Free/Libre Open Source Software users’ local Face-to-Face Meetings in career-related activities

While prior studies on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) users have mainly looked at FLOSS users in the context of FLOSS communities, little is known about whether and how FLOSS communities play a role in the context of its users’ careers. This study takes an inductive approach to investigate the phenomena that are emergent and poorly understood. As promising themes emerge from a pilot study on Drupal users’ local face-to-face meetings, the author proposes research question and research design. The proposed study plans to investigate local LAMP (Linux, Apache web server, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) users who attend local face-to-face meetings. The proposed study pays attention to: what role do FLOSS users’ local face-to-face meetings play in the context of their career-related activities. It is expected that the proposed study will contribute to FLOSS research by giving a new insight into FLOSS users in their careers, how FLOSS projects fit into local FLOSS users’ careers, and how to manage offline activities for