ccMixter.org, an online remix community that uses Creative Commons licenses to protect and promote their work, is a unique site of musical activity whose discourse is shaped by an egalitarian ideology. However, simultaneously exists a hierarchical structure in which some remixes are considered better than others. This report explores the coexistence of these two paradigms, and seeks to frame the discussion within the context of current IP policy politics, the open source movement, and fundamental shifts that the Internet has caused in communication. / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

This dissertation comprises three essays analyzing various economic questions relating to open-source software development. The common thread linking these essays is the long-term sustainability of the open-source software development model, which is largely built on unpaid contributions from individual developers scattered across the world. The first essay develops a theoretical analysis of the market for operating systems as two-sided platforms, modeling the effects of competition and compatibility between a proprietary platform developed by a profit-maximizing firm, and an open platform (a public good developed by volunteers). Looking at the impacts on the proprietary platform firm, and application developer firms and users of both platforms, I find that under certain circumstances, a proprietary platform can find it profitable to become compatible with the open platform. However, it is always optimal in terms of social welfare to have compatibility between platforms. The second essay uses a laboratory experiment to examine how these characteristics and levels of motivations that are heterogeneous across individuals interact to result in sustainable, non-zero levels of contribution to open source software. There is a pronounced “leadership effect,” with subjects playing in the first position invariably contributing more frequently than those in the second position, and so on. Heterogeneity preserves the leadership effect, but increases contributions across the board, and eliminates the pattern of declining individual and total group contributions over time frequently observed in public goods experiments. The third essay studies the micro-foundations of open-source software contributions and provides an empirical examination of developer motivations using survey data. If open-source contributions and education are both signals of ability, then their impact on income is likely to be linked. They may be complements if open source contributions reinforce the signal from education by showing that one stands out from the crowd, or they might be substitutes if open-source development replaces expensive education in honing programming skills by offering more immediate feedback. Using an instrumental variables framework to deal with the endogeneity of the education and contribution choices, I find that leading an open-source project and completing college are complementary practices, so that the signaling and reputation-building aspect dominates.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att sammanställa vad Open Source är och försöka kartlägga hur användningen av Open Source-program ser ut på de svenska folkbiblioteken.Jag tittar även på vilka Open Source-program som kan vara aktuella för ett bibliotek att titta närmare på. Resultatet visar att Open Source inte används i någon större utsträckning men att man är positivt inställd till rörelsen. Några få program har börjat användas men man är orolig för hur supporten fungerar för Open Source-program, sen verkar biblioteken inte ha någon större kontroll över vilka program som faktiskt används utan är styrda av de regler som kommunens IT-avdelning har satt upp.

There is a great variety of software solutions which improve quality of work and increase productivity. Nevertheless there still is a demand for specialized software sollutions, often coupled to particular production systems. In this work author approaches such a concrete subject of computer hardware and repair in small and medium enterprise. Proposed information system not only allows internal administration of service requests within a company, but also provides complete status and process overview for customers accessing company's intranet. This is a unique solution of a kind as others are too general and do not fullfil specific demands posed in the specification. The main subject of this work is software design, development and investigation. Analysis of current software technology platforms was performed and the best deployment platform LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) was selected. Modular system design provided easy system development and future extendability as well as integration into other portals. Final resulting information system incorporates a number of advanced networking and programming technologies: template engine, certificate based security, data encryption engine and others. Implemented software is customized to meet the needs of particular enterprise and is currently used as part of its' intranet and service network. Legal open source technologies were mostly used for developing the product.

It has been proposed that the field of appropriate technology (AT) - small-scale, energy efficient and low-cost solutions, can be of tremendous assistance in many of the sustainable development challenges, such as food and water security, health, shelter, education and work opportunities. Unfortunately, there has not yet been a significant uptake of AT by organizations, researchers, policy makers or the mainstream public working in the many areas of the development sector. Some of the biggest barriers to higher AT engagement include: 1) AT perceived as inferior or ‘poor persons technology’, 2) questions of technological robustness, design, fit and transferability, 3) funding, 4) institutional support, as well as 5) general barriers associated with tackling rural poverty. With the rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for online networking and knowledge sharing, the possibilities to tap into the collaborative open-access and open-source AT are growing, and so is the prospect for collective poverty reducing strategies, enhancement of entrepreneurship, communications, education and a diffusion of life-changing technologies. In short, the same collaborative philosophy employed in the success of open source software can be applied to hardware design of technologies to improve sustainable development efforts worldwide. To analyze current barriers to open source appropriate technology (OSAT) and explore opportunities to overcome such obstacles, a series of interviews with researchers and organizations working in the field of AT were conducted. The results of the interviews confirmed the majority of literature identified barriers, but also revealed that the most pressing problem for organizations and researchers currently working in the field of AT is the need for much better communication and collaboration to share the knowledge and resources and work in partnership. In addition, interviews showcased general receptiveness to the principles of collaborative innovation and open source on the ground level. A much greater focus on networking, collaboration, demand-led innovation, community participation, and the inclusion of educational institutions through student involvement can be of significant help to build the necessary knowledge base, networks and the critical mass exposure for the growth of appropriate technology. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-08-16 17:13:06.891

