Abstract
Open Source Software Development appears to depart radically from conventional notions of software engineering. In particular, requirements for Open Source projects seem to be asserted rather than elicited.
This paper examines two features of selected open source products: “tabbed browsing” as realized in the Firefox web browser, and “edge magnetism” found in the Gnome desktop environment’s Metacity window manager. Using archives of mailing lists and issue tracking databases, these features were traced from first mention to release, in attempt to discover the process by which requirements are proposed, adopted, and implemented in their respective Open Source projects. The results confirm the importance of user participation in Open Source projects.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
- Open Source
- Open Source Software
- Open Source Project
- Global Software Development
- Open Source Software Project
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Alex Bishop. Major roadmap update centers around Phoenix, Thunderbird; 1.4 branch to replace 1.0; changes planned for module ownership model. MozillaZine (online), April 2 2003. http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article3042.html.
Peter Bojanic. The joy of XUL. Web page, cited september 6, 2006., Mozilla Foundation, June 2006. http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/The_Joy_of_XUL.
Dbrody. no title. http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3603&highlight=&sid=c5f4%e5ae34765db22bac227d7f8b17cb, September 2003. Posting to the Gnome desktop user support forum.
Joseph Feller and Brian Fitzgerald. A framework analysis of the open source software development paradigm. pages 58–69, 2000.
The Apache Software Foundation. About the Apache HTTP server project. http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html. Web page, cited January 16, 2007.
The Mozilla Foundation. About the Mozilla foundation. http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/, November 2006. Web page cited January 16, 2007.
Gboone. Open new window in background (tabbed browsing). http://groups.google.com/group/netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist/tree/br%owse_frm/thread/ef62c3307e2a7a32/4ec071eae14082ff?rnum=1&hl=en&_done=%2Fgroup%%2Fnetscape.public.mozilla.wishlist%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Fef62c3307e2a7a32%2F%4ec071eae14082ff%3Ftvc%3D1%26hl%3Den%26#doc_4b33ef52c30564cf.
Daniel M. German. GNOME, a case of open source global software development. In Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Global Software Development, Portland, OR USA, May 2003.
Ben Goodger. Firefox 1.0 roadmap. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap-1.0.html, 2004. Web page describing release history of Firefox, cited March 1, 2007.
Steve Hamm. A Firefox in IE’s henhouse. Business Week, September 17 2004.
Lisa G. R. Henderson. Requirements elicitation in open-source programs. CrossTalk-The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 13(7):28–30, July 2000. http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2000/07/henderson.html.
Sandeep Krishnamurthy. Cave or community?: An empirical examination of 100 mature open source projects. First Monday, 7(6), June 2002.
Lou. Metacity configuration. http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3603&highlight=&sid=c5f4%e5ae34765db22bac227d7f8b17cb, August 4 2003. Posting to the Gnome desktop user support forum.
Audris Mockus, Roy T. Fielding, and James Herbsleb. A case study of open source software development: The Apache server. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 263–272, Limerick, Ireland, May 2000.
Netcraft, Ltd. September 2006 web server survey. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/09/05/september_2006_web_server_%survey.html, September 2006.
Vladimir Neyman. Open new window in background. http://groups.google.com/group/netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist/tree/br%owse_frm/thread/ef62c3307e2a7a32/4ec071eae14082ff?rnum=1&hl=en&_done=%2Fgroup%%2Fnetscape.public.mozilla.wishlist%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Fef62c3307e2a7a32%2F%4ec071eae14082ff%3Ftvc%3D1%26hl%3Den%26#doc_4ec071eae14082ff, June 23 1999. Message posted to netscape.public.mozilla.wishlist mailing list.
David M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale. The usability of open source software. First Monday, 8(1), January 2003.
OpenOffice.org. About us: OpenOffice.org. http://about.openoffice.org/index.html, January 2007. Web page, cited January 19, 2007.
Havoc Pennington. Bug 81704-Edge magnetism/resistance/snapping/etc. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81704, May 2002. Request for enhancement (RFE) entered into the Gnome project’s issue tracking system.
Eric S. Raymond. The cathedral and the bazaar. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar. O’Reilly and Associates, October 1999.
Christian Robottom Reis and Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes. An overview of the software engineering process in the Mozilla project. In Proceedings of the Open Source Software Development Workshop, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, February 2002.
Rachel Rosmarin. Mozilla Firefox gaining ground on Microsoft IE. Forbes.com, August 1 2006.
Walt Scacchi. Understanding the requirements for developing open source software systems. IEE Proceedings-Software, 149(1):24–39, February 2002.
Walt Scacchi. Free and open source development practices in the game community. IEEE Software, pages 59–66, January 2004.
Stephen R. Schach, Bo Jin, David R. Wright, Gillian Z. Heller, and A. Jefferson Offut. Maintainability of the Linux kernel. IEE Proceedings-Software, 149(1), February 2002.
Peter Trudelle. Shall we dance? Ten lessons learned from Netscape’s flirtation with open source UI development. Technical report, Mozilla.org, 2002. Presented at the Open Source Meets Usability Workshop, Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2002), Minneapolis, MN. Accessed December 28, 2006.
unknown. A guide to Mozilla 1.0. http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/guide/, 2002. Web page describing release 1.0 of Mozilla.
H.J. van Rantwijk. MultiZilla’s home page. http://multizilla.mozdev.org, February 24 2006. Home page for the MultiZilla project, cited September 6, 2006.
David A. Wheeler. Why open source software / free software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the numbers! Technical report, dwheeler.com, 2005.
WonkoTheSane. Untitled. http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3603&highlight=&sid=c5f4%e5ae34765db22bac227d7f8b17cb, September 22 2003. Posting to the Gnome desktop user support forum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Noll, J. (2007). Innovation in Open Source Software Development: A Tale of Two Features. In: Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B., Scacchi, W., Sillitti, A. (eds) Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation. OSS 2007. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 234. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-72485-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-72486-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)