Are There Any Academic Works On Open Source?

joschen asks: "I have just recently been given the provisional go ahead to do some research in the field of Open Source for a university I am associated with. My first task is to write an introductory paper on the subject. In doing so I have found a distinct lack of academic papers on the subject. I have read ESR's essays which are very interesting but have found that the majority of essays and articles are on Web sites and newsstand magazines rather than reputable academic journals. When writing papers we are always supposed to be building on research that has already been completed or is currently ongoing. Where are the background papers? I am sure a number of Slashdot reader reside in Academia, how have you resolved this problem?"

Comments

A couple of possibilities

[acoopersmith]

Usenix has had several open source papers published in the proceedings of various conferences - I'd imagine various ACM & IEEE conferences also have had papers on the subject.

For alternative views, there's also a couple of papers at:

• Nikolai Bezroukov. Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research. First Monday, Vol 4, No. 10 (October 1999), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_10/bezroukov/ index.html
• Nikolai Bezroukov. A Second Look at the Cathedral and Bazaar by Nikolai Bezroukov First Monday, Vol 4, No. 12 (December 1999), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/ index.html