Dissertation submitted for the fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Masters in Information Technology, Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Accounting and Informatics, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Competitive pressure on the software industry encourages organizations to examine the effectiveness of their software development and evolutionary processes. Therefore it is important that software is measured in order to improve the quality. The question is not whether we should measure software but how it should be measured. Software measurement has been in existence for over three decades and it is still in the process of becoming a mature science. The many influences of new software development technologies have led to a diverse growth in software measurement technologies which have resulted in various definitions and validation techniques. An important aspect of software measurement is the measurement of the design, which nowadays often means the measurement of object oriented design. Chidamer and Kemerer (1994) designed a metric suite for object oriented design, which has provided a new foundation for metrics and acts as a starting point for further development of the software measurement science. This study documents theoretical object oriented cohesion metrics and calculates those metrics for classes extracted from a sample of open source software packages. For each open source software package, the following data is recorded: software size, age, domain, number of developers, number of bugs, support requests, feature requests, etc. The study then tests by means of association rules which theoretical cohesion metrics are validated hypothesis: that older software is more cohesive than younger software, bigger packages is less cohesive than smaller packages, and the smaller the software program the more maintainable it is. This study attempts to validate existing theoretical object oriented cohesion metrics by mining open source software data with association rules.

In the end of 2004 in Lithuania first big e-government projects financed by EU structural funds should start, and developing and implementation of software will constitute an integral part of these projects. Before starting the projects it must be determined how new and current information systems should be integrated and their interoperability ensured. Usage of commercial software system will lead to attachment to the sole producer, it will reduce competition and will deprive from choosing other software providers. Alternative solution would be to develop open source (OS) systems and as a consequence create better competition for the development of such systems. This work intends to analyze solutions for information system integration and interoperability through using open source software, open standards and their implementation for e-government services. Open source software and open standards are analyzed and major features defined to estimate their advantages for the usage at government institutions. Modern information system integration methods and open source realization possibilities overlooked. Lithuanian and foreign legislation on open source are reviewed. From research materials the analysis is given about the usage of the open source software, open standards at the governmental institutions, determining factors for the usage and opinion of institutions. As the review shows at the present time open source and commercial software have unequal positions with the... [to full text]

With an overview how Moodle plugin works, this paper aims to focus on those areas where open source software impact has on learning management system software which is distributed for free. One of the essential goal of this project is to develop plugin tool for Moodle, which aid users by providing less interaction time while adjusting date related tasks mainly with courses and assignments, which currently in the Moodle system is accomplished by a lot of steps. The project concentrated on two application functions, namely assignment_daterollover and course_daterollover. These two application plugin features in Moodle learning environment allows instructors to automatically update all date items in their course at the beginning of each semester. Date adjustments can easily be made to each assignments in a course through one centralized screen, rather than having to go into each individual learning activity. The two plugin tool options are one which will change the course start date by which all assignments can be simultaneously set forward by a specified number of days which is called course_daterollover and the other option is to adjust individual assignment items within a course which is called assignment_daterollover. Through the methods, the number of steps (clicks) has been counted and compared with the existing date adjustment method in Moodle for course and assignments, to evaluate and identity UI limitations Heuristic evaluation method is used. The plugin is implemented using block-plugin, because of its appearance to simply reside the content on the right or left side of each main course page, which also gives users the right to turn it on or off if they don't want to use it. In addition, the tool can be used as an option associated with the existing Moodle date adjustment system from the point of view of having a different design. The result is a user-friendly plugin tool interface for the stated two purposes which have less number of clicks than the Moodle date adjustment system for courses and assignments. The plugin tool can be used by anyone since it has been published on Github. As a conclusion, Moodle with its cost-effectiveness can serve a lot of users around the world.

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