Research Priorities in Open Source Software Development

1
Research Priorities in Open Source Software
Development

• James D. Herbsleb
• Institute for Software Research, International
• School of Computer Science
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Pittsburgh, PA, USA 15213
• jherbsleb_at_acm.org

2
Motivations, Decision-Making

• FLOSS, BCG clarify general motivation for
  participation
• How do key developers decide where to allocate
  their resources?
• User innovation model
• Personal reputation model
• Product needs model
• How do individual motivations sum to give the
  development its trajectory?
• Not quite a market, not quite a hierarchy,
  perhaps a network

3
Limitations

• Product structure, architecture
• What does not get built?
• Developers only meeting own needs?
• Differences between developer/users and general
  users?
• Effects of scale
• Hypothesis with larger scale, coordination needs
  force adoption of commercial development
  techniques
• Possible to increase participation by non-core
  developers?

4
Adoption and Patronage

• Commercial organizations need ways to assess risk
  of adopting open source
• New forms of virtual organization
• What effects on OSS culture, individual
  motivation, economic network?
• How will competitive pressures, business
  motivations affect development?
• Cause branching, fragmentation?
• Evolve toward joint ventures, away from community
  ownership?

5
Collaboration Technology

• Possible effects
• Better management of dependencies, more
  participation of periphery
• More and richer communication among
  developer/users
• Activity monitors different choices about what
  to work on -- easily identify neglected areas
• Social network monitors increase sense of
  community, attract more developers

6
Backup follows
7
Collaboration Technology Example