Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a concept where hardware designs are shared for everyone to use, modify and build upon. This have become a widespread phenomenon in the microcontroller industry and created an ecosystem where users and companies produce various “derivatives” or alternative designs based on existing OSHW. This research explores this phenomenon of derivative development between users and producers and how this affects innovation, by exploring three case studies of user developed derivatives and interviews with producers and various people with OSHW background. This thesis found that this ecosystem to be dependent on Open Source and leverages the interest of users motivation to innovate and producer support. Furthermore, eight different factor were discovered that derivative development affecting innovation. (1) Openness & Transparency allows the user to innovate without fearing consequences of IP infringement and establishing trust. The transparency also increases the chances for the users to become innovators, as it facilitates the understanding of products, through the documentations and information sharing. (2) Support from producers facilitates users’ ability to design and innovate and was found crucial for the emergence of derivative designs. (3) Amplified Motivation through personal interest has a high impact in the innovation of open microcontrollers. (4) Market diffusion through low-cost ways of sharing and diffusing designs. (5) Market expansion increasing the number of derivative development can affect the resources used by producers in their development process. (6) Product improvements are affected, because of the vast feedback provided by the community, which can lead to through the discovery of usage in fields, product functionality. This increases the quality of the product and allows OSHW producers to stay competitive. (7) Collaboration can affect innovation by the collaborations with derivative projects and businesses. (8) Brand and Marketing is affecting by the number of users that use producers’ products for user-innovators development of derivative designs.

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Despite the abundance of literature on free and open source software (FOSS), its impact on individual developers’ productivity is a topic that is under explored. Moreover, the traditional measures of developers’ productivity are based on objective measures (lines of code) instead of subjective measures (self-rated productivity). To bridge this gap and add new knowledge to existing literature, the study explored the impact of FOSS on developers’ productivity based on self-rated productivity measure. Hence, the study used an exploratory approach of qualitative research, a theoretical framework and interviews as a method of data collection. The findings indicate that FOSS actually has a positive impact on developers’ productivity and the rate of adoption is high among young and experienced developers. However, the risks and security challenges that come with FOSS based on its open model actually creates room for lack of trust and thus can reduce the adoption rate. Though FOSS has improved developers’ productivity when it comes to software development, the issues of poor documentation and lack of documentation encountered when trying to modify or enhance FOSS actually hinder developers’ productivity. Hence the free and open source software community should come up with ways of tackling these challenges in order for the developers to be more productive.

Investigations are increasingly conducted online by not only novice sleuths but also by professionals -- in both competitive and collaborative environments. These investigations rely on publicly available information, called open source intelligence (OSINT). However, due to their online nature, OSINT investigations often present coordination, technological, and ethical challenges. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 professional OSINT investigators from nine different organizations, we examine the social collaboration and competition patterns that underlie their investigations. Instead of purely competitive or purely collaborative social models, we find that OSINT organizations employ a combination of both, and that each has its own advantages and disadvantages. We also describe investigators' use of and challenges with existing OSINT tools. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on supporting investigators' with more appropriable tools and making investigations more social. / Master of Science / Investigations are increasingly conducted online by not only novice investigators but also by professionals, such as private investigators or law enforcement agents. These investigations are conducted in competitive environments, such as Capture The Flag (CTF) events where contestants solve crimes and mysteries, but also in collaborative environments, such as teams of investigative journalists joining skills and knowledge to uncover and report on crimes and/or mysteries. These investigations rely on publicly available information called open source intelligence (OSINT) which includes public social media posts, public databases of information, public satellite imagery...etc. OSINT investigators collect and authenticate open source intelligence in order to conduct their investigations and synthesize the authenticated information they gathered to present their findings. However, due to their online nature, OSINT investigations often present coordination, technological, and ethical challenges. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 professional OSINT investigators from nine different organizations, we examine how these professionals conduct their investigations, and how they coordinate the different individuals and investigators involved throughout the process. By analyzing these processes, we can discern the social collaboration and competition patterns that enable these professionals to conduct their investigations. Instead of purely competitive or purely collaborative social models, we find that OSINT organizations employ a combination of both, and that each has its own advantages and disadvantages. In other words, professional OSINT investigators compete with each other but also collaborate with each other at different stages of their investigations or for different investigative tasks. We also describe investigators' use of and challenges with existing OSINT tools and technologies. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on supporting investigators with tools that can adapt to their different needs and investigation types and making investigations more social.

