Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Research and Development

The 2nd Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development Workshop will have as an overarching theme "How to close the gap between Software Engineering and FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) Development", and will bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss what knowledge software engineering experts can provide to the wider FLOSS communities.

Organizers: Andrea Capiluppi and Gregorio Robles
Website: http://icse.libresoft.es/
Deadline: January 26
Meeting Date: May 18, 2009

Workshop Theme

The overarching theme of this workshop will be Closing the Gap between Software Engineering and FLOSS Development (where FLOSS stands for Free/Libre/Open Source Software). Specifically, the goal of this workshop is to bring together academic researchers, industry members and FLOSS developers for the purpose of discussing:

* Models, case studies and empirical approaches of how requirements are sought, assessed and implemented in FLOSS development, as compared to traditional Software Engineering;
* IP-related issues, such as the various kinds of licenses, their compatibilities and effects on software engineering, as well as patents and trademarks;
* Empirical studies, models and frameworks of how traditional Software Engineering testing techniques should be brought forward into FLOSS development;
* The impact of the newest and/or most established approaches in Software Engineering, like software reuse, and refactoring/cloning, are currently implemented by FLOSS developers;
* Experience reports of commercial companies dealing with FLOSS components, to understand how the traditional development is coupled with the new environment.

To this end, we will solicit position papers presenting field reports, case studies, analytical frameworks and key research questions, which serve to improve the communication and the impact of FLOSS products, methods, tools and organizational structures in a variety of application spaces.

The workshop will be divided in four sessions: the first three will have blocks of presentations of position papers and attached discussion and comments by the assistants. To boost the participation of the attendees and effectiveness of the discussion, the last block will be devoted to discuss actively some of the most prominent (and polemic) aspects of the position papers presented, using some of the methods in use in unconferences and acting the workshop proposals as facilitators.
Previous editions of the workshop

The 2nd Workshop on "Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development" will build on the success of the first workshop on FLOSS in the series, which was held at ICSE 2007 (Minneapolis, US), and the 5 Workshops on Open Source Software Engineering, held at ICSE 2001 (Toronto), ICSE 2002 (Orlando), ICSE 2003 (Portland), ICSE 2004 (Edinburgh) and ICSE 2005 (St. Louis), also managed by the same organisers. These workshops have consistently attracted high quality position papers and large numbers of active participants from academia, government and industry. The position papers and presentation slides from each workshop are hosted at Open Source Resources, and are downloaded by hundreds of readers each month.
Relevance to the Field

FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is now well recognized as an important research area within both the Software Engineering and Information Systems fields, as evidenced by the growing number of related journal papers, conference papers, workshops and seminars. As FLOSS development continues to grow and become an evermore pervasive and global approach to the development of dependable software through non-traditional means (i.e., does not simply follow the software engineering paradigm found in textbooks), this ICSE workshop will be an appropriate place for leading FLOSS and SE scholars to come together to discuss and exchange their research work in progress.

We believe that this workshop will also serve as a common bridge between the ACM/IEEE (ICSE) and (IFIP) OSS research communities, thereby providing a window for others in the Software Engineering community to interact with and learn more about the advances of research into FLOSS development an communities. To insure participation, representation and cross-fertilization across the ACM/IEEE (ICSE) and (IFIP) OSS research communities, members of the program committee of this workshop will be drawn also from the committee of the OSS2008 Conference.