Canonical vs. Community -an outside study
Translated title
Term
4. term (INF10 - Master Thesis)
Education
Publication year
2009
Submitted on
2012-02-14
Abstract
This report is about the collaboration between a company and an open source community. We have examined what control the company has over the community, and what the relation is between the community and a company with commercial interests. The open source distribution examined in this thesis, is Ubuntu and the company is Canonical. Our research method is a case study, and our method for collecting data is conducting qualitative research interviews with both Canonical employees and Ubuntu community members. Additionally we have conducted an unstructured observation study at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona May 25th to May 29th, 2009, to confirm our findings from the interviews, and gathering further empirical data. Our conslusion states among others that Canonical has a great deal of control with the Ubuntu releases, even though they might try to give the volunteer developers a chance to be heard. In the end both sides have one major goal in common: Making Ubuntu as great a distribution as possible.
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