What are source communities in the context of software development? What do they offer in this context? What are the problems in building and maintaining viable source communities?
Paper instructions:
This question comprises three sub-questions and the best approach would be to answer each sub-question separately.

To answer the first sub-question, a brief description of source communities in the context of software development is required. Students should provide the key characteristics of such communities, together with examples (e.g. Linux). This part needs more than a single-line definition of source.

The second sub-question is looking for the promises’ of source. In other words, why has source caught on in the context of software development? Clearly it must offer members of the community certain benefits and students are expected to identify these benefits. For this discussion, like the rest of the question, students should stay within the context of software development, even though
source production has spread far beyond this context.

Considered from the perspective of new organisational forms, source communities do offer many benefits but, like any other organisational form, they have problems as well and these form the basis of the third sub-question. There are two important words in this sub-question: building and maintaining. While there may be motivation for building a community, that motivation is not always the same as that needed for maintaining the community over a period of time. Hence, students need to distinguish between short-term set-up problems and longer term issues.

A good answer would include an appreciation of how source communities in software development have evolved over time through, for example, the support of IT development companies.