Handbook of Research on Open Source Software
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Published By IGI Global

9781591409991, 9781591408925

Author(s):  
Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

This chapter discusses the role of the project/product community in the open source product life cycle. It outlines how a community-driven approach affects not only the development process, but also (and more importantly) the marketing/sales process, the deployment, the operation, and in general the resulting software product. Participation in the community is essential for any organization using the product, leading to the concept of a community customer. Specific community participation guidelines are given to organizations and individuals who deploy and use open source software, further develop it, or offer lifetime services on the product.


Author(s):  
Laurence Favier ◽  
Joël Mekhantar

This chapter deals with the integration of OSS in local and territorial e-administration and its relations with the state level in France. France includes both many local collectivities: (36,568 local collectivities) on four levels (local, departmental, regional, and central) and a centralized State. The policies defined in France and promoted by initiatives from the European Union are leading to the definition of a normative framework intended to promote interoperability between information systems, the use of free software and open standards, public-private partnerships, development of know-how and abilities. These policies are applicable to State agencies but are not required for local and regional collectives because of the constitutional principle of administrative freedom. The chapter shows how the integration of all administrative levels can be operated in an e-administration framework OSS based, often coexisting with proprietary software. The legal, political, and technical (III) frameworks of such integration are presented.


Author(s):  
Kwei-Jay Lin ◽  
Yi-Hsuan Lin ◽  
Tung-Mei Ko

In this chapter, the authors present a novel perspective by using the Creative Commons (CC) licensing model to compare 10 commonly used OSS licenses. The authors also propose a license compatibility table to show that whether it is possible to combine OSS with CC-licensed open content in a creative work. By using the CC licensing concept to interpret OSS licenses, the authors hope that users can get a deeper understanding on the ideas and issues behind many of the OSS licenses. In addition, the authors hope that by means of this table, users can make a better decision on the license selection while combining open source with CC-licensed works.


Author(s):  
Daniel Poulin ◽  
Andrew Mowbray

Law consists of legislation, judicial decisions, and interpretative material. Public legal information means legal information produced by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make it public. Such information includes the law itself (so-called primary materials) as well as various secondary (interpretative) public sources such as reports on preparatory work and law reform and resulting from boards of inquiry and available scholarly writing. The free access to law movement is a set of international projects that share a common vision to promote and facilitate open access to public legal information. The objectives of this chapter are to outline the free access to law movement, to set out the philosophies and principles behind this, and to discuss the role that open source software has played both in terms of its use and development.


Author(s):  
Robert Cunningham

This chapter examines the development of open source computer software with specific reference to the political economy of copyleft and the legalities associated with the General Public License (GPL). It will be seen that within the context of computer software development the notion of copyleft provides an important contrast to more traditional uses of copyright. This contrast symbolizes political, economic, and social struggles which are contextualized within this chapter. As the GPL is an important legal embodiment of copyleft, its legalities are preliminarily explored so as to determine its future potential. While there is some scope to further refine the legal strength of the GPL, it will be seen that it remains a strong and subversive legal instrument which will continue to underlie open source initiatives in the years to come.


Author(s):  
Bruno de Vuyst

This chapter discusses legal and economic rationale in regards to open source software protection. Software programs are, under TRIPS1, protected by copyright (reference is made to the Berne Convention2). The issue with this protection is that, due to the dichotomy idea/expression that is typical for copyright protection, reverse engineering of software is not excluded, and copyright is hence found to be an insufficient protection. Hence, in the U.S., software makers have increasingly turned to patent protection. In Europe, there is an exclusion of computer programs in Article 52 (2) c) EPC (EPO, 1973), but this exclusion is increasingly narrowed and some call for abandoning the exclusion altogether. A proposal by the European Commission, made in 2002, called for a directive to allow national patent authorities to patent software in a broader way, so as to ensure further against reverse engineering; this proposal, however, was shelved in 2005 over active opposition within and outside the European parliament. In summary, open source software does not fit in any proprietary model; rather, it creates a freedom to operate. Ultimately, there is a need to rethink approaches to property law so as to allow for viable software packaging in both models.


Author(s):  
Beatrice A. Boateng ◽  
Kwasi Boateng

This chapter examines the main issues that have to be considered when selecting an open source content management system. It involves a discussion of literature and the experiences of the authors after installing and testing four widely used open source CMSs (Moodle, Drupal, Xoops, and Mambo) on a stand-alone desktop computer. It takes into consideration Arnold’s (2003) and Han’s (2004) suggestions for the development of CMSs, and identifies six criteria that need to be considered when selecting an open source CMS for use.


Author(s):  
Marcus Vinicius Brandão Soares

This chapter introduces the hybrid GLW information infrastructure as an alternative to proprietary-only information infrastructures with lower costs. The author argues that the use of FLOSS servers in a client- server infrastructure reduces the transaction costs relative to the data processing and the contract management that organizations have to support, preserving the investment already made with the installed base of clients in comparison to the use of proprietary managed servers. Transaction costs of two realworld proprietary infrastructures, Netware 5.0 and Windows NT 4.0, and of GLW, all with Windows 98 clients, are described and compared to give elements for the reader to analyze and decide.


Author(s):  
Juha Järvensivu

Dependencies between modern software projects are common. Jointly, such dependencies form a project network, where changes in one project cause changes to the others belonging to the same project network. This chapter discusses the issues of dependencies, distances, and priorities in open source project networks, from the standpoint of both technological and social networks. Thus, a multidisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of open source software (OSS) development is offered. There is a strong empirical focus maintained, since the aim of the chapter is to analyze OSS network characteristics through an in-depth, qualitative case study of one specifi c open source community: the Open Source Eclipse plug-in project Laika. In our analysis, we will introduce both internal and external networks associated with Laika, together with a discussion of how tightly they are intertwined. We will analyze both the internal and the external networks through the elements of mutuality, interdependence, distance, priorities, different power relations, and investments made in the relationships—elements chosen on the basis of analysis of the network studies literature.


Author(s):  
Victor van Reijswoud

Development organizations and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been emphasizing the high potential of free and open source software (FOSS) for the less developed countries (LDCs). Cost reduction, less vendor dependency, and increased potential for local capacity development have been their main arguments. In spite of its advantages, FOSS is not widely adopted on the African continent. In this chapter the experiences of one of the largest FOSS migrations in Africa is evaluated. The purpose of the evaluation is to make an on-the-ground assessment of the claims about the development potential of FOSS and draw up a research agenda for a FOSS community concerned with the LDCs.


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