research-article

The role of foundations in open source projects

Authors:

Javier Luis Cánovas Izquierdo,

Jordi CabotAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-SEIS '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

Pages 3 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3183428.3183438

Published: 27 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

In the last years, a number of Open-Source Systems (OSS) have created parallel foundations, as legal instruments to better articulate the structure, collaboration and financial model for the project. Some examples are Apache, Linux, Mozilia, Eclipse or Django foundations. Nevertheless, foundations largely differ in the kind of mission they have and the support they provide to their project/s. In this paper we study the role of foundations in open source software development. We analyze the nature of 89 software foundations and then focus on the 18 most relevant ones to study their openness and influence in the development practices taking place in the endorsed projects. Our results reveal the existence of a significant number of foundations with the sole purpose of promoting the importance of the free software movement and/or that limit them selves to core legal aspects but do not play any role in the day-to-day operations of the project (e.g., a few of them are just umbrelia organizations for a large variety of projects). Therefore, while useful, foundations do not remove the need for specific projects to develop their own governance, contribution and development policies.

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Cited By

Chakraborti MAtkisson CStănciulescu ŞFilkov VFrey S(2024)Do We Run How We Say We Run? Formalization and Practice of Governance in OSS CommunitiesProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641980(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641980
Berlinguer M(2023)Open Source and Economic Models in an Evolutionary ApproachBusiness Models and Strategies for Open Source Projects10.4018/978-1-6684-4785-7.ch002(18-49)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4785-7.ch002
Zimmermann TFalleri J(2023)A grounded theory of community package maintenance organizationsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10337-428:4Online publication date: 6-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-023-10337-4
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Index Terms

The role of foundations in open source projects
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE-SEIS '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

May 2018

108 pages

ISBN:9781450356619

DOI:10.1145/3183428

Conference Chairs:
Valerie Issarny
Inria, France
,
Schahram Dustdar
TU Wien, Austria

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

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Published: 27 May 2018

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ICSE '18: 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 27 - June 3, 2018

Gothenburg, Sweden

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Cited By

Chakraborti MAtkisson CStănciulescu ŞFilkov VFrey S(2024)Do We Run How We Say We Run? Formalization and Practice of Governance in OSS CommunitiesProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641980(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641980
Berlinguer M(2023)Open Source and Economic Models in an Evolutionary ApproachBusiness Models and Strategies for Open Source Projects10.4018/978-1-6684-4785-7.ch002(18-49)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4785-7.ch002
Zimmermann TFalleri J(2023)A grounded theory of community package maintenance organizationsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10337-428:4Online publication date: 6-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-023-10337-4
Kritikos AStamelos I(2023)A resilience‐based framework for assessing the evolution of open source software projectsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2597Online publication date: 19-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2597
Linåker JPapatheocharous EOlsson T(2022)How to characterize the health of an Open Source Software project? A snowball literature review of an emerging practiceProceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Open Collaboration10.1145/3555051.3555067(1-12)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555051.3555067
Zhang XWang TYu YZeng QLi ZWang H(2022)Who, What, Why and How? Towards the Monetary Incentive in Crowd Collaboration: A Case Study of Github’s Sponsor MechanismProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501822(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3501822
Wang YWang LHu HJiang JKuang HTao X(2022)The Influence of Sponsorship on Open-Source Software Developers' Activities on GitHub2022 IEEE 46th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)10.1109/COMPSAC54236.2022.00144(924-933)Online publication date: Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC54236.2022.00144
Hsieh YVergne J(2022) The future of the web? The coordination and early‐stage growth of decentralized platforms Strategic Management Journal10.1002/smj.345544:3(829-857)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3455
Zhou JWang SKamei YHassan AUbayashi N(2021)Studying donations and their expenses in open source projects: a case study of GitHub projects collecting donations through open collectivesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-10060-y27:1Online publication date: 30-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10060-y
Zhou JWang SZhang HChen THassan A(2021)Studying backers and hunters in bounty issue addressing process of open source projectsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-09979-z26:4Online publication date: 10-Jun-2021
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