[Fsfe-france] Call for Chapters - Free/Open Source Software Development

[Frederic Couchet]

FYI

Call for Chapters:
================================
FREE/OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
================================
A book edited by Stefan Koch and published by Idea Group, Inc.

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2002

Introduction
============

Free/Open source software development has generated increasing interest in
the last years, both in academic circles and the software industry.
Especially Linux, but also several other widely adopted projects like GNU
project's utilities and libraries, the Perl and Tcl programming languages,
and the Apache Web server have sparked the interest in the resulting
products and their special form of development.

Overall Objective of the Book
=============================

This book aims at publishing original academic work on Free and Open
Source software development. This wide area entails many facets, including
the special development process performed by a large number of
geographically dispersed programmers, community issues like coordination
and communication, motivations of the participants, and also economic and
even legal issues. Regarding the development process, whose adherence to
software engineering standards and guidelines is often debated, there is
still a scarcity of quantitative accounts on Free or Open Source projects
and communities. Especially the effort expended by all participants would
be of high interest as a basis for comparisons to the efficiency of
commercial development practices. Also, a mixture between more
'traditional' approaches and the Open Source process have been proposed as
being of very high potential, but have not yet been thoroughly explored.

The ways in which the 'virtual teams' of Free/Open Source development
communities form, interact, communicate and coordinate also seem of
particular interest. Several tools and technologies are in use to support
these activities, and studies of their usage and efficiency in different
projects are encouraged. In addition, psychological and social issues like
motivational aspects, political behaviour and analogies with academic
research could be explored. Other questions include the economic viability
of the Free and Open Source movement, business models, legal issues, its
implications for the software industry for example regarding the
implementation of open standards, and in special application areas like
public administration or teaching.

Possible Topics
===============

Recommended Topics include (but are not limited to):

* Case studies of Free or Open Source projects, their participants and/or
their development process

* Communication and coordination in Free/Open Source projects:
Organisational forms and tools/technologies used

* Free/Open Source software development processes

* Adoption of software engineering practices in Free/Open Source projects
(during all phases of the life-cycle)

* Software development processes as a mixture of traditional approaches
and Open Source (e.g. 'gated open source communities')

* Motivation of participants in Free/Open Source projects

* Hosting of Free/Open Source projects

* Business models for Open Source

* Evolution of both Free/Open Source software artefacts and the Free
Software/Open Source community overall

* Legal issues of Free/Open Source software

* Implications of the Open Source movement for the software industry

* Implications of the special attributes of Free/Open Source software for
usage in functional areas like public administration or teaching

* Usage and adoption of Free/Open Source software in different application
areas and/or countries

* Adoption of Free Software/Open Source principles in other areas than
software development

Submission Procedure
====================

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit a 2-5 page manuscript
proposal on or before December 31, 2002, clearly explaining the mission
and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by January
31, 2003 about the status of their proposals, and authors of accepted
chapter will receive chapter organizational guidelines. Full chapters are
expected to be submitted by May 1, 2003.  All submitted chapters will be
reviewed by 2-3 reviewers on a double-blind basis. The book is scheduled
to be published by Idea Group, Inc., publisher of the "Idea Group
Publishing", "Information Science Publishing" and "IRM Press" imprints in
2004.

Important Dates
===============

Chapter proposals due:  31.12. 2002
Proposal acceptance notification: 31.1. 2003
Full chapters due: 1.5. 2003

World Wide Web
==============

For this book project, a website has been established which will provide
the Call for Chapters, any new announcements and additional information.

http://wwwai.wu-wien.ac.at/~koch/oss-book/

Contact Information
===================

Please send all inquiries and submissions to the Editor:

Stefan Koch
Department of Information Business
University of Economics and BA
Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: (+43-1) 31336/5206
Fax: (+43-1) 31336/739
e-Mail: address@hidden
http://wwwai.wu-wien.ac.at/~koch/uni.html

-- 
Petition contre les brevets logiciels      http://petition.eurolinux.org/
Frederic Couchet                                       Tel: 06 60 68 89 31 
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Free Software Foundation Europe                http://www.fsfeurope.org/