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Here are a couple of pointers to current activities in open source development:

1. www.cosource.com This is a local effort to organize open source developers with projects that somebody wants done. The basic idea is that a requester may post a bounty on a software job, and developers will bid on the job, until some agreement is reached (a contract). It was started by a couple of local guys in the Seattle area, Bernie Thompson and Norm Jacobowitz. Also see www.cosource.com/help/company.shtml.

2. www.sourcexchange.com This is more of a national level effort to set up an open source marketplace, similar to but different from the above. This one probably has more visibility with the backing of O'Reilly (publishers) and Hewlett-Packard.

Both use a market model that tries to bring together requesters and bidders. Both are somewhat oriented to Linux and drivers or applications for Linux, but are not limited to Linux orientation. Both address the issues you raised about meeting schedules and commitments, basically with a contract negotiated between buyer and seller.

The linux and open source communities have a lot of fragmentation and factions, and vary from those with socialist ideologies to those with just as much for-profit orientation (if not the ruthlessness) as Microsoft. Don't be put off by the terms of the GPL as expressed by the Free Software Foundation. That's not the only way to develop open source software, as you will see in the _Open Sources_ book. Copyrights and patents are still used to protect ownership where it is appropriate or necessary. Further perspective on open source can be found through:

3. www.opensource.org

The seminal paper on open source is _The Cathedral & the Bazzar_ by Eric Raymond. I can't find the web link at the moment, but it has just been published in expanded form with related papers:

4. Eric Raymond, _The Cathedral & the Bazaar_, O'Reilly, 1999, ($13.97 at amazon.com).