Collaborative Research: Workshop: Research Directions for Continuous (Re)Design in Free/Open Source Software Systems

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports an international workshop to that will extend research directions for understanding the continuous (re)design of processes in free/open source software systems (F/OSS). Using widely shared knowledge capture/management processes and tools, the dynamic communities that develop F/OSS software develop and refine very large, interdependent, and moving sets of software specifications and designs, concurrently with processes of implementation repair, release, etc. This is a fundamentally new type of software design process, effectively linking many interacting, continuous, open, collective processes (which could easily become chaotic) to produce surprisingly efficient, stable, useful, and circumscribed artifacts. The activities to be accomplished under this workshop award include analyzing and finding ways to extend current research on continuous (re)design in free/open source software systems and communities; developing criteria for informing decisions on what are the most intellectually rewarding and productive directions in these areas; developing a set of specific new directions and critical issues for research in these areas which meet those criteria; and formulating several sets of recommendations for NSF on how best to focus new research efforts in these areas. The themes investigated will include work practices and software development tools employed in a wide variety of F/OSS development projects. Numerous scientific, government, and industrial communities stand to benefit from having frameworks and guidelines for how to continuously design, or how to manage the continuous design, of complex software systems under the F/OSS model as they strive to develop or manage complex software systems for internal applications or external products, under economic pressure to improve their software productivity and quality, while reducing costs.