Key Concepts and Definitions of Open Source Communities

Author(s):  
Ruben van Wendel de Joode ◽  
Sebastian Spaeth

Most open source software is developed in online communities. These communities are typically referred to as “open source software communities” or “OSS communities.” In OSS communities, the source code, which is the human-readable part of software, is treated as something that is open and that should be downloadable and modifiable to anyone who wishes to do so. The availability of the source code has enabled a practice of decentralized software development in which large numbers of people contribute time and effort. Communities like Linux and Apache, for instance, have been able to connect thousands of individual programmers and professional organizations (although most project communities remain relatively small). These people and organizations are not confined to certain geographical places; on the contrary, they come from literally all continents and they interact and collaborate virtually.

2003 ◽  
Vol 2003 (01) ◽  
pp. 0102
Author(s):  
Terry Bollinger

This report documents the results of a study by The MITRE Corporation on the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). FOSS gives users the right to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve it as they see fit, without asking permission or making fiscal payments to any external group or person. The study showed that FOSS provides substantial benefits to DoD security, infrastructure support, software development, and research. Given the openness of its source code, the finding that FOSS profoundly benefits security was both counterintuitive and instructive. Banning FOSS in DoD would remove access to exceptionally well-verified infrastructure components such as OpenBSD and robust network and software analysis tools needed to detect and respond to cyber-attacks. Finally, losing the hands-on source code accessibility of FOSS source code would reduce DoD’s ability to respond rapidly to cyberattacks. In short, banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the DoD’s ability to defend the U.S. against cyberattacks. For infrastructure support, the deep historical ties between FOSS and the emergence of the Internet mean that removing FOSS applications would strongly negatively impact the DoD’s ability to support web and Internet-based applications. Software development would be hit especially hard due to many leading-edge and broadly used tools being FOSS. Finally, the loss of access to low-cost data processing tools and the inability to share results in the more potent form of executable FOSS software would seriously and negatively impact nearly all forms of scientific and data-driven research.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamish Harvey ◽  
Dawei Han

Open Source, in which the source code to software is freely shared and improved upon, has recently risen to prominence as an alternative to the more usual closed approach to software development. A number of high profile projects, such as the Linux operating system kernel and the Apache web server, have demonstrated that Open Source can be technically effective, and companies such as Cygnus Solutions (now owned by Red Hat) and Zope Corporation have demonstrated that it is possible to build successful companies around open source software. Open Source could have significant benefits for hydroinformatics, encouraging widespread interoperability and rapid development. In this paper we present a brief history of Open Source, a summary of some reasons for its effectiveness, and we explore how and why Open Source is of particular interest in the field of hydroinformatics. We argue that for technical, scientific and business reasons, Open Source has a lot to offer.


2013 ◽  
Vol 373-375 ◽  
pp. 1172-1177
Author(s):  
Bo Shu ◽  
Xiao Jun Du

Because of the complexity of the software development, some software developers may plagiarize source code that comes from other projects or open source software in order to shorten development cycle. Usually the copyist would modify and disguise the source code copied to escape plagiarism detection. So far, most algorithms cant completely detect the source disguised by the copyist, especially cant exactly distinguish between the source code and the plagiaristic code. In this paper, we summarize and analyze the effect of disguised source to the detection process, design the strategy to remove the effect of disguised source, and propose a PDG-based software source code plagiarism detection algorithm. The algorithm can detect the existence of disguised source, so as to find out source code plagiarism. And we propose a heuristic rule to make the detection algorithm have the ability to give the plagiarism direction. Any existing algorithm does not have this function. We prove the availability of the algorithm by experiment.


Author(s):  
Ruben van Wendel de Joode ◽  
Hans de Bruijn ◽  
Michel van Eeten

Open source communities bring together a dispersed collection of people, sometimes a large number of them, around the development of open source software. In the absence of enforceable formal structures, like those found in corporate settings, how are the activities of all these participants coordinated? From the outside looking in, it may seem that chaos and disorder rule. It is true that most decisions are made on an individual basis by the participants themselves. Nevertheless, work is coordinated successfully. We first discuss mechanisms that reduce the need for coordination— most notably by striving for modularity and elegance. We then turn to a number of mechanisms that provide coordination even under the difficult conditions that are present in open source communities. We conclude by outlining a number of potential steps for future research.


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