SOS-ware DEVILS[Strategic Open Software DEVelopment ILlnesseS]

Certain categories of software play a strategic role in contemporary public and private organizations. While software use is accelerated and diffused to more and more people and organisations, software development follows a reverse trend where fewer players form oligopolies, with some of them having almost reached a state of monopoly in certain areas. The evil consequences of such an evolution can be numerous, some of them relate to economic and security dependence and some others to phenomena of knowledge dependence and hysteresis. Within the current paper, we formulate a general framework that categorises the types of illnesses in open strategic software development from a number of viewpoints and the types of damages that could be inflicted to organizations and states as a result of false expectations if these illnesses persist. Finally, we identify the areas where research is considered to be urgently needed.