Previous research shows that software reuse can have a positive impact on software development economics, and that the adoption of a specific open source license can influence how a software product is received by users and programmers. This study attempts to bridge these two research areas by examining how the adoption of an open source license affects software reuse. Two reuse metrics were applied to 9,570 software packages contained in the Fedora Linux software repository. Each package was evaluated to determine how many external components it reuses, as well as how many times it is reused by other software packages. This data was divided into subsets according to license type and software category. The study found that, in general, (1) software released under a restrictive license reuse more external components than software released under a permissive license, and (2) that software released under a permissive license is more likely to be reused than software released under a restrictive license. However, there are exceptions to these conclusions, as the effect of license choice on reuse varies by software category. / Master of Science

No / The surprise advent of the peer-to-peer payment system Bitcoin in 2009 has raised various concerns regarding its relationship to established economic market ideologies. Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin is based on open-source software; it is a secure cryptocurrency, traded as an investment between two individuals over the internet, with no bank involvement. Computationally, this is a very innovative solution, but Bitcoin’s popularity has raised a number of security and trust concerns among mainstream economists. With cities and countries, including San Francisco and Germany, using Bitcoin as a unit of account in their financial systems, there is still a lack of understanding and a paucity of models for studying its use, and the role Bitcoin might play in real physical economies. This project tackles these issues by analysing the ramifications of Bitcoin within economic models, by building a computational model of the currency to test its performance in financial market models. The project uses established agent-based modelling techniques to build a decentralised Bitcoin model, which can be ‘plugged into’ existing agent-based models of key economic and financial markets. This allows various metrics to be subjected to critical analysis, gauging the progress of digital economies equipped with Bitcoin usage. This project contributes to the themes of privacy, consent, security and trust in the digital economy and digital technologies, enabling new business models of direct relevance to NEMODE. As computer scientists, we consider Bitcoin from a technical perspective; this contrasts with and complements other current Bitcoin research, and helps document the realizable risks Bitcoin and similar currencies bring to our current economic world. This report outlines a comprehensive collection of risks raised by Bitcoin. Risk management is a discipline that can be used to address the possibility of future threats which may cause harm to the existing systems. Although there has been considerable work on analysing Bitcoin in terms of the potential issues it brings to the economic landscape, this report performs a first ever attempt of identifying the threats and risks posed by the use of Bitcoin from the perspective of computational modeling and engineering. In this project we consider risk at all levels of interaction when Bitcoin is introduced and transferred across the systems. We look at the infrastructure and the computational working of the digital currency to identify the potential risks it brings. Additional information can be seen in our forthcoming companion report on the detailed modeling of Bitcoin.

The Xilinx Partial Reconfiguration tool kits have been instrumental for performing a wide variety of research on Xilinx FPGAs. These tool kits provide a methodology for creating rectangular partial reconfiguration modules that can be swapped in and out of a static baseline design with one or more PR slots. This thesis presents a new PR toolkit called OpenPR that, for starters, provides similar functionality to the Xilinx PR tool kits. The distinguishing feature of this toolkit is that it is being released as open source, and is intended to be customizable to the needs of researchers. OpenPR has been designed to be easy to use, extensible, portable, and compatible with a wide range of Xilinx software and devices. Aside from supporting the slot-based PR paradigm, OpenPR also provides a solid base for further research into partial reconfiguration and FPGA productivity oriented design tools. / Master of Science