A systematic review of research on open source software in commercial software product development

ContextThe popularity of the open source software development in the last decade, has brought about an increased interest from the industry on how to use open source components, participate in the open source community, build business models around this type of software development, and learn more about open source development methodologies. There is a need to understand the results of research in this area.ObjectiveSince there is a need to understand conducted research, the aim of this study is to summarize the findings of research that has ben carried out on usage of open source components and development methodologies by the industry, as well as companies’ participation in the open source community.MethodSystematic review through searches in library databases and manual identification of articles from the open source conference. The search was first carried out in May 2009 and then once again in May 2010.ResultsIn 2009, 237 articles were first found, from which 19 were selected based on content and quality, and in 2010, 76 new articles were found from which four were selected. Twenty three articles were identified in total.ConclusionsThe articles could be divided into four categories: open source as part of component based software engineering, business models with open source in commercial organization, company participation in open source development communities, and usage of open source processes within a company.