Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?

Many organisations are dependent upon long-term sustainable software systems and associated communities. In this paper we consider long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities in Open Source software projects involving a fork. There is currently a lack of studies in the literature that address how specific Open Source software communities are affected by a fork. We report from a study aiming to investigate the developer community around the LibreOffice project, which is a fork from the OpenOffice.org project. In so doing, our analysis also covers the OpenOffice.org project and the related Apache OpenOffice project. The results strongly suggest a long-term sustainable LibreOffice community and that there are no signs of stagnation in the LibreOffice project 33 months after the fork. Our analysis provides details on developer communities for the LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice projects and specifically concerning how they have evolved from the OpenOffice.org community with respect to project activity, developer commitment, and retention of committers over time. Further, we present results from an analysis of first hand experiences from contributors in the LibreOffice community. Findings from our analysis show that Open Source software communities can outlive Open Source software projects and that LibreOffice is perceived by its community as supportive, diversified, and independent. The study contributes new insights concerning challenges related to long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities.     

Microsoft,Open Source and the software ecosystem: of predators and prey—the leopard can change its spots

Over the past few years, Microsoft has promoted a project called ‘Shared Source Initiative’, which allows certain customers (e.g., research institutions and independent software vendors) access to its source code on a restricted basis. As part of this initiative, Microsoft introduced some licences that appear to give unrestricted access to source code and closely resemble ‘traditional’ Open Source licences. In July 2007, two of these ‘shared source’ licenses (the Microsoft Community Licence and the Microsoft Permissive Licence) were submitted to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and subsequently approved by the OSI as certified Open Source licences. Thus Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative and its partial embrace of Open Source appear to be a significant step towards closing the ideological rift between developers of proprietary software and the Free/Open Source software movement, and more than just another attempt to appease consumers and/or critics in terms of software transparency. By analysing the ‘evolution’ of Microsoft's Shared Source licences, this article aims to shed some light on the question what is needed for a ‘predator’ (i.e., proprietary, software developer) such as Microsoft to become ‘prey’ (i.e., be part of the Open Source community). This article concludes that, although Microsoft's efforts are to be lauded, it is highly unlikely that the company will embrace fully the Open Source philosophy in the near future.     

Socialization in an Open Source Software Community: A Socio-Technical Analysis

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.