In recent years, open source (1 <http://www.flosspols.org/#note1>)
software has developed as a novel form of collaborative production.
Relative to its origin as a collaboration between individual
non-professionals, it has seen tremendous success, both in terms of the
commercial and technical strengths of the produced software itself, but
also as a model of organisation: open source software is arguably one of
the best examples of adaptive self-organising, collaborative networked
organisations that exists today. Indeed, this success has been enough
for open source to be considered as a useful alternative for
e-government applications, in particular within this Strategic Objective
of the IST work-programme. However, several gaps remain in our
understanding of the functioning and purposes of open source software.
The FLOSS project (funded by IST/FP5) resulted in the single largest
knowledge base on open source usage and development worldwide. The
proposed support action builds on the FLOSS project to fill in important
gaps in the understanding of open source, thus supporting the objectives
of the work-programme and maintaining the EU’s lead in this domain.
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