The security of software is becoming increasingly important. Open source software forms much of our digital infrastructure. It, however, contains vulnerabilities which have been exploited, attracted public attention, and caused large financial damages. This article proposes a solution to shortcomings in the current economic situation of open source software development. The main idea is to introduce price signals into the peer production of software. This is achieved through a trading market for futures contracts on the status of software issues. Users, who value secure software, gain the possibility to predict outcomes and incentivize work, strengthening collaboration and information sharing in open source software development. The design of such a trading market is discussed and a prototype introduced. The feasibility of the trading market design is corroborated in a proof-of-concept implementation and simulation. Preliminary results show that the implementation works and can be used for future experiments. Several directions for future research result from this article, which contributes to peer production, software development practices, and incentives design.

In this paper we analyze the major trends and changes in the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market place since the beginning of the journal`Parallel Computing'. The initial success of vector computers in the 1970s was driven by raw performance. The introduction of this type of computer systems started the area of`Supercomputing'. In the 1980s the availability of standard development environments and of application software packages became more important. Next to performance these factors determined the success of MP vector systems, especially at industrial customers. MPPs became successful in the early 1990s due to their better price/performance ratios, which was made possible by the attack of the`killer-micros'. In the lower and medium market segments the MPPs were replaced by microprocessor based symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP) systems in the middle of the 1990s. There success formed the basis for the use of new cluster concepts for very high-end systems. In the last few years only the companies which have entered the emerging markets for massive parallel database servers and ®nancial applications attract enough business volume to be able to support the hardware development for the numerical high-end computing market as well. Success in the traditional¯oating point intensive engineering applications seems to be no longer sucient for survival in the market. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. 0167-8191/99/$ -see front matter Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 -8 1 9 1 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 6 7 -8 1. Introductioǹ`T

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The popularity of open source as a collaboration mechanism for developing software is increasing. Organizations increase their engagement. In our work, we draw the missing connection between open source projects, organizations, and markets. Without this connection, we have seen severe software vulnerability result from coordination and financing breakdowns. In this paper, we develop eight design features that a market place for open source should have to address these breakdowns. We develop the design features based on literature about the practices of open source. We present a prototype and discuss what implications would result from implementing such a market place.

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