Current issues and research trends on open-source software communities

Open source software (OSS) projects represent a new paradigm of software creation and development based on hundreds or even thousands of developers and users organised in the form of a virtual community. The success of an OSS project is closely linked to the successful organisation and development of the virtual community of support group. This paper reviews different fields and research topics related to the OSS communities such as collective intelligence, the structure of OSS communities, their success, communities as virtual organisations, motivation, shared knowledge, innovation and learning. The main challenges, results obtained, and the knowledge areas are detailed for each topic.