Bearing Point Consulting just published a study on the use of open source software in the automotive industry. It shows how open source is on the rise, no surprise. Martin Helmreich, a student of mine, did most of the work, and I guided study conception and evaluation. Here are links to the German version and the English version. I’m particularly proud about this news coverage. It is our first Chinese news coverage!
I’m at beautiful Schloss Dagstuhl once again this week, for a seminar on “Open Models as a Foundation of Future Enterprise Systems”. I was asked to spin some thoughts on what the Open Models Initiative could learn from open source. The result is a short but sweet presentation on “the business of open models”. My maybe obvious statement is that for open models to be sustainable, they’ll need a business model. My suggestion is to create developer foundations like Apache or Eclipse for this. The slides are available as a PDF and through Slideshare, see below:
“Startupinformatik” is a German term for “informatics (computer science) for startups” that I just made up. It is intended to be close to “Wirtschaftsinformatik”, which is German for “informatics for businesses”. So it is about the business of startups and the role software (IT) plays in it. You can read my prior thoughts
Enjoy!
2012-02-18: Updated the post with translations from the original letter.
I’m an Addison-Wesley author and just received a letter from Pearson, the owner of Addison-Wesley, informing me about their thoughts and steps towards e-books and the digital age. The letter is written as an open letter with no apparent secrets, so I’m making it available here for anyone interested to read and to comment on it.
In general, I have sympathies with companies trying to sustain their revenue streams. I do expect them, however, to understand that change is inevitable and to flexibly react to and to lead that change for their customers’ sake and not just their shareholders’ sake. As an author, I’m naturally in a similar or at least related situation.
The PDF is marked up with numbers. The following list relates to what the (German) letter says on the respective issues:
A technology is disruptive, if it allows new companies to shake up an established market and win against established 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: