Abstract. Open Source Software (OSS) development is often characterized as a fundamentally new way to develop software. Past analyses and discussions, however, have treated OSS projects and their organization mostly as a static phenomenon. Consequently, we do not know how these communities of software developers are sustained and reproduced over time through the progressive integration of new members. To shed light on this issue I report on my analyses of socialization in a particular OSS community. In particular, I document the relationships OSS newcomers develop over time with both the social and material aspects of a project. To do so, I combine two mutually informing activities: ethnography and the use of software specially designed to visualize and explore the interacting networks of human and material resources incorporated in the email and code databases of OSS. Socialization in this community is analyzed from two perspectives: as an individual learning process and as a political process. From these analyses it appears that successful participants progressively construct identities as software craftsmen, and that this process is punctuated by specific rites of passage. Successful participants also understand the political nature of software development and progressively enroll a network of human and material allies to support their efforts. I conclude by discussing how these results could inform the design of software to support socialization in OSS projects, as well as practical implications for the future of these projects.

The focus of this paper is to review what is known about free and open source software development (FOSSD) work practices, development processes, project and community dynamics, and other socio-technical relationships. It focuses on exploring how FOSS is developed and evolved based on an extensive review of a set of empirical studies of FOSSD projects that articulate different levels of analysis. These characterize what has been analyzed in FOSSD studies across levels that examine (i) why individuals participate; (ii) resources and capabilities supporting development activities; (iii) how cooperation, coordination, and control are realized in projects; (iv) alliance formation and inter-project social networking; (v) FOSS as a multi-project software ecosystem, and (vi) FOSS as a social movement. Next, there is a discussion of limitations and constraints in the FOSSD studies so far. Last, attention shifts to identifying emerging opportunities for future FOSSD studies that can give rise to the development of new software engineering tools or techniques, as well as to new empirical studies of software development.

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A frequent characterization of open source software is the somewhat outdated, mythical one of a collective of supremely talented software hackers freely volunteering their services to produce uniformly high-quality software. I contend that the open source software phenomenon has metamorphosed into a more mainstream and commercially viable form, which I label as OSS 2.0. I illustrate this transformation using a framework of process and product factors, and discuss the shift in the application of the bazaar metaphor from the development process to the product delivery and support process. Overall the OSS 2.0 phenomenon is significantly different from its free software antecedent. Its emergence accentuates the fundamental alteration of the basic ground-rules in the software landscape, signifying the end of the proprietary-driven model that has prevailed for the past 20 years or so. Thus, a clear understanding of the characteristics of the emergent OSS 2.0 phenomenon is required to address key challenges for research and practice.

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.

The fast growth of OSS has increased the interest in studying the composition of the OSS community and its collaboration mechanisms. Moreover, the success of a project may be related to the underlying social structure of the OSS development community. In this paper, we perform a quantitative analysis of Open Source Software developers by studying the entire development community at SourceForge [26]. Statistics and social network properties are explored to find collaborations and the effects of different members in the OSS development community. Small world phenomenon and scale free behaviors are found in the SourceForge development network. These topological properties may potentially explain the success and efficiency of OSS development practices. We also infer from our analysis that weakly associated but contributing co-developers and active users may be an important factor in OSS development. 1.

Free/open source software (F/OSS) development projects are growing at a rapid rate. Globally dispersed virtual communities with large groups of software developers contribute time and effort often without pay. One force behind this phenomenon is the Free Software Movement (FSM), a 20 year-old social movement whose purpose is to promote the use of free software instead of proprietary software. We show how the ideology of the FSM influences software development work practices in F/OSS communities and how an occupational community of F/OSS developers has emerged from this movement. We present results from an empirical study of a F/OSS development community, GNUenterprise (GNUe) whose purpose is to build an Enterprise Resource Planning system. We show how the beliefs in freedom and freedom of choice, and the values of cooperative work and community building are manifested in the GNUe norms of informal self-management, immediate acceptance of fellow contributors, and open disclosure.

This study is part of an ongoing comparative study of various types of open software communities including both free and open source software projects. This study examines how the organizational cultural beliefs and values of a free software virtual organization influence software development processes. It provides examples that illustrate the importance of personal motivation and a sense of working as a team in the perpetuation of a virtual work community. It presents the world of the GNUenterprise.org project as a virtual organizational culture that embodies the beliefs of free software and freedom of choice, and the values of community building and cooperative work. A close study of this project shows how these beliefs and values are manifested in software development methods, artifacts, and tool choice, as well as how dispersed developers cooperate and resolve conflict in a virtual community. Data collection includes the content analysis of Internet Relay Chat archives; kernel cousins archives (summary digests of IRC and mailing list archives); mailing list archives; email interviews; Web site documents and observations; and personal interviews conducted at two open source conferences. Two cases from IRC and mailing list archives of the GNUe virtual community at work are presented for in-depth analyses and comparison. Cultural beliefs and values combined with

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We thank the senior editor on the manuscript, V. Sambamurthy, and the anonymous associate editor and reviewers for their many insightful suggestions on earlier

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