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The goal of every open source project is to gain as many satisfied users as possible. To this end, open source software producers should focus on both product development and communication. Currently, most open source projects are mainly concerned with developing code using the most appealing technologies and introducing fancy features. On the contrary, open source software producers seem to lack good communication strategies. During the next Open Source Summer School I will take a lecture on "OSS Marketing.

Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is a continuously growing movement. To give an idea of the size of the phenomenon, note that according to a report published in August 2006 by the market research group IDC, FLOSS was used by over 70% of all developers worldwide, and in production at 54% of organizations.  Another IDC report, published in December 2009, shows that more than 85% of companies were using FLOSS in 2009.

A recent survey by Gartner (Feb 2011) on 547 IT leaders in organizations in 11 countries

Trust is a complex phenomenon that has been the object of interest in various disciplines. Depending on the approach, trust has been defined in many ways. As an example, trust can be defined as "have confidence or faith in,"[1] "something (as property) held by one party (the trustee) for the benefit of another (the beneficiary),"[2].

Open Source discussions concerning trustworthiness, and dependability have been raised by the articles, presentations, at the “Open Source Development Workshop” held in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on the 25th & 26th of February 2002[1]. Among other contributions, they underline some key concepts about OSS and trustworthiness. They also note that the terms Trustworthiness and Dependability are equivalent.

Open Source Assessment, often deals with security and privacy. Some academic works relates trusttorthiness to securoty and privacy.

Hansen defines trustworthiness meaning in respect to security and privacy meanings [1]. More in details, he argues that security and privacy principally can be objectively stated, while trustworthiness strongly depends on the subjective experience and feelings of the user.

The term "free software" was coined by Richard Stallman in 1983 when he launched the free software movement [2]. This term define software which user can use for any purpose, study the source code of, adapt to their needs and redistribute. To avoid the ambiguity of the English word "free", and to avoid talking about the impact on freedom of non-free software, people have suggested alternative names...

Modern society depends on large-scale software systems of astonishing complexity. As the consequences of their possible failure are so high, it is vital that software systems should exhibit a trustworthy behavior.

Trustworthiness is a major issue when people and organization are faced with the selection and the adoption of new software. Although some ad-hoc methods have been proposed (see for instance [1]), there is not yet general agreement about software characteristics contributing to trustworthiness.