Discovering the Processes, Practices, Community Dynamics and Principles for Developing Open Source Software Systems

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This is a project to further develop and refine empirically grounded models and theory of the development processes, technical system configurations, work practices, organizational contexts, and their interrelationships that give rise to free/open source software (FOSS). FOSS development represents a continually emerging and evolving approach for communities of like-minded participants to develop software systems that are intended to be shared freely, rather than offered as commercial products. The research goal is to discover and disseminate new knowledge that can guide new FOSS development efforts, as well as improve the design, use, behavior, reliability, and confidence in widely distributed FOSS systems and applications. The research will employ field study methods to investigate, compare, and contrast the development, use and evolution of FOSS within and across projects in three communities through a three-year, longitudinal study. One community is engaged in scientific research, specifically in bioinformatics. Another community is engaged in developing and sustaining networked computer games. This community is primarily engaged in software development, not research, but has relationships with commercial enterprises. The last community is engaged in the development and deployment of large-scale FOSS applications supported by non-profit educational consortia. The choice to study these three communities stands in contrast to many prior studies that focus on the developing and sustaining the Internet/Web infrastructure, the longest and most commonly studied source of projects that have been examined elsewhere. One of the research goals is to compare and contrast the data and findings from these three communities with those found in the prior studies of FOSS projects in the Internet/Web infrastructure community. The focus will be on: (a) how such communities produce software; (b) how they coordinate software development work across different settings; (c) what development processes, work practices or project organizations constitute how FOSS is most effectively produced and sustained. Researchers in a number of distinct scientific/engineering disciplines, as well as practitioners in commercial enterprises and institutions of higher learning, are adopting FOSS approaches to software development as a basis for reducing the cost and improving the quality and diversity of infrastructural systems or application programs relevant to their domains. Thus, to the extent that research communities, development enterprises, commercial firms, and universities seek to primarily follow popular prescriptions and testimonials regarding the efficacy of FOSS, we cannot be assured that their activities will be most effective or efficient investment of their time, skill, and related resources. This research will offer a solid basis of knowledge for achieving those goals.