Libre Software

One of my main research lines is Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS). This is the traditional core expertise of the research group where I work at URJC, GSyC/Libresoft.

Following, an explanation based on the document "Free/Libre and Open Source Software: A guide for SMEs":

Free Software was a term firstly introduced by Richard Stallman and the FSF. Later, the Open Source Initiative proposed "Open Source Software", allegedly to avoid the linguistic uncertainty associated with the English term "free", specifically used by the Free Software Foundation to preserve the underlying concept of freedom. The "libre software" term was introduced for the same reason, and used specially in Europe. The term "FLOSS" was introduced by Rishab Gosh in the context of EU-funded project "Free/Libre and Open source software: survey and study", started in 2002, as a catch-all term for free software and open source.

The group usually participate in a number of conferences covering this topic, including:

• OSS: International Conference on Open Source Systems (link)
• ICSE: Inernational Conference on Software Engineering (link)
• ICSM: International Conference on Software Maintenance (link)
• Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (link)
• Minitrack on Open Movements, at HICSS (Hawaiian Intl. Conference on System Sciences) (link)
• Wopdasd: Workshop on Public Data about Software Development (link)