Ann Barcomb is studying for an MSc in International Business (Information Management) at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She is presently working on her thesis on the subject of success factors in Free/Libre and Open Source (FLOSS) businesses.
Before returning to school to study for a master's degree, Ann worked as a programmer for a number of years. During this time she was involved in the non-profit organization YAPC::Europe Foundation and helped organize a grassroots Perl conference in Amsterdam. She has also worked on Gnash, written summaries of the Perl 6 mailing lists, written for O'Reilly net, and given talks at OSCON (2002) and the Slovenian Linux Conference (2003, 2004).
Ann's motivation in pursuing this line of research stems from her personal belief in the benefits of FLOSS, and her desire to eventually develop this interest into a career.