More and more software development is being distributed across greater and greater distances. The motives are varied, but one of the most predominant is the effort to keep costs down. As talent is where you find it, why not use it where you find it, rather than spending the money to relocate it to some ostensibly more "central" location? The increasing ubiquity of the Internet is making far-flung talent ever-more accessible.
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Ken Coar (2003) studied this question.
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