Panel Open Source Software Successes and Challenges Margaret

Panel: Open Source Software Successes and Challenges Margaret Elliott, ISR Pankaj Garg, Zee. Source Jason Robbins, UCI (formerly Collab. net) Walt Scacchi, ISR (moderator) ISR Research Forum 8 June 2004 1

Who is investing in OSS? • Large corporations: (IT and Financial) – IBM-Eclipse, Sun-Net. Beans and Open. Office, HPGelato, Apple-Darwin, Microsoft Research-Rotor, SAP -DB, etc. – Barclays Global Investors, DKW, Merrill Lynch, UBS • Mid-size corporations: – Red. Hat, Novell, Borland, BEA Systems • Small (start-up) companies: – Active. State (now part of Sophos), Collab. Net, Jabber, Ximian (now part of Novell), JBoss, Compiere, etc. • Government agencies: – U. S. : Do. D, Energy, NSF 2

Panel questions • What is the basic difference between free versus open source software business models for software development? • What are some notable OSS success stories and why? • Is the OSS repository, Source. Forge. net, safe with VA Software in the long-term? 3

Panel questions • How do you distinguish the good from the bad OSS projects? • What challenges or opportunities will the oss community face next? • How do F/OSS developers earn income from working on free/open source software projects? 4

Panel questions • How are the successes and challenges of OSS different from or the same as those faced by closed source software development? • Should OSS developers reveal their corporate identities? • How can businesses building proprietary software convert a product to a F/OSS project and continue making profits? 5

Panel questions • How can the successes and challenges of OSS be understood in traditional software engineering terms? • How can traditional software development organizations learn from the successes and challenges of OSS, or the other way around? 6

Open source software research Web site at UCI 7