Supporting Distributed and Decentralized Projects: Drawing Lessons from the Open Source Community

Submitted by msquire on Thu, 2011-05-05 15:54

Title	Supporting Distributed and Decentralized Projects: Drawing Lessons from the Open Source Community
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2003
Authors	Erenkrantz, J, Taylor, RN
Secondary Title	1st Workshop on Open Source in an Industrial Context
Date Published	10/2003
Keywords	abiword, apache, debian, freebsd, kde, linux, mozilla, mysql, perl, PHP, postgresql, python, subversion, tomcat, tools
Abstract	Open source projects are typically organized in a distributed and decentralized manner. These factors strongly determine the processes followed and constrain the types of tools that can be utilized. This paper explores how distribution and decentralization have affected processes and tools in existing open source projects with the goals of summarizing the lessons learned and identifying opportunities for improving both. Issues considered include decision-making, accountability, communication, awareness, rationale, managing source code, testing, and release management.
Notes	"We begin the remainder of the paper with discussion of a survey of open source projects, showing similarities that have arisen in tool usage"
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