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Successful And Abandoned Sourceforge.Net Projects In The Initiation Stage, Charles Schweik
Successful And Abandoned Sourceforge.Net Projects In The Initiation Stage, Charles Schweik
National Center for Digital Government
[first paragraph] Chapter 6 provided an open source project success and abandonment dependent variable. Chapter 7 described data available in the Sourceforge.net repository and linked these data to various independent variable concepts and hypotheses presented in the theoretical part of this book. Chapter 7 also described the Classification Tree and Random Forest statistical approaches we use in this and the following chapter. This chapter presents the results of the Classification Tree analysis for successful and abandoned projects in the Initiation Stage, which in Chapter 3 (Figure 3.2), we defined as the period before and up to the time when a …
The Dependent Variable: Defining Open Source "Success" And "Abandonment" Using Sourceforge.Net Data, Charles Schweik
The Dependent Variable: Defining Open Source "Success" And "Abandonment" Using Sourceforge.Net Data, Charles Schweik
National Center for Digital Government
[first paragraph] From the very beginning of this research project, we understood that we needed to define what success meant in open source so that we could use that definition to create a dependent variable for our empirical studies. Does success mean a project has developed high quality software, or does it mean that the software is widely used? How might extremely valuable software that is used by only a few people, such as software for charting parts of the human genome, fit into this definition? In this chapter, we establish a robust success and abandonment measure that satisfies these …
The Open Source Software Ecosystem, Charles M. Schweik
The Open Source Software Ecosystem, Charles M. Schweik
National Center for Digital Government
[first paragraph] Open source research in the late 1990s and early 2000's described open source development projects as all-volunteer endeavors without the existence of monetary incentives (Chakravarty, Haruvy and Wu, 2007), and relatively recent empirical studies (Ghosh, 2005; Wolf {{243}}) confirm that a sizable percentage of open source developers are indeed volunteers.1 Open source development projects involving more than one developer were seen to follow a “hacker ethic” (Himanen, 2000; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003) where individuals freely give away and exchange software they had written so that it could be modified and built upon, with an expectation of …
Open Source Software Collaboration: Foundational Concepts And An Empirical Analysis, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English, Sandra Haire
Open Source Software Collaboration: Foundational Concepts And An Empirical Analysis, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English, Sandra Haire
National Center for Digital Government
This paper has three primary goals. First, we provide an overview on some foundational concepts – “peer-production,” “user-centric innovation,” “crowdsourcing,” “task granularity,” and yes, open source and open content – for they are key elements of Internet-based collaboration we see today. Second, through this discussion on foundational concepts, we hope to make it clear why people interested in collaborative public management and administration should care about open source and open source-like collaboration. After this argument is made, we provide a very condensed summary of where we are to date on open source collaboration research. The goal of that research is …
Brooks' Versus Linus' Law: An Empirical Test Of Open Source Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English
Brooks' Versus Linus' Law: An Empirical Test Of Open Source Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English
National Center for Digital Government
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects are Internet-based collaborations consisting of volunteers and paid professionals who come together to create computer software...
Open-Source Collaboration In The Public Sector: The Need For Leadership And Value, Michael P. Hamel
Open-Source Collaboration In The Public Sector: The Need For Leadership And Value, Michael P. Hamel
National Center for Digital Government
From executive summary: The “open-source” movement in information technology is largely based on the innovative licensing schemes that encourage collaboration and sharing and promise reduced cost of ownership, customizable software and the ability to extract data in a usable format. Government organizations are becoming increasingly intolerant of the forced migrations (upgrades) and closed data standards (or incompatible data standards) that typically come with the use of proprietary software. To combat the problems of interoperability and cost, governments around the globe are beginning to consider, and in some cases, even require the use of open-source software (Hahn, 2002; Wong, 2004).
Tragedy Of The Foss Commons? Investigating The Institutional Designs Of Free/Libre And Open Source Software Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English
Tragedy Of The Foss Commons? Investigating The Institutional Designs Of Free/Libre And Open Source Software Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English
National Center for Digital Government
Free/Libre and Open Source Software projects (FOSS) are a form of Internetbased commons. Since 1968, when Garrett Hardin published his famous article “Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science, there has been significant interest in understanding how to manage commons appropriately, particularly in environmental fields. An important distinction between natural resource commons and FOSS commons is that the “tragedy” to be avoided in natural resources is overharvesting and the potential destruction of the resource. In FOSS commons the “tragedy” to be avoided is project abandonment and a “dead” project. Institutions – defined as informal norms, more formalized rules, and …
Identifying Success And Tragedy Of Floss Commons: A Preliminary Classification Of Sourceforge.Net Projects, Robert English, Charles M. Schweik
Identifying Success And Tragedy Of Floss Commons: A Preliminary Classification Of Sourceforge.Net Projects, Robert English, Charles M. Schweik
National Center for Digital Government
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects are a form of commons where individuals work collectively to produce software that is a public, rather than a private, good. The famous phrase “Tragedy of the Commons” describes a situation where a natural resource commons, such as a pasture, or a water supply, gets depleted because of overuse. The tragedy in FLOSS commons is distinctly different -- it occurs when collective action ceases before a software product is produced or reaches its full potential. This paper builds on previous work about defining success in FLOSS projects by taking a collective action perspective. …