Hello Friends, <sorry for any x-posting> Hope everyone is doing OK and have recovered from July 4th, EuroCup 2004, Tour de France and other assorted summer fun! Please find below 3 new papers and one extended abstract on the opensource.mit.edu|freesoftware.mit.edu website. Many thanks to all the authors who submitted their work. Please provide them with comments on their working papers. Ok back to my dissertation writing. Warmly, Karim -- Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224 http://spoudaiospaizen.net http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu Paper 1 Authors: Twidale, Michael B & David M. Nichols Title: Usability Discussions in Open Source Development http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/twidalenichols.pdf Abstract: The public nature of discussion in open source projects provides a valuable resource for understanding the mechanisms of open source software development. In this paper we explore how open source projects address issues of usability. We examine bug reports of several projects to characterise how developers address and resolve issues concerning user interfaces and interaction design. We discuss how bug reporting and discussion systems can be improved to better support bug reporters and open source developers. Paper 2 Authors: West, Joel & Siobhán O'Mahony Title: Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/westomahony.pdf Abstract: Prior research has focused on community-founded open source projects; more recently, firms have spun out existing code to create a new project. We compare the lifecycle differences between these models, and identify identify problems unique to spinout projects, particularly in building an external community. We illustrate these issues by examining a proposed open source project for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Paper 3 Authors: Henkel, Joachim & Mark Tins Title: Munich/MIT Suvey: Development of Embedded Linux http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/henkeltins.pdf Abstract: The use of Linux in embedded devices has increased enormously in recent years. Most of the publicly available code for embedded Linux is developed and contributed by commercial firms, not by hobbyists. This raises the question if and how the development process differs from that of other OSS. This issue was addressed in a survey of embedded Linux developers yielding 268 valid responses. This paper is a collection of descriptive results from the survey. Extended Abstract Author: Bertelli, Federico Title: Open source software development put in an impure public goods context http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/bertelli.pdf Description: The open source software development appears to be a problem of pure public goods contribution, but looking more in depth emerge the classic question posed by Lerner and Tirole: "Why should thousands of top-notch programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good?". So, the aim of this research is to elaborate a model able to cope with the low level of free riding.