Assessing the role of open source software in the european secondary software sector: a voice from industry

Abstract

This paper addresses the open source software (OSS) phenomenon from an industry perspective and reveals a number of complexities surrounding the role of OSS in the secondary software sector. It presents the research results of an international workshop which was hosted with the explicit intention of extracting the voice of key industrial stakeholders. The data was gathered and analysed using a qualitative approach which revealed the key strengths and weaknesses of OSS from an industrial perspective. This formed the foundations for developing a framework describing the emerging commercial incarnation of OSS (we refer to this as Open Source Software, Inc.) The paper concludes that the European secondary software sector recognise the benefits of leveraging OSS but are aware of key issues pertinent to such an end.