Category Archives: Industry

Open Commons Region Linz is Starting

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The region of and around Linz, Austria, has declared itself the Open Commons Region Linz. The opening festivities, including talks, free-of-charge, will take place on April 11th, 2011, in Linz (naturally). Read more about it on the blog of the Open Commons Region Linz! I’m a member of the academic advisory council of the Open Commons Region Linz and applaud and support the effort. I’m also happy to say that it will me bring to Linz in person once in a while.

Why I'm Interested In Computer Games Research

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Just before my inaugural lecture at University of Erlangen, a broad panel of scientists was debating the merits of computer games. Except for a computer games researcher and a games professional, all participants thought that computer games are of no particular interest. When I asked: “But isn’t there anything to learn from computer games?” I got a full rebuke by the M.D. on the panel: “No, there is no recognizable value whatsoever.”

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Call for Papers: OSS 2011, the 7th International Conference on Open Source Systems

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  • Paper submission deadline: April 8, 2011
  • Conference location: Salvador, BA, Brazil
  • Conference dates: 6-7 October 2011
  • Conference website: OSS 2011

Conference Theme

Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on the way organisations and individuals create, distribute, acquire and use software and software-based services. OSS has challenged the conventional wisdom of the software engineering and software business communities, has been instrumental for educators and researchers, and has become an important aspect of e-government and information society initiatives. OSS is a complex phenomenon and requires a interdisciplinary understanding of its engineering, technical, economic, legal and socio-cultural dynamics.

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New German Edition of Design Patterns (Entwurfsmuster) book (in German)

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Seit ein paar Monaten ist die neue Ausgabe des Entwurfsmusterbuchs