A structure for innovation reproduction in the Eclipse OSS ecosystem

Open source software ecosystems: A Systematic mapping

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

This paper outlines a critical, textual approach for the analysis of the relationship between different actors in information technology (IT) production, and further concretizes the approach in the analysis of the role of users in the open source software (OSS) development literature. Central concepts of the approach are outlined. The role of users is conceptualized as reader involvement aiming to contribute to the configuration of the reader (to how users and the parameters for their work practices are defined in OSS texts). Afterwards, OSS literature addressing reader involvement is critically reviewed. In OSS context, the OSS writers as readers configure the reader and other readers are assumed to be capable of and interested in commenting the texts. A lack of OSS research on non-technical reader involvement is identified. Furthermore, not only are the OSS readers configured, but so are OSS writers. In OSS context while writers may be empowered, this clearly does not apply to the non-technical OSS readers. Implication for research and practice are discussed.

Usability is an important quality characteristic of software products and information systems. Different approaches for introducing usability activities into open source software (OSS) development have not yet been fully evaluated. This paper experiments with the introduction of usability activities into OSS development through a participative approach. An empirical case study was carried out in a game development OSS project. The results of this study suggest that it is beneficial to introduce usability activities into OSS development through the participative approach. In the participative approach the usability experts become recognized part of the development community through adapting their ways of work into the culture of the OSS project and submitting code patches. This participative approach had a clear impact in the case project as seen in changes in the user interface and in improved usability. The challenge of adapting usability and OSS development philosophies and practices should, however, be researched further.

Interest of scientific research on Open Source software and its development process is frequent. The number of articles available and the number of tracks or workshops on this topic in most relevant IS Conferences is high. The usability of Open Source Software has been scarcely considered until few years ago, probably due to the particular role that the user has in such a development environment. In Open Source software development, users and developers are not so different. Anyhow, the diffusion of the Open Source software outside the development community contributes to sharpen the distinction among these two groups that are no longer equivalent. This circumstance has contributed to increase the interest on usability of Open Source software. Nevertheless, studies on end-users in Open Source contexts are still young. This paper introduces a pilot study on end user's perception of Open Source software. The aim of this pilot study is to identify how the end user perceives the Open Source software (in terms of Usability, Functionality, Reliability, Efficiency and Quality in Use).

In recent years, a very important structural change in the software industry took place, with an increasing number of firms that got involved in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development communities. FLOSS communities and products have been studied as complementary to proprietary software companies and products. In this paper we propone a business model for the software market, and in particular we analyze the competition between proprietary software firms and FLOSS firms. Our software market is a system where each agent is independent of each other in the choice about buying or selling software products or services. The proposed work aims to analyze the influence of FLOSS firms producing both software and services in vertical software markets, nowadays mostly dominated by large proprietary firms. The findings show that FLOSS firms are able to compete with proprietary firms, though in the end a monopoly or oligopoly of the latters emerges. The ousted FLOSS firms, however, survive longer than proprietary ones, when these are not able to compete in the market.

In stark contrast with the fully participative “bazaar” imagery of open source software (OSS) development, some recent empirical research has pointed out that much of the OSS development is carried out by a small percentage of developers. This raises serious concerns that concentration of development effort on a few will limit knowledge sharing and underutilize the available resources. Using the notion of strategic interaction, this paper argues that individual developers often interact strategically with other highly resourceful developers by forming a smaller but better organized structure to intensify the types of epistemic interactions that matter most to the OSS development. A general framework of strategic interaction including participation inequality, conversational interactivity, and cross-thread connectivity is proposed to examine its impact on knowledge sharing, and validated using 128 discussion threads from the K Desktop Environment (KDE) developer mailing list. The findings indicate that strategic interaction has expanded knowledge sharing but with the caveat that extreme concentration of development could have an opposite effect. For researchers, this study dovetails the incentive logic by proposing and validating the strategic aspects of OSS participation to better understand the collective dynamics underpinning OSS development. Practitioners can use this approach to evaluate and better support existing knowledge-sharing initiatives.

Open source software is becoming increasingly prominent, and the economic structure of open-source development is changing. In recent years, firms motivated by revenues from software services markets have become the primary contributors to open-source development. In this paper we study the role of services in open source software development and explore the choice between open source and proprietary software. Specifically, our economic model jointly analyzes the investment and pricing decisions of the originators of software and of subsequent open-source contributors. We find that if a contributor is efficient in software development, the originator should adopt an open-source strategy, allowing the contributor to offer higher total quality and capture the higher end of the market while the originator focuses on providing software services to lower end consumers. Conversely, if the contributor is not efficient in development, the originator should adopt a proprietary software development strategy, gaining revenue from software sales and squeezing the contributor out of the services market. In certain cases an increase in originator development efficiency can result in increased contributor profits. Finally, we find that, somewhat counterintuitively, an increase in contributor development efficiency can reduce overall social welfare.

