EMERGING FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PRACTICES

Project infrastructure and software repositories are now widely available at low cost with easy extraction, providing a foundational base to conduct detailed cyber-archeology at a scale not open to researchers before. Emerging Free and Open Source Software Practices provides a collection of empirical research acting as a focal point to the status of these repositories and infrastructures along with the F/OSS project. Emerging Free and Open Source Software Practices presents a framework and state-of-the-art references on F/OSS projects, reporting on past and on-going case studies of projects covering a wide range of F/OSS applications and domains. This book postulates trends in the evolution of software practices and solutions to the challenges ubiquitous nature free and open source software provides.

Sulayman K Sowe is a final year PhD student at the Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He received a BEd in science education from University of Bristol, UK (1991) and an Advance Diploma and MSc in computer science from Sichuan University, China (1997). He taught physics, chemistry, and mathematics at various schools in the Gambia (1988-1998). He was a lecturer in Information Technology at the University of The Gambia (2002). He worked at the Department of State for Education, The Gambia as the director of Information Technology and Human Resource Development - IT/HRD (1998), as a System Administrator and Assistant Registrar II for the West African Examinations Council (1998-2002), and as a Database Manager for the Medical Research Council (2002-2003. His research interests include Free/Open Source Software Development, Knowledge Management, Information Systems Evaluation, and Social & Collaborative Networks. He is currently working on several projects related to Free/Open Source Software financed by Greece and the European Commission Information Society Technologies (IST) Programmes. He has publications in scientific Journals, Conferences and Book chapters. Ioannis G. Stamelos is Assistant Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Dept. of Informatics and Teaching Consultant at the Hellenic Open University. He received a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic School of Thessaloniki (1983) and the Ph. D. degree in computer science from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1988). He teaches compiler design, object-oriented technology, software engineering, software project management and enterprise information systems at the graduate and postgraduate level. His research interests include empirical software evaluation and management, software education, agile methods and open source software engineering. He is author of approx. 70 scientific papers and member of the IEEE Computer Society. Ioanni