25 THOUGHTS ON STUDYING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE COMMUNITIES Abstract Joseph Feller Business Iriformation Systems University College Cork o 'Rahilly Building Cork Ireland This speculative paper offers a preliminary discussion of the academic study of open source software (OSS) communi- ties. The paper includes (1) a description of the general growth of OSS research, (2) the argument that an understanding of OSS communities is critical to understanding OSS, (3) a review of the research to date which approaches OSS from a social or ethnographic viewpoint, and (4) an examination of one of the key issues to be addressed in future research on the subject. 1. INTRODUCTION This speculative paper offers a preliminary discussion of the academic study of open source software (OSS) communities. In section 2, I summarize the massive increase in academic attention to OSS, and the wider context ofindustry and public acceptance ofOSS. In section 3, the growing body ofOSS research is examined, and the trend toward studying the social aspects of OSS is described. Furthennore, I argue that this trend is to be encouraged, and that an understanding of OSS communities is critical to the understanding of OSS in general. Finally, section 4 outlines one of the key issues to be addressed in the study of OSS communities. The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35489-7_33 © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2001 N. L. Russo et al. (eds.), Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development