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 An Annotated Bibliography on Open Source

The following are some titles that have proven useful in attempting to come up to speed on OpenOffice.org. Comments have been included about each work to summarize the content.

MIT Sloan School Of Management, 2001. Open Source Research Community. http://opensource.mit.edu.
This is a web site the covers the research into open source  from a group at the business school at MIT. There are a number of interesting papers on this site including an economic model for open source, and some data analysis on the GNOME project.

Mockis, Audris, et al,  2000. A Case Study of Open Source Software Development: The Apache Server. Limerick, Ireland: ICSE 2000. ACM.
This is a paper that helped to form the project goals for OpenOffice.org. It describes an analysis of the Apache Project, including the number, distribution and types of committers, as well as covering quality issues.

Ravicher, Daniel B. Facilitating Collaborative Software Development: The Enforceability of Mass-Market Public Software Licenses. Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, Fall 2000, 5 Va. J.L. & Tech. 11.
This is a legal analysis of the enforceability of "public software" or open source licenses. This paper is well written and logically cogent, and very detailed. It has 185 citations, and more information on the precedents around software licensing than most non-legal types can stand.

Raymond, Eric. 2000. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/.
The classic text capturing the open source zeitgeist.

Raymond, Eric. 2000. Homesteading the Noosphere. http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/.
This is a very interesting tract on how running an open source project is akin to Lockean property rights.

Rosenberg, Donald, 2000. Open Source: The Unauthorized White Papers. Foster City, CA. M & T Books.
This book is a compilation of essays on open source from the author. He covers the origins and history, as well as a responsible coverage of the licensing models. While there is an over emphasis of Linux, it does talk about various business models that can be used in the open source context. It also includes the text of some of the major open source licenses.

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