Corner Open source software – – an evaluation q

The success of Linux and Apache has strengthened the opinion that the open source paradigm is one of the most promising strategies to enhance the maturity, quality, and efficiency of software development activities. This observation, however, has not been discussed in much detail and critically addressed by the software engineering community. Most of the claims associated with open source appear to be weakly motivated and articulated. For this reason, this paper proposes some qualitative reflections and observations on the nature of open source software and on the most popular and important claims associated with the open source approach. The ultimate goal of the paper is to identify the concepts and intuitions that are really peculiar to open source, and to distinguish them from features and aspects that can be equally applied to or found in proprietary software. 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.