Guest Editor´s Introduction: How Open Source Tools Can Benefit Industry

The software industry has evolved toward complex supplier-user networks that cooperate and collaborate in many ways. We hardly see any longer the traditional way of software development in which one company handles design, production, sales, delivery, and service. Business models, engineering life cycles, distribution channels, and services have changed dramatically. A key driver in these new value networks is open source software (OSS). Open source refers to software that we may freely use, modify, or distribute, provided we observe certain restrictions with respect to copyright and protection of its open source status. OSS is not freeware and generally has a copyright. IEEE Software, through this paper, has assembled this minitheme to provide a glimpse of where OSS is heading.