[Air-l] 7 new papers on opensource.mit.edu | freesoftware.mit.edu

[Karim R. Lakhani]

Hello Friends
<sorry for any X-posting>

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American friends.  Below you will find 7 
new papers related to open source and free software.  We have papers 
from Sociology, Social Psychology, Economics, and Computer Science.

Many thanks to all the authors that submitted their papers!

Thanks!

Karim
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Paper 1
Authors:
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi

Title:
Comparing motivations of individual programmers and firms to take part 
in the Open Source movement. From community to business
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/bnaccorsirossimotivationlong.pdf

Abstract:
A growing body of economic literature is addressing the incentives of 
the individuals that take part to the Open Source movement. However, 
empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that 
do business with Open Source software (OSS). During 2002, we conducted a 
large-scale survey on 146 Italian firms supplying Open Source solutions 
in Italy. In this paper our data on firms’ motivations are compared with 
data collected by the surveys made on individual programmers. We aim at 
analysing the role played by different classes of motivations (social, 
economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different 
groups of agents in Open Source activities.

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Paper 2
Authors:
O'Mahony, Siobhan & Fabrizio Ferraro
Title:
Managing the Boundary of an ‘Open’ Project
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/omahonyferraro.pdf
Abstract:
In the past ten years, the boundaries between public and open science 
and commercial research efforts have become more porous. Scholars have 
thus more critically examined ways in which these two institutional 
regimes intersect. Large open source software projects have also 
attracted commercial collaborators and now struggle to develop code in 
an open public environment that still protects their communal 
boundaries. This research applies a dynamic social network approach to 
understand how one community managed software project, Debian, develops 
a membership process. We examine the project’s face-to-face social 
network during a five-year period (1997-2001) to see how changes in the 
social structure affect the evolution of membership mechanisms and the 
determination of gatekeepers. While the amount and importance of a 
contributor’s work increases the probability that a contributor will 
become a gatekeeper, those more central in the social network are more 
likely to become gatekeepers and influence the membership process. A 
greater understanding of the mechanisms open projects use to manage 
their boundaries has critical implications for research and knowledge 
producing communities operating in pluralistic, open and distributed 
environments.

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Paper 3
Authors:
Schach, Jin, Wright, Heller & Offutt
Title:
Quality Impacts of Clandestine Common Coupling
http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~srs/preprints/clandestine.preprint.pdf

Abstract:
The number of instances of common coupling between a module M and the 
other modules can be changed without any explicit change to M; this is 
termed "clandestine common coupling." This paper presents results from a 
study of clandestine common coupling in 391 versions of Linux. 
Specifically, the common coupling between each of 5332 kernel modules 
and the rest of the product as a whole was measured. In more than half 
of the new versions, a change in common coupling was observed, even 
though none of the modules themselves was changed.
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Paper 4
Authors:
Schach, Jin, Wright, Heller & Offutt
Title:
Maintainability of the Linux Kernel
http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~srs/preprints/linux.longitudinal.preprint.pdf

Abstract:
We have examined 365 versions of Linux. For every version, we counted 
the number of instances of common (global) coupling between each of the 
17 kernel modules and all the other modules in that version of Linux. We 
found that the number of instances of common coupling grows 
exponentially with version number. This result is significant at the 
99.99% level, and no additional variables are needed to explain this 
increase. We conclude that, unless Linux is restructured with a bare 
minimum of common coupling, the dependencies induced by common coupling 
will, at some future date, make Linux exceedingly hard to maintain 
without inducing regression faults.
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Paper 5
Authors:
Schach, Jin, Yu, Heller & Offutt
Title:
Determining the Distribution of Maintenance Categories: Survey versus 
Measurement
http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~srs/preprints/lst.preprint.pdf

Abstract:
In 1978, Lientz, Swanson, and Tompkins ("LST") published the results of 
a survey on software maintenance. They found that 17.4% of maintenance 
effort was categorized as corrective in nature, 18.2% as adaptive, 60.3% 
as perfective, and 4.1% was categorized as other. We contrast this 
survey-based result with our empirical results from the analysis of data 
for the repeated maintenance of a commercial real-time product and two 
open-source products, the Linux kernel and GCC. For all three products 
and at both levels of granularity we considered, our observed 
distributions of maintenance categories were statistically very highly 
significantly different from LST. In particular, corrective maintenance 
was always more than twice the LST value.
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Paper 6
Author:
Shah, Sonali
Title: Understanding the Nature of Participation & Coordination in Open 
and Gated Source Software Development Communities
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/shah3.pdf

Abstract:
This paper explores the motivations of participants from two software 
development communities and finds that most participants are motivated 
by either a need to use the software or an enjoyment of programming. The 
latter group, hobbyists or enthusiasts, are critical to the long-term 
viability and sustainability of open source software code: they take on 
tasks that might otherwise go undone, are largely need-neutral as they 
make decisions, and express a desire to maintain the simplicity, 
elegance, and modularity of the code. The motives of hobbyist evolve 
over time; most join the community because they have a need for the 
software and stay because they enjoy programming in the context of a 
particular community. Governance and licensing structures affect this 
evolution.
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Paper 7
Author:
Warner, Julian

Title:
Forms of labour in information systems
http://informationr.net/ir/7-4/paper135.html

Abstract:
The idea of technology, including information technology, as a human 
construction is taken as the basis for the themes to be developed. The 
possibility of constructing an information dynamic, continuous with the 
dynamic of capitalism, is considered. Differentiations are made between 
forms of semiotic labour: semantic from syntactic labour and communal 
from universal labour. Information retrieval systems and the departure 
from the labour theory of copyright are considered in relation to the 
forms of labour distinguished. An information dynamic is constructed. 
The potential and limitations of syntactic labour are considered. The 
analytic value of the distinctions developed is differentiated from the 
possible predictive power of the dynamic indicated.
-- 
===============================================
Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan School of Management
&
The Boston Consulting Group, Strategy Practice Initiative
e-mail: karim.lakhani at sloan.mit.edu | lakhani.karim at bcg.com
voice:  617-851-1224
fax:    617-344-0403
http://spoudaiospaizen.net/
http://opensource.mit.edu | http://freesoftware.mit.edu
http://userinnovation.mit.edu


-- 
===============================================
Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan School of Management
&
The Boston Consulting Group, Strategy Practice Initiative
e-mail: karim.lakhani at sloan.mit.edu | lakhani.karim at bcg.com
voice:  617-851-1224
fax:    617-344-0403
http://spoudaiospaizen.net/
http://opensource.mit.edu | http://freesoftware.mit.edu
http://userinnovation.mit.edu