eBRC Research Report 33

Multidisciplinary Views to Open Source Research

Nina Helander & Hanna Martin-Vahvanen (eds.)

Open source software (OSS) not only challenges the conventional ways of developing software, but it is also a basis for new businesses and business models. Companies that use OSS in their business need a comprehensive view on how to deal with the phenomena, not just one narrow view from a specific scientific discipline. To provide answers to the multifaceted phenomena 4 Finnish universities and 10 companies launched a multi-disciplinary Tekes funded project titled OSSI - Managing Open Source Software as an Integrated Part of Business. The research project aims to build a management framework providing answers to companies’ practical challenges.

This report presents the results of the state-of-the-art analysis carried out by the OSSI research group in the fall 2005. Five articles, representing the viewpoints of technology, sociology, law, business, and value networks, give insights into OSS and its use as part of business. According to the focus of the OSSI project, the report deals with the following OS communities: GNOME, Eclipse, Debian, MySQL, and Laika.

Download the report in pdf-format (0,8Mb)

Distribution
eBRC
Tampere University of Technology and University of Tampere

Published by
Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and
University of Tampere (UTA)

Printed edition ISSN 1459-0158 ISBN 952-15-1586-4 (TUT) 951-44-6607-1 (UTA)	Electronic edition ISSN 1459-0166 ISBN 952-15-1587-2(TUT) 951-44-6608-X (UTA)

Printed by Cityoffset Oy, Tampere 2006