Study of the Release Process of Open Source Software: Case Study

This report presents the results of a case study focusing on the release process of open source projects initiated with commercial motives. The purpose of the study is to gain an increased understanding of the release process, how a community can be attracted to the project, and how the interaction with the community evolves in commercial open source initiatives. Data has been gathered from four distinct sources to form the basis of this thesis. A thorough review of the open source literature has been performed. To further substantiate the data gathered from the literature study and to gain qualitative insights from companies heavily involved with open source development, four Norwegian companies adopting open source strategies have been interviewed. Data has also been gathered from active participation in the release process of the Keywatch networking software, including the creation of a web site and promotion of the project to build a community. Finally, the web sites of six company-initiated open source projects have been studied to gain further insight into how commercial open source projects are presented. The contributions of this report can be divided into two parts; a description of the open source phenomenon and theoretical guidelines describing important measures to be taken into consideration when releasing software as open source. The description of the open source phenomenon is derived from reviewing the open source literature and includes a description of the history of open source, its characteristics, licenses, legal issues related to open source, and motivations for adopting open source software. The theoretical guidelines are based on corroboration of data gathered from qualitative interviews, reviewing of commercial open source web sites, and findings in the research literature. The guidelines are summarized in the concluding section of the report together with suggestions for future research. Keywords: Open Source, Qualitative Research, Commercial Open Source Adoption, Open Source Preparations, Open Source Release Process, Open Source Community Managemen