The international surveys of FLOSS (free/libre open source software) firms

SONNENBERG, JOSEFINA; MORERO, HERNÁN ALEJANDRO; FERNÁNDEZ, VALENTINA

Atenas

Congreso; 15th Globelics International Conference; 2017

The Global Network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (Globelics)

In the last decade, there was asubstantial growth in the software and IT services sector, which generates aninterest in the study of the impact that the expansion of this sector had inthe development of emerging economies. At the same time, it is particularlyrelevant to the study the FLOSS production activity given its contribution tothe Knowledge Intensive Services Sector, as software. The aim of this study isto contribute to the analysis of this activity, presenting a systematization,evaluation and analysis of the design of technological surveys available in thesoftware activity and in FLOSS worldwide, so that it serves as antecedent for asubsequent recommendation in the design of a measuring instrument suited to theneeds of the emerging economies. For that, this paper contains a review andsystematization of software surveys at international level, surveys on FLOSSactivity that take FLOSS developers as a unit of analysis and lastly on the FLOSSsurveys at firm level, as a way to propose a questionnaire that allows to measure the particularities of FLOSS.