A technology is disruptive, if it allows small new companies to shake up an established market and win against establish large companies.
I got asked three times this week what “disruptive” means so here is my definition 
Titel: Geschäftsrisiken und Governance von Open-Source in Softwareprodukten
Zusammenfassung: In fast jedem Softwareprodukt, auch in großer Standardsoftware, sind heute Open-Source-Komponenten enthalten. Die Hersteller dieser Software müssen die Geschäftsrisiken, die mit der Integration von Open-Source-Software in kommerzielle Produkte verbunden sind, verstehen und vernünftig managen. Dieser Artikel zeigt ein Modell verschiedener rechtlicher, technischer und sozialer Risiken auf, die durch unkontrollierten Einsatz von Open-Source-Software entstehen und erläutert ausgewählte Erfolgsmethoden der Open-Source-Governance, die von führenden Firmen angewandt werden. Das Modell ist das Analyseergebnis von fünf mit großen deutschen Softwareherstellern geführten Interviews sowie weiterer Literaturrecherche.
For your convenience, the OSS 2012 call for papers (I’m on the program committee).
Hammamet, Tunisia, 10-13 September 2012
Over the past two decades, Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) has introduced new successful models for creating, distributing, acquiring and using software and software-based services. Inspired by the success of FLOSS, other forms of open initiatives have been gaining momentum. Open source systems (OSS) now extend beyond software to include open access, open documents, open science, open education, open government, open cloud, open hardware, open artworks and museum exhibits, open innovation and more. On the one hand, the openness movement has created new kinds of opportunities such as the emergence of new business models, knowledge exchange mechanisms, and collective development approaches. On the other hand, the movement has introduced new kinds of challenges, especially as different problem domains embrace openness as a pervasive problem solving strategy. OSS can be complex yet widespread and often cross-cultural. Consequently, they require an interdisciplinary understanding of their technical, economic, legal and socio-cultural dynamics.
For your convenience, the ECOOP 2012 call for papers (I’m on the program committee).
The European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP) is the premium international conference covering all areas of object technology and related software development technologies. ECOOP 2012 will take place from 11-16 June, 2012 in Beijing, China — only the second time ECOOP has been held outside Europe. ECOOP 2012 embraces a broad range of topics related to object-orientation, including:
For your convenience, the SPLC 2012 call for papers (I’m on the program committee).
We invite the following classes of contributions:
I’m at the Dagstuhl Seminar “Information Management in the Cloud” where I keynoted about cloud computing businesses models. Given that I’m hardly a cloud computing expert this may seem like a stretch, however, the organizers had asked me to talk about my open source experience and relate this to cloud computing. This perspective turned out to be surprisingly fruitful. By realizing that both open source and cloud computing are disruptive innovations that enable a new generation of business models, I believe I was able to draw reasonable conclusions on the future of cloud computing from the history of open source. I reason by analogy, and here are the main conclusions:
Trying to wrap my head around the Open Cloud Principles put out by the revamp of the Open Cloud Initiative, I’m happy to note that software engineering research has something to say to the challenges these principles will face.
Every real-world specification is an underspecification.
So, well, I say that, but I doubt that I’m the first one to have learned this from 30+ years of software engineering research. This principle leads us directly to the challenges anyone is facing who is trying to be truthful to the intentions behind the Open Cloud Principles.
The IEEE just published a short version of the “control points and steering mechanisms” article. Here is the abstract. Please see the original for more details.
Abstract: Open source software has become an important part of the software business. In a 2009 survey, Forrester Research found that 46 percent of all responding enterprises were using or implementing open source software. Moreover, in 2009, the Gartner Group estimated that by 2012, at least 80 percent of all software product firms will use open source software. Thus, it’s important to understand how software product firms depend on open source and how they manage that dependency to meet their business goals. There are three main types of software product firms. [...]
I was revising my talk on “Inner Source” when it occurred to me that it might be fun to review the changes to the sf.net (Sourceforge) homepage. Please find my collection of screenshots below. I only started saving them in 2007 so pointers to more and older screenshots are welcome! (In particular if they come with a CC license so that I can use them in talks, attribution is a given. I trust that Geek.net does not object…) Thanks!
| Title | The Open Source Volunteering Process |
| Abstract | Open source projects critically depend on bringing new project members on board speedily and effectively. In this talk, I’ll describe the open source volunteering and on-boarding process. I’ll discuss the roles people play and the practices they follow, and I’ll illustrate how this process works by showing the open source software development tools that support it. |
| Speaker | Prof. Dr. Dirk Riehle, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg |
| Date | 14.07.11, 18:30(-20:00) |
| Location | Cogneon GmbH, Henkestr. 91, Erlangen |
| More | GfWM Website Announcement (in German) |