Open source communities have successfully developed a great deal of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability.

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Thành, and all other TEX project participants I met. This paper was directly inspired by the reflections that community kept having about its own culture, history, future and organization. All errors and omissions are of course mine and are the result of my bad understanding. I also owe many thanks to all the people who develop, maintain and distribute the TEX system and make it freely available to us researchers and academics; this project was an opportunity to learn how to better use that typesetting system that keeps amazing me. I would also like to thank Jacques Crémer, Bruno Jullien, Jean

Is there such a thing as good and bad web design and should we care? The goal of this paper is to outline the issues involved in web design from an economic perspective. The paper does not attempt to provide any answers or proofs but is meant to serve as a baseline for future research.