In the last few years, the open source software (OSS) development movement has captured the attention of both information systems practitioners and researchers. In contrast to proprietary software, OSS is usually developed through public collaborationand its source code is made freely available. In the last five years, OSS development has become a viable alternative to commercial software (Chengalur-Smith and Sidorova, 2003), attracting intense practitioner interest. As a new approach to the production of software, OSS has already begun to revolutionize the software industry as a whole, drastically changing the way software code is produced. Beyond the software industry, OSS has attracted interest for its application of community principles of governance over commercial activities (Markus et al., 2000; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003). indeed, by describing OSS development as a "movement," we reflect the broader excitement about the implications of community governance processes in a knowledge economy (Adler, 2001).
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