Margaret S. Elliott

Mobilization of software developers: the free software movement

Purpose – The paper has three purposes: the first is to provide a deeper understanding of the ideology and work practices of free and open source software development, the second to characterize the free software movement as a new type of computerization movement and the third to present a conceptual diagram and framework with an analysis showing how the free software computerization movement has evolved into an occupational community.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were collected over a four year period using a virtual ethnography in a study of free and open source software development and, in particular, a study of a free software community, GNUenterprise, located at www.gnuenterprise.org, which has the goal of developing a free enterprise resource planning software system.Findings – It is concluded that the ideology of the free software movement continues to be one of the factors which mobilize people to contribute to free and open source software development. This movement represents a ...

Free software developers as an occupational community: resolving conflicts and fostering collaboration

In this paper, we present results from the study of a free software development virtual organization, the GNU Enterprise (GNUe) project, and how they develop software in a globally distributed free software development project. In particular, examples of how they mitigate and resolve conflict are presented. Conflict arises over the use of a non-free tool to create GNUe graphic, and over the use of a non-free tool for GNUe documentation. The GNUe developers resolve the conflict using internet relay chat (IRC), threaded email discussions, and community digests. We characterize the GNUe developers as an occupational subculture within the occupational community of free/open source software (F/OSS) developers and show how the beliefs in free software and freedom of choice, and values in cooperative work and community assist GNUe contributors in mitigating and resolving conflict. In addition, we show how, despite fluctuating boundaries of membership in a virtual organization, daily discussions on the GNUe IRC serve to build and perpetuate the global community of GNUe contributors as well as F/OSS developers in general.

Multimodal Modeling, Analysis, and Validation of Open Source Software Development Processes

Understanding the context, structure, activities, and content of software development processes found in practice has been and remains a challenging problem. In the world of free/open source software development (F/OSSD), discovering and understanding what processes are used in particular projects is important in determining how they are similar to or different from those advocated by the software engineering community. Prior studies have revealed that development processes in F/OSSD projects are different in a number of ways. In this article, we describe how a variety of modeling perspectives and techniques are used to elicit, analyze, and validate software development processes found in F/OSSD projects, with examples drawn from studies of the software requirements process found in the NetBeans.org project.

Moving from paper-based to digital documents: case study of public defenders using case management and legal research tools

The paper presents a study of the influence of computers on job productivity, job satisfaction and quality of work. Results of a combined qualitative and quantitative study of the use of personal computers (PC)s in a public defender (PD)s office in Los Angeles County (USA) for legal research and case management me discussed. A survey was administrated to 56 PDs and 25 qualitative interviews were completed. It is concluded that the expedient fashion in which legal documents must be prepared in the criminal courts lends itself well to the acceptance of computer innovation by the PDs, and that this innovation requires a reskilling of the professional role of a PD.

Introduction to the Special Issue on The Legacy of Rob Kling: Social Informatics as a Research Discipline

The late Professor Rob Kling was an influential scholar in the field of social informatics (SI). Not only was he a visionary promoting the conceptualization of this new area (Kling, 1999; Kling & Allen, 1996), but a lead researcher as well. As a tribute to this profound, eclectic professor, we present this special issue of The Information Society to honor his contributions to the social informatics community. Unlike a festschrift, where papers are focused on research topics related to a professor’s previous work, this special issue is dedicated to Rob’s impact on the past, current, and future state of the field of SI. The articles in this special issue are a subset of 24 papers presented at the Social Informatics Workshop, held at the University of California, Irvine, March 11–12, 2005 (cf. http://www.crito.uci.edu/si), to honor the contributions of Rob Kling as founder of SI. The workshop was focused on papers and presentations related to SI generally, and to extending his research on computerization movements (CM) in particular. The workshop papers related to CMs are being published in a book (Elliott & Kraemer, in press), whereas the papers in this special issue deal specifically with Rob Kling’s contribution to the genesis of the SI research community in the United States and Europe. We both worked closely with Rob Kling during his tenure at the University of California, Irvine, as did Jonathan Grudin, Suzanne Iacano, and John King who are authors in this issue. Several other authors worked with Rob when he went to Indiana University, including Blaise Cronin, Debora Shaw, Alice Robbins, and Steve Sawyer. As coeditors of this special issue, we wish to enlighten researchers about the richness of SI research and further Rob’s vision

A Common Information Space in Criminal Courts: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Case Management Systems

The Los Angeles County criminal courts process about 600,000 cases per year, more than any other state court in the United States. This complex task is facilitated by large-scale, distributed case management computer-based systems. This paper presents results of a case study of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems in the criminal courts and how their implementation changes work practices. We studied the Trial Court Information System (TCIS), a case management system adopted for Los Angeles Criminal Courts, and computer-aided legal research (CALR) systems. We show how the work culture of judges and court clerks has an impact on attitudes regarding computer usage. Our results indicate that the use of TCIS to generate minute orders and reports has improved efficiency while creating a sense of deskilling for some court clerks. In addition, there is a dichotomy of computer use by judges - some completely integrate computers into work while others reject them.

Free software developers as an occupational community: resolving conflicts and fostering collaboration[3] (abstract only)

In this paper, we present results from the study of a free software development virtual organization, the GNU Enterprise (GNUe) project, and how they develop software in a globally distributed free software development project. In particular, examples of how they mitigate and resolve conflict are presented. Conflict arises over the use of a non-free tool to create GNUe graphic, and over the use of a non-free tool for GNUe documentation. The GNUe developers resolve the conflict using internet relay chat (IRC), threaded email discussions, and community digests. We characterize the GNUe developers as an occupational subculture within the occupational community of free/open source software (F/OSS) developers and show how the beliefs in free software and freedom of choice, and values in cooperative work and community assist GNUe contributors in mitigating and resolving conflict. In addition, we show how, despite fluctuating boundaries of membership in a virtual organization, daily discussions on the GNUe IRC serve to build and perpetuate the global community of GNUe contributors as well as F/OSS developers in general.

Conflict and cooperation in the courts (doctoral colloquium): case study of how CSCW alters work

The Doctoral Colloquium at CSCW 96 is a forum in which Ph.D. students can meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced CSCW researchers and practitioners. Ten participants were accepted from the disciplines which form CSCW, including sociology, computer science, cognitive science, etc. During the colloquium, participants will be expected to give a short, informal presentation of their work, to be followed by a discussion.