Socio-Technical Interaction Networks in Free/Open Source Software Development Processes

Abstract

This chapter explores patterns of social a nd technological interaction that emerge in free/open source software development (F/OSSD ) projects found in different research and development communities. F/OSSD is a relatively new way for building and deploying large software systems on a global ba sis, and differs in many interesting ways from the principles and practices traditi onally advocated for so ftware engineering. Hundreds of F/OSS systems are now in use by thousands to millions of end-users, and some of these F/OSS systems entail hundreds-of -thousands to millions of lines of source code. So what’s going on here, and how are F/OSSD processes that are being used to build and sustain these projects different?