i have long planned to eventually update my thesis with new developments. apparently, some people are actually reading what i jotted down 🙂 i got an invitation from ieee to submit an article for their software journal today:

Increasingly, we develop software by integrating components, libraries, and subsystems. The open source software movement has generated an extensive repository of potentially reusable software elements of varying quality and integrability. The free availability of source code might address 2 reservations often raised when deciding on the use of COTS components: unknown implementation quality and long-term vendor support. However, the use of OSS in commercial software development has not yet been formalized as an established practice. Developers need to know what types of OSS they can reuse, when such reuse is a promising strategy, how they can locate and evaluate OSS, and how OSS will fit into their development and maintenance processes. In addition, drawing on OSS in ways that go beyond unmodified as-is use (by modifying the source) raises further issues of long-term maintainability and its own set of interesting economic, business, and legal aspects.
We seek submissions that address one or, preferably, more of the following topics: taxonomies and repositories of available OSS; searching and evaluation strategies; success stories and failures; development strategies, models, and methodologies based on reusing OSS; economic, business, and legal aspects; the maintenance and integration of evolution paths; cooperation with the OSS community; and challenges and benefits.

the submission deadline is in august, and publication is in january 2004. geez, talk about lead times. on the other hand, it gives me time to come up with something original.

the biggest liability for open source projects are neither software patents nor the “enemy” microsoft, but zealots. these people feel that they somehow have the moral legitimacy to read from the open source scripture, and rip others a new one. by spewing their zealotry, they do triple damage:

• they drive reasonable onlookers away
• they waste everyone’s time
• they fail to contribute with code

as the saying goes, verba volant, scripta manent.

fortunately my thesis, rather than collecting dust, continues to inspire others. today i got a mail:

I read your master thesis entitled “A Framework For Open Source Projects”. It struck me in an uncanny way. I recently began working on a project in which the goal is to improve process for open software. My motivation is that I have contributed to projects and was amazed at the poor processes they used, and I think this is a way that I can really help out open source.

The project home page is hoot.tigris.org. The reason I was amazed at your paper is that you point out MANY ideas that I have been thinking about and actually have evidence or references to back them up. In some cases you stated word for word what I have been thinking, and what I want to improve.

I would also like to invite you to be a part of the project, at any level you desire. By that I mean just sitting on the dev list and making comments from time to time, or actually making major decisions and being a member of the “core team of developers”.

when i looked at the open source landscape, the community’s infatuation with tools was readily apparent. everything was basically a tools problem, and if your project sucked, it must be because you were not using the latest and greatest (ftp/web/irc/mail/nntp/scm/bugtracker/forum/wiki) software. efforts to raise the bar by quality-enabling tools are noble and worthy, but i feel they will fail to do much good because only the good developers would use them. this is why i focused on general education about open source processes and pitfalls more than specific instances or tool support, and i still believe there is a bigger gain by educating the masses about some key concepts rather than by making them use better tools without the proper theoretical insights. i will therefore continue to spread my thesis, and probably even help out with commentary on the hoot project, but probably wont tie myself too tightly to it, even though i laud the effort.