Most of the current swarm model studies and applications try to mimic the collective behaviors of social animals, such as birds and ants. The studies seek to solve tasks similar to patterns and behaviors exhibited in those animal colonies. In this research, we demonstrated that the swarm model is also the major collaboration and organization model of Open Source Software (OSS) developer communities. OSS developers swarm together and spend their time attempting to achieve their relatively simple goals, while their contributions emerged as a collection of useful and sophisticated functionality that can compete with commercial software. The results discovered in this research will be helpful in demonstrating that the swarm model can not only be considered as a feasible approach to classical optimization problems, but can also be applied to constructing highly sophisticated systems.

One opportunity for organizations to participate in open source software (OSS) development is through <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">organizations OSS</i> (orgsOSS), a term we use to describe a group of organizations that commit resources to collectively develop OSS. This archetype of OSS development is distinct from other types that include organizations, yet is understudied. As organizations increasingly contribute to and rely on OSS as part of their strategy, understanding how they can collaborate to build software holds importance for the future of software development. This study collects a unique dataset of development tasks from a large orgsOSS project spanning over two years and seven releases. Building on existing OSS research, we explore norms with respect to collaboration, i.e., how developers assign, discuss, and complete tasks, in an orgsOSS project. Interestingly, our analysis reveals that developers in orgsOSS do not always adhere to ideals of widespread sharing and participation espoused by traditional OSS, however some developer and task characteristics helped foster these ideals. Based on these and other findings, we develop a set of propositions and associated collaboration mechanisms that are important to future orgsOSS and other similarly structured software development projects.

Shared understandings are important for software development as they guide effective individual contributions and coordination of the software development process. However, it is not clear if such understandings can be developed in highly distributed groups that do not regularly meet face-to-face. In this paper, we present the results of a preliminary analysis of shared mental models within a Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development team. We analyzed mental models using cognitive mapping and process analysis and compared the models of four developers from the Apache Lucene Java project. Our analysis suggests that there is a high level of sharing among core developers but the sharing is not complete, with some differences related to tenure and role in the project. Finally, we suggest directions for further research on shared mental models in FLOSS teams.

The contingent role of interproject connectedness in cultivating open source software projects

We empirically examine the relationship between software design modularity and software quality in open source software (OSS) development projects. Conventional wisdom suggests that degree of software modularity affects software quality. An analysis of 203 software releases in 46 OSS projects hosted on SourceForge.net lends support for a more complex relationship between software modularity and software quality than conventional wisdom suggests. We find that software modularity is associated with reduced software complexity, an increased number of static software bugs, and a mixed relationship with the percentage of bugs closed. We do not find empirical evidence supporting any relationship between modularity and other measures of customer satisfaction. In addition to empirically testing the relationship between modularity and quality, we introduce new measures of software modularity and software quality. Implications are developed for the theory of modularity and the practice of software development.

The development of information technology in Indonesia has increasingly driven the use of Open Source Software (OSS), which enables open collaboration among developers worldwide. However, the implementation of copyright protection for OSS in Indonesia faces challenges, as the basic principle of copyright, which grants exclusive rights to creators, contradicts the spirit of sharing that lies at the core of OSS. This article aims to analyze the challenges faced in implementing copyright for OSS in Indonesia and explore how the adaptation of copyright regulations can support OSS development. This research employs a descriptive qualitative approach with document analysis and interviews as data collection methods. Data sources are derived from relevant legal literature on copyright, OSS licenses, and interviews with software developers and legal experts in Indonesia. The findings indicate that the mismatch between the exclusive nature of copyright principles and the collaborative spirit of OSS is the main challenge in legal regulation. Moreover, limited understanding of OSS licenses among software developers in Indonesia exacerbates the potential for copyright violations. Therefore, this study recommends the need for updates to the Copyright Law to better support the concept of open licensing and to provide better education for developers regarding the legal implications of using OSS. Strengthening the monitoring system is also necessary to ensure that OSS developers in Indonesia can continue to innovate safely while respecting copyright.

Open source software has witnessed an exponential growth in the last two decades and it is playing an increasingly important role in many companies and organizations leading to the formation of open source software ecosystems. In this paper we present a quality model that will allow the evaluation of those ecosystems in terms of their relevant quality characteristics such as health or activeness. To design this quality model we started by analysing the quality measures found during the execution of a systematic literature review on open source software ecosystems and, then, we classified and reorganized the set of measures in order to build a solid quality model.