Internet Success: A Study of Open-Source Software Commons
Charles M. Schweik and Robert C. English
Abstract
The use of open-source software (OSS)—readable software source code that can be copied, modified, and distributed freely—has expanded dramatically in recent years. The number of OSS projects hosted on SourceForge.net (the largest hosting Web site for OSS), for example, grew from just over 100,000 in 2006 to more than 250,000 at the beginning of 2011. But why are some projects successful—that is, able to produce usable software and sustain ongoing development over time—while others are abandoned? This book, the product of a large-scale empirical study to look at social, technical, and instituti ... More
The use of open-source software (OSS)—readable software source code that can be copied, modified, and distributed freely—has expanded dramatically in recent years. The number of OSS projects hosted on SourceForge.net (the largest hosting Web site for OSS), for example, grew from just over 100,000 in 2006 to more than 250,000 at the beginning of 2011. But why are some projects successful—that is, able to produce usable software and sustain ongoing development over time—while others are abandoned? This book, the product of a large-scale empirical study to look at social, technical, and institutional aspects of OSS, examines factors that lead to success in OSS projects and work toward a better understanding of Internet-based collaboration. Drawing on literature from many disciplines and using a theoretical framework developed for the study of environmental commons, it examines stages of OSS development, presenting multivariate statistical models of success and abandonment. The authors argue that analyzing the conditions of OSS successes may also inform Internet collaborations in fields beyond software engineering, particularly those which aim to solve complex technical, social, and political problems.
Keywords:
open-source software,
source code,
SourceForge.net,
usable software,
Internet-based collaboration,
environmental commons,
multivariate statistical models,
OSS,
software engineering,
political problems
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262017251 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262017251.001.0001 |
