An Open Source Community Christina K Pikas LBSC708P November 10, 2005

Agenda Brief introduction to the community Brief introduction to the community Supporting software platform Supporting software platform Usability support Usability support Sociability support Sociability support Is Sourceforge successful? Is Sourceforge successful? References References

What is Sourceforge? Open source software (OSS) community/group of communities Open source software (OSS) community/group of communities Code repository with included Code repository with included –CVS (Concurrent Versions System) –Compilers –Communication and project manager tools –Security tools

Examples of Projects Gaim Gaim BitTorrent BitTorrent eMule eMule NASA World Wind NASA World Wind Audacity Audacity Slash Slash

Supporting Software “PHP, Perl and Python and many Open Source tools and components” ( “PHP, Perl and Python and many Open Source tools and components” ( MySQLdatabase, Apache, mod_ssl, boa, MySQLdatabase, Apache, mod_ssl, boa, SSH, IRC SSH, IRC Client Software: Microsoft Explorer or Mozilla browsers, each project has unique hardware/software requirements Client Software: Microsoft Explorer or Mozilla browsers, each project has unique hardware/software requirements (see more complete listing here: up_id=1)

Usability Navigation isn’t very clear Navigation isn’t very clear No white space No white space Consistent throughout the site Consistent throughout the site Registration, updating profile, adding projects are easy Registration, updating profile, adding projects are easy Supports different levels of experience Supports different levels of experience

Sociability Clearly stated policies Clearly stated policies Many security features delegated to projects (good and bad) Many security features delegated to projects (good and bad) Support available at site level and frequently at project level Support available at site level and frequently at project level Symbols to indicate type/level of participation Symbols to indicate type/level of participation

Successful Current statistics (11/5/05) Current statistics (11/5/05) –Registered Projects: 105,395 –Registered Projects: 105,395 –Registered Users: 1,167,369 Many people have used it without knowing they were using it Many people have used it without knowing they were using it Expert reviews say it’s successful (Xu et al, 2005) Expert reviews say it’s successful (Xu et al, 2005) Supports learning (see Ye and Kishida, 2003) Supports learning (see Ye and Kishida, 2003)

References Diker, V., (2004) A Dynamic Feedback Framework for Studying Growth Policies in Open Online Collaboration Communities. CD-Rom Proceedings of the 10th Americas Conference on Information Systems, New York City, NY, August 5-8, Ducheneaut, N. (2005). Socialization in an open source software community: A socio-technical analysis. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14(4), Hippel, E. v. (2001). Innovation by user communities: Learning from open- source software. MIT Sloan Management Review, 42(4), 82. Hippel, E. v., & Krogh, G. v. (2003). Open source software and the "private- collective" innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization Science, 14(2), 209. Lakhani, K. R., & Hippel, E. v. (2003). How open source software works: "free" user-to-user assistance. Research Policy, 32(6), 923. Xu, J., Gao, Y., Christley, S., & Madey, G. (2005). A Topological Analysis Of The Open Source Software Development Community. HICSS '05: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'05) - track 7, Ye, Y., & Kishida, K. (2003). Toward an understanding of the motivation open source software developers. ICSE '03: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, Portland, Oregon,