2005. MIT Media Lab.
Free software projects are a growing and important source of software. They range in size from one develop to hundreds. Unlike traditional models of software development, they use the Internet to collaborate in a decentralized, self-organizing fashion. It is important to understand how such communities can prosper without traditional centralized control.
Open Sources is a visualization that operates on existing code bases and mailing list archives in order to understand the relationship between the community's communication patterns and the code. It attempts to reveal characteristic signatures that may result in successful projects, as well as the locally hidden history behind code and mailing list archives.
The images here represent the history over many years of the FVWM project.