Kouichi Kishida

Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.

A case study of the evolution of Jun: an object-oriented open-source 3D multimedia library

Jun is a large open-source graphics and multimedia library. It is object-oriented and supports 3D geometry, topography and multimedia. This paper reviews the development of the Jun library from five perspectives: open-source, software evolution processes, development styles, technological support, and development data. It concludes with lessons learned from the perspective of a for-profit company providing open-source object-oriented software to the community.

Non-technological issues in software engineering

A panel discussion is reported. Three nontechnological problems were selected which each serve to cluster several lower-level elements. First, the software engineering profession has not produced a cadre of capable/competent managers. Second, software development is largely practiced as an individual creative activity, rather than a team effort. Third, the software engineering community has not taken positive action to reduce the performance (e.g., productivity and quality) differences among individuals (or across teams). Much of the potential impact of technological advances may be blocked by these factors. The panelists offer a wealth of experience, insight, and international perspectives on these nontechnological issues. The panelists address both the problems and steps for their resolution.<<ETX>>

SDA: A novel approach to software environment design and construction

The Software Designers Associate (SDA) is a workstation-based collection of tools which support the description, evaluation, and comparison of software system architectural designs and cooperation among, and management of, a team of software designers. Each SDA is a specific instance of a generic facility which supports a team members design activities, cooperation among team members, and overall team management. It provides a framework for the integration of tools supporting the use of various notations within the context of a particular set of technical and managerial methods. These tools, notations, and methods may be adapted to support the needs of a particular project or the habits of an individual developer by selecting the particular tools to be added to the generic facility. The authors describe the concept of SDAs and the cooperative, international project which is intended to lend to its realization.<<ETX>>

Quality-Assurance Technology in Japan

A survey of the state of SQA in Japan finds that the situation is much like, but slightly different than, that in the US.

Analysis of software process improvement experience using the project visibility index

Based on the capability maturity model (CMM), process improvement at OMRON, a Japanese microprocessor manufacturer, increased project predictability in three ways: accuracy, variability, and performance. The authors use the project visibility index (PVI) and other measurements to quantitatively demonstrate this. Qualitative analysis of how and why OMRON achieved higher project visibility and increases in the QCD (quality, cost, and delivery on time) factors are supported with data on review-effort ratios and productivity. They identify factors directly affected by high project visibility.

Through the looking glass of immaterial labor

Immaterial labor, which is a philosophical concept established by Maurizio Lazzarato and others for understanding the post-Fordism industry, refers to the process of producing the informational and cultural contents of a commodity. Through examining software development and software-intensive society with the lens of immaterial labor, this paper aims to make a first step of establishing a new theoretical framework to understand (1) how to evaluate values of software systems, (2) how such values are created, and (3) how software development should be organized to create such values.

Managing Megaprojects: A Free-Form Approach

“I consider it ‘large,”’ Lehman answered, “if it is developed and/or maintained by a team with more than one level of management hierarchy.” Hmm, I thought, largeness related to hierarchy. And I filed that idea away. At the 10th International Conference on Software Engineering (Singapore, 1988), Dewayne Perry and Gail Kaiser presented a paper entitled “1Models of Software Development Environments.” They classified such environments into four sociological categories: individual, family, city, and state. Here again were the related concepts of hierarchy and largeness, which reminded me of a Confucian classic, Gwat Learning: