Talk:Open-source software

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Proposal to rewrite Sociological and demographic questions and the introduction[edit]

I propose rewriting the intro/lead in section. I also propose rewriting the social and demographic questions section and renaming it Society and Culture, as well as moving the section further down toward the bottom as impact to society makes more sense as a closing thought.

Extended content

Open Source Software[edit]

The term open source software (OSS) refers to software projects that are redistributable, with all source code being made available. Similarly, modifications and derived works are allowed and distributable.[1]

Though open-source software has many similarities to free software, open-source software focuses on the logic of publicly available software creating as much innovation as possible, while the free software movement sees publicly available software as a moral right, creating philosophical differences, though both movements support publicly available software.[1] Because of their similarities, some refer to their projects with both terms; free and open source (FOSS) or free/libre open source (F/LOSS, FLOSS).[1] Whichever the case, because of their respective philosophical focuses, it is generally expected to refer to projects as the creator has labeled them.[1]

The strength of open source software is its community, involving a range of roles from contributors to users. Because open source software is generally made up of voluntary contributions, open source projects differ from proprietary software in their organization, membership, leadership, contribution policies, and quality control.[2] This allows for lower barriers to participation, but also removes the monetary incentive to finish projects.[2] However, there are also some disadvantages.[1] For example, due to being made up of voluntary contributions there may be members who are unhelpful or have agendas that influence their contributions.[1] These issues may be true of any voluntary community and the majority greatly outnumbers the minority of unpleasant participants.[1] Some other issues may be licensing difficulties, disordered projects, language barriers, poor communication, or abandoned projects.[1]

For the consumer, open source software offers and opportunity to share, modify, improve software within the licensing limitations or to enjoy the software others have altered.[1] For society, open source software offers software that can be tailored to the needs of many industries and institutions around the world, including governments, allowing for greater economic development.[3][4][5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Brasseur, V. M. (2018). Forge your future with open source: build your skills, build your network, build the future of technology. The pragmatic programmers. Raleigh, North Carolina: The Pragmatic Bookshelf. ISBN 978-1-68050-301-2.
  2. ^ a b Androutsellis-Theotokis, Stephanos (2010). "Open Source Software: A Survey from 10,000 Feet". Foundations and Trends® in Technology, Information and Operations Management. 4 (3–4): 187–347. doi:10.1561/0200000026. ISSN 1571-9545.
  3. ^ Bretthauer, David (2001). "Open Source Software: A History". Information Technology and Libraries. 21 (1).
  4. ^ Wynants, M., & Cornelis, J. (Eds.). (2005). How open is the future? : Economic, social and cultural scenarios inspired by free and open-source software. ASP.
  5. ^ Pannier, Alice (2022). Software Power: The Economic and Geopolitical Implications of Open Source Software. Études de l’Ifri. ISBN 9791037306418.
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Society and Culture[edit]

Demographics[edit]

Despite being able to collaborate internationally, open source software contributors were found to mostly be located in large clusters such as Silicon Valley that largely collaborate within themselves.[1] Possible reasons for this phenomenon may be that the OSS contributor demographic largely works in software, meaning that the OSS geographic location is closely related to that dispersion and collaborations could be encouraged through work and social networks.[1] Code acceptance can be impacted by status within these social network clusters, creating unfair predispositions in code acceptance based on location.[2] Barriers to international collaboration also include linguistic or cultural differences.[3] Furthermore, each country has been shown to have a higher acceptance rate for code from contributors within their country except India, indicating a bias for culturally similar collaborators.[3]

In 2021, the countries with the highest open source software contributions included the United States, China, Germany, India, and the UK, in that order.[1] The counties with the highest OSS developers per capita from a study in 2021 include, in order, Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, while in 2008 the countries with top amount of estimated contributors in SourceForge were the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada and France.[1] [3] Though there have been several studies done on the distribution and contributions of OSS developers, this is still an open field that can be measured in several different ways.[3] For instance, Information and communication technology participation, population, wealth and proportion of access to the internet have been shown to be correlated with OSS contributions.[3]

