Open Source Software Engineering

The term Open Source Software (OSS) first appeared in 1998 [1] in an effort to change the popular understanding of what had to that point been called “free software” products like GNU/Linux, Apache, Perl and BIND. In the periods both immediately before and after the coining of the term, many insightful essays appeared both online and in print, attempting to better explain this novel approach to the problems of software development. However, as Eric S. Raymond, President of the Open Source Initiative, puts it, “all the attempts at a really comprehensive description of the phenomenon had come from open-source hackers like myself, theorists operating from within the culture we were describing. We had the advantage of knowing our ground, but the disadvantage of knowing it perhaps too well -there are undoubtedly good questions we would never have thought to ask. That's why I've hoped from the beginning that an analytical literature about open source, independent of the open-source community itself, would evolve [2].”