Free/Open Source Software Development: Recent Research Results and Methods

The focus of this chapter is to review what is known about Free and Open Source Software Development (FOSSD) work practices, development processes, project and community dynamics, and other socio-technical relationships. It does not focus on specific properties or technical attributes of different FOSS systems, but it does seek to explore how FOSS is developed and evolved. The chapter provides a brief background on what FOSS is and how free software and open source software development efforts are similar and different. From there attention shifts to an extensive review of a set of empirical studies of FOSSD that articulate different levels of analysis.