Although gender diversity has been found to enhance team productivity, women still face biases while contributing to open source software projects when their gender is identifiable.[4] In 2002, only 1.5% of international open-source software developers were women, while women made up 28% of tech industry roles, demonstrating their low representation in the software field.[5] Despite OSS contributions having no prerequisites, this gender bias may continue to exist due to the common belief of contributors that gender shouldn't matter, and the quality of code should be the only consideration for code acceptance, preventing the community from addressing the systemic disparities in female representation.[5] However, a more recent figure of female OSS participation internationally calculated across 2005 to 2021 is 9.8%, with most being recent contributors, indicating that female participation may be growing.[6]

Motivations[edit]

There are many motivations for contributing to the OSS community.[7] For one, it is an opportunity to learn and practice multiple skills such as coding and other technology related abilities, but also fundamental skills such as communication and collaboration and practical skills needed to excel in technology related fields such as issue tracking or version control.[7] Instead of learning through a classroom or a job, learning through contributing to OSS allows participants to learn at their own pace and follow what interests them.[7] When contributing to OSS, you can learn the current industry best practices, technology and trends and even have the opportunity to contribute to the next big innovation as OSS grows increasingly popular within the tech field.[7] Contributing to OSS without payment means there is no threat of being fired, though reputations can take a hit.[7] On the other hand, a huge motivation to contribute to OSS is the reputation gained as you grow your public portfolio.[7]

Disparities[edit]

Even though programming was originally seen as a female profession, there remains a large gap in computing.[8] Social identity tends to be a large concern as women in the tech industry face insecurity about attracting unwanted male attention and harassment or being unfeminine in their technology knowledge, having a large impact on confidence.[5] Some male tech participants make clear that they believe women fitting in within the culture is impossible, furthering the insecurity for women and their place in the tech industry.[4] Additionally, even in a voluntary contribution environment like open source software, women tend to end up doing the less technical aspects of projects, such as manual testing or documentation despite women and men showing the same productivity in OSS contributions.[4] Explicit biases include longer feedback time, more scrutinization of code and lower acceptance rate of code.[4] Specifically in the open-source software community, women report that sexually offensive language is common and the women’s identity as female is given more attention that as an OSS contributor[5] Bias is hard to address due to the belief that gender shouldn’t matter, with most contributors feeling that women getting special treatment is unfair and success should be dependent on skill, preventing any changes to be more inclusive.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wachs, Johannes; Nitecki, Mariusz; Schueller, William; Polleres, Axel (March 2002). "The Geography of Open Source Software: Evidence from GitHub". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 176: 121478. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121478.
  2. ^ Rastogi, Ayushi; Nagappan, Nachiappan; Gousios, Georgios; van der Hoek, André (2018-10-11). "Relationship between geographical location and evaluation of developer contributions in github". ESEM '18: Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. ACM: 1–8. doi:10.1145/3239235.3240504. ISBN 978-1-4503-5823-1.
  3. ^ a b c d e Gonzalez-Barahona, Jesus M.; Robles, Gregorio; Andradas-Izquierdo, Roberto; Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer (August 2008). "Geographic origin of libre software developers". Information Economics and Policy. 20 (4): 356–363. doi:10.1016/j.infoecopol.2008.07.001.
  4. ^ a b c d Bosu, Amiangshu; Sultana, Kazi Zakia (2019). "Diversity and Inclusion in Open Source Software (OSS) Projects: Where Do We Stand?". 2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM). IEEE: 1–11. doi:10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870179. ISBN 978-1-7281-2968-6.
  5. ^ a b c d e Nafus, Dawn (June 2012). "'Patches don't have gender': What is not open in open source software". New Media & Society. 14 (4): 669–683. doi:10.1177/1461444811422887. ISSN 1461-4448.
  6. ^ Trinkenreich, Bianca; Wiese, Igor; Sarma, Anita; Gerosa, Marco; Steinmacher, Igor (2022-10-31). "Women's Participation in Open Source Software: A Survey of the Literature". ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. 31 (4): 1–37. doi:10.1145/3510460. ISSN 1049-331X.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Brasseur, V. M. (2018). Forge your future with open source: build your skills, build your network, build the future of technology. The pragmatic programmers. Raleigh, North Carolina: The Pragmatic Bookshelf. ISBN 978-1-68050-301-2.
  8. ^ Albusays, Khaled; Bjorn, Pernille; Dabbish, Laura; Ford, Denae; Murphy-Hill, Emerson; Serebrenik, Alexander; Storey, Margaret-Anne (April 2021). "The Diversity Crisis in Software Development". IEEE Software. 38 (2): 19–25. doi:10.1109/MS.2020.3045817. ISSN 0740-7459.

Thoughts or questions? --Policy1257 (talk) 12:32, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: IFS213-Hacking and Open Source Culture[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eddawolfkill (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Msowers77.

— Assignment last updated by KAN2035117 (talk) 22:50, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to rewrite development tools and edit page layout[edit]

Hello, I propose rewriting the development tools section and combining the current applications and adoption section with the extensions for non-software use section as they are similar topics and small by themselves.

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Technologies Used[edit]

In open source software development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself.[1]

Version control systems such as Centralized Version control system (CVCS) and the distributed version control system (DVCS) are examples of tools, often open source, that help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project in order to foster collaboration.[2] CVCS are centralized with a central repository while DVCS are decentralized and have a local repository for every user.[2] concurrent versions system (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) and Git are examples of CVCS.[2] The repositories are hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as GitHub.[2]

Open-source projects use utilities such as issue trackers to organize open-source software development. Commonly used bugtrackers include Bugzilla and Redmine.[1]

Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination and discussion of bugs among developers.[1] Project web pages, wiki pages, roadmap lists and newsgroups allow for the distribution of project information that focuses on end users.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Napoleao, Bianca M.; Petrillo, Fabio; Halle, Sylvain (2020). "Open Source Software Development Process: A Systematic Review". IEEE 24th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC). IEEE: 135–144. doi:10.1109/EDOC49727.2020.00025. ISBN 978-1-7281-6473-1.
  2. ^ a b c d Zolkifli, Nazatul Nurlisa; Ngah, Amir; Deraman, Aziz (2018). "Version Control System: A Review". Procedia Computer Science. 135: 408–415. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2018.08.191.

Policy1257 (talk) 21:17, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to Delete and Rewrite[edit]

Hello, I propose deleting the open source licensing section under definitions because the information is repeated in the licensing section under legal and economic issues. I also propose deleting the funding section under open source software development because it is pretty short and unsourced. additionally, I propose rewriting the advantages section to give it more sources. Finally, there are a couple of duplicate citations I would like to fix.

@Eddawolfkill I'm a student editor too! Let me know if you have any thoughts on these changes! Policy1257 (talk) 14:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay. I had different sections I am currently focused on. I noticed we no section in culture not talking about social media with open software. I am currently reviewing this section in more detail about how obs, Shotcut, etc are used in this space. More so since the influx of population use is around 5 billion users in social media. Once I have completed this section and had advisor review my portion to add. I will help with updating some of the citations and review the duplication statements stated. I agree they is redundancy. Eddawolfkill (talk) 05:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Summary of recent work[edit]

Hello, as a student researcher I have implemented a lot of changes recently on the page. As my work on the page comes to an end, I wanted to provide a summary for some of the changes I have made. I have rewrote several sections to provide more sources with up to date information. I have deleted a few small unsourced sections that I felt did not contribute to the article, such as the funding section and practical uses section. I have replaced a few duplicate citations and tried to reduce the amount of sources to focus on academic, peer reviewed information. I have changed the outline of the page to move history and society and culture more toward the bottom for a clearer reading of the page. Finally, I have tried to introduce a few new sections such as the legal and economics section and to fill out a few sections, such as the society and culture section.

Thanks! Policy1257 (talk) 16:57, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ajay[edit]

Ajay — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4052:4D9D:BB43:2A7:68F2:F514:150F (talk) 04:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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