars: Financial Rewards, Payment Norms, and Motivation Crowding in Open Source Software Development

Existing literature on open source software (OSS) maintains that intrinsic motivation and extrinsic financial rewards have a unidimensionally positive effect on the motivation of individual developers. Based on self-determination theory, which underlies most of these studies, we challenge this assumption. We argue that the effect of payment on both intrinsic motivation and total motivation of OSS developers is far more complex. To illustrate our point, we introduce the concept of individuals’ norms about payment to the field of OSS. In doing so, we are able to show that payment norms moderate the effect of payment on intrinsic motivation and total motivation. Conducting a scenario experiment, we find that intrinsic motivation decreases for individuals with norms against payment. This effect becomes even stronger when analyzing for mediation effects. Total motivation is impacted positively by payment, but the effect turns insignificant for individuals with norms for payment. Our findings help explain the results of previous studies in which OSS developers did not seem to be affected by motivation crowding. They further contribute to the more general debate on how to manage individuals in the absence of formal contracts. From a practical perspective, we show that financial rewards may create a management dilemma for OSS project leaders.

The adaptive integrated data information system (AIDIS) for global water research

Global research programs related to river basin water resources have at least two things in common: (1) they assess and model hydrological process dynamics on a macro scale and (2) research partners jointly working on such research issues are internationally distributed in different institutions. These prerequisites require a sophisticated and scale bridging data assessment and information management comprising geo-referenced distributed data components, measured or simulated time series, and socio-economic information. Networking such international research structures by means of the internet pose new challenges to Geoinformatics in respect to the design of a Web based distributed database system, metadata and GIS-information management, geo-referenced data query and visualization. Such data management must include powerful and efficient data exchanging software tools and information sharing policies to ensure that decision making can jointly be done on the base of the best information available. Geoinformation includes raster and vector GIS coverages, measured process time series data and associated metadata. Furthermore there are needs to integrate multidisciplinary information and research knowledge related to IWRM comprising information obtained by remote sensing, GIS analysis, modeling, and socio-economic assessments for vulnerability and mitigation. Addressing these challenges and to cope with such data organization and management tasks the Adaptive Integrated Data Information System (AIDIS) has been developed by the DGHM at the FSU-Jena. It is based on open source software (OSS) and a multi tier class hierarchy structure. AIDIS has implemented the full ISO 19115 metadata model, and enhances its structure if required e.g. for time series or documents. A first prototype was developed for the Challenge Program “Water and Food” (CPWF) of the CGIAR and has been improved and refined for the Tisza River basin within the “Tisza River” EU-project comprising at present about one hundred GIS maps and more than 5000 measured and simulated time series.

Understanding the Motivations, Participation, and Performance of Open Source Software Developers: A Longitudinal Study of the Apache Projects

Understanding what motivates participation is a central theme in the research on open source software (OSS) development. Our study contributes by revealing how the different motivations of OSS developers are interrelated, how these motivations influence participation leading to performance, and how past performance influences subsequent motivations. Drawing on theories of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, we develop a theoretical model relating the motivations, participation, and performance of OSS developers. We evaluate our model using survey and archival data collected from a longitudinal field study of software developers in the Apache projects. Our results reveal several important findings. First, we find that developers’ motivations are not independent but rather are related in complex ways. Being paid to contribute to Apache projects is positively related to developers’ status motivations but negatively related to their use-value motivations. Perhaps surprisingly, we find no evidence of diminished intrinsic motivation in the presence of extrinsic motivations; rather, status motivations enhance intrinsic motivations. Second, we find that different motivations have an impact on participation in different ways. Developers’ paid participation and status motivations lead to above-average contribution levels, but use-value motivations lead to below-average contribution levels, and intrinsic motivations do not significantly impact average contribution levels. Third, we find that developers’ contribution levels positively impact their performance rankings. Finally, our results suggest that past-performance rankings enhance developers’ subsequent status motivations.