Free/Libre and Open Source Software:
Survey and Study



Introduction
Technological and socio-economic changes known as the "New Information Society/Economy" are re-introducing the notion of production, consumption and trade of goods and services without the direct or obvious involvement of money. Such "non-monetary/trans-monetary" economic activity is difficult to measure through usual monetary indicators. This project aims to remedy this situation by identifying and developing indicators of such activity through a case study of OS/FS: Open Source/Free Software.

A survey of users and developers provided the first comprehensive base of hard data on OS/FS; indicators of measurement including monetary are applied on this domain through the survey; and a unique survey of OS/F software source code measured authors' contributions and other indicators. OS/FS business models and best practices and policy/regulatory impact were assessed. While focusing on OS/FS, FLOSS has implications for measuring and modelling the New Economy as a whole.

Status: proposal accepted by the European Commission, project started on June 1, 2001 and terminates on October 31, 2002.
Report delivered to the European Comission on July 1, 2002. Final version of the report will be publicly available on November 1, 2002.
A final workshop to present FLOSS results and set the future research agenda was conducted on October 14, 2002 and summary proceedings will be included with the final report.
See also: CORDIS, TESSS
Partnership: Berlecon Research, Berlin; ProActive International, Paris
Time slot: June 2001-May 2002
Deliverables: project report, research paper(s), database(s), software applications/tools, workshop
Contact(s): Rishab Ghosh