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After two months and 24 posts, I would like to thank all the kind people that mentioned our FLOSSMETRICS and OpenTTT work, especially Matthew Aslett, Matt Asay, Tarus Balog, Pamela Jones and many others with which I had the pleasure to exchange views with. I received many invaluable suggestions, and one of the most common one was to have a small “summary” of the posted research, as a landing page. So, here is a synthesis of the previous research posts:

• Why use OSS in product development: a set of examples from a thesis by Erkko Anttila, “Open Source Software and Impact on Competitiveness: Case Study” from Helsinki University of Technology, that provided hard data on the different hybrid community/company approaches by Nokia and Apple, and the relative gains and advantages.
• The dynamics of OSS adoption – 1: an initial view on the different dynamics behind open source adoption, starting with diffusion processes. Some data was also presented on unconstrained monetization.
• On business models and their relevance: A follow-up post on work by Matthew Aslett, introducing my view that future OSS business models will see more industry consortia and specialists, as more and more groups start to take advantage of the collaborative model, and will need more coordination on how to contribute back.
• Transparency and dependability for external partners: Outlining the transparency advantages of most OSS projects (with two examples mentioned: Zimbra and Alfresco) and the added advantage for partners, that can synchronize their work with that of the OSS community.
• The dynamics of OSS adoptions, II – diffusion processes: A presentation of diffusion processes as one of the models in OSS adoption, and a presentation of the UTAUT model for estimating the degree of acceptance of OSS.
• From theory to practice: the personal desktop linux experiment: A (long) example on how to apply the previously discussed models in a theoretical exercise: creating an end-user, large scale linux PC for personal activities. The post was inspired by work done during the Manila workshop along with UN’s International Open Source Network for facilitating take-up of open source by south-east Asean SMEs.
• Rethinking OSS business model classifications by adding adopters’ value: A presentation of the new classification of OSS business models; I have to thank Matthew Aslett of the 451 group for the many comments, and for accepting to share his work from the CAOS report with us.
• Comparing companies effectiveness: a response to Savio Rodrigues: A post written in response to work by Savio Rodrigues, on the relative shares of R&D of OSS companies compared to traditional IT companies.
• Our definitions of OSS-based business models: A follow-up of the “rethinking..” post, it outlines the new definitions of OSS business models created for the final part of the FLOSSMETRICS project.
• Another take on the financial value of open source: Our estimates of the value of the open source software market, and a call for further research on non-code contributions.
• OSS-based business models: a revised study based on 218 companies: A post providing the summary of the extended FLOSSMETRICS study on open source companies, that increased its number from 80 to 218, with some observation on relative size and usage of the various models.
• Estimating savings from OSS code reuse, or: where does the money comes from?: One of my favourite posts, provides a long discussion of the savings obtained when using OSS inside of other products, with some additional data obtained through COCOMO modeling.
• Another data point on OSS efficiency: A short post focusing on data from the italian TEDIS research, that showed how OSS companies are on average more capable to take on larger customers when compared with benchmark IT companies of the same size.
• The new FLOSSMETRICS project liveliness parameters: Fresh from the other project researchers, I provided a list of the new “project liveness” parameters that will be used in the SME guide.
• Reliability of open source from a software engineering point of view: A post that presents some results on how open source tends to be of higher quality under specific circumstances, and a follow-up idea on how this may be due to basic software engineering facts (related to component reuse).
• Open source and certified systems: A post inspired by a recent white paper on e-voting, the post presents my views on high-integrity and life-critical open source systems.