Open source software development: Exploring research perspectives

Abstract

Fundamentally speaking, Open Source Software (OSS) development has generated considerable interest following the success of projects like Internet, WWW and Linux. The principle steering this form of development is that the developers, through source code sharing, use a cooperative development model of rigorous peer review and parallel debugging leading to rapid innovative development and maintenance of projects. The phenomenon of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) has grown within the past decade to revolutionize the ways of creation, distribution, acquisition and use of information systems and services. FLOSS is becoming an increasingly important topic of research for information systems researchers to understand the development process and the tools involved for its success. This paper adopts a general exploratory approach and focuses on the exploring research perspectives in the OSS development in present scenario. It aims to examine the concept behind OSS development, its origins and differences from traditional development approach. A brief literature review regarding various research approaches has been presented. Finally, research perspectives within the present scenario are described in three categories of research areas namely Developers', Metrics and Tools. This work highlights the OSS development research aspects with consideration towards areas which need exploration for consideration and comparison with traditional software engineering concepts. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.