2003 IRISH SCIENTIST YEAR BOOK

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University of Limerick
Brian Fitzgerald
Free/Open Source Software research at UL

Professor Brian Fitzgerald

Software is pervasive and critical for modern business and society, but software development continues to be problematic despite almost five decades of research. The Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) phenomenon has emerged as an apparently revolutionary new paradigm shift which appears to address the central problems of software development, namely projects exceeding budget and schedule and of poor quality, and also harnesses the most scarce resource of all - talented software developers. The F/OSS phenomenon is multi-faceted with significant relevance for at least four key areas of software development and distribution: Software Engineering, Business/Economic, Legal/Policy, and Socio-Cultural aspects. It has also been suggested that the F/OSS model represents the future model for organisational work supplementing traditional models with more fluid roles, and indeed for society, promoting open access for all citizens and addressing the 'Digital Divide' between the West and developing countries.

Prof. Brian Fitzgerald, Frederick A. Krehbiel II Chair in Innovation in Global Business and Technology at the University of Limerick, has been extremely active in researching the Free/Open Source Software phenomenon. Together with Dr Joseph Feller of University College Cork, he has written one of the first books on the topic, Understanding Open Source Software Development (Addison-Wesley, 2002), and his paper on the topic won a 'Best Conference Theme Paper' award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in 2000. Also, he and Dr Feller have been guest editors for four international journal special issues which were dedicated to the topic. Together with US colleagues, Karim Lakhani at MIT and Scott Hissam at the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, he has been co-chair for a series of very successful workshops on the topic at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) for the past few years. He has also co-edited a book with these colleagues, Making Sense of the Bazaar: Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (O'Reilly, 2003), with contributed chapters from the leading researchers in Cambridge, Stanford, MIT, and from pioneers in the field such as Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, David Parnas, Peter Neumann and Bob Glass.

Also, in May 2003, Prof. Fitzgerald, together with Prof. David Parnas, one of the world's leading software researchers, were co-chairs for a workshop which focused on the critical software engineering aspects of F/OSS at the XP2003 Conference in Genoa.

Obviously, the F/OSS research agenda looms large in the University of Limerick, and Prof. Fitzgerald has received significant funding to further research in this area.

Contact: Anyone interested in research in this area should contact Prof. Brian Fitzgerald; E-mail: [email protected] .