Charles Schweik, associate professor of Natural Resources Conservation and Public Policy, will discuss “Collaborative Principles in Open Source Commons” on Monday, March 1, at 12 p.m. in Thompson 620. Schweik is also the founder and co-director of the UMass Amherst Open Source Laboratory.
This talk, part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration’s Spring 2010 Faculty Colloquium, will draw on Professor Schweik’s extensive research over the past several years to understand factors leading to successful open source software collaborations. Although “open source” can have multiple meanings, it generally refers to software that is produced collaboratively and whose source code is freely available to the public for use or modification. Schweik is especially interested in open source software as a “public good” and its potential as a global collaborative paradigm in many other contexts, including science, public policy and/or administration.
Professor Schweik, together with members of his research team, will report some of their findings on successful open source collaborations that come from one of the first empirical studies of its kind, analyzing more than 100,000 projects—those that failed as well as those that succeeded—and surveying more than 1,700 developers.
Charles Schweik’s research is supported by a NSF Early CAREER Development grant. In other related work, he has worked closely with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, which promotes the use of open source GIS software, and has developed innovative online systems to aid local and regional efforts in the area of environmental management. His early research on changing landscapes has taken him to regions as remote as the forests of Nepal. At UMass, he is currently an associate director of the National Center for Digital Government and an affiliated researcher with the Science, Technology, and Society Initiative.
Professor Schweik’s talk is free and open to the public. Brownbag lunches are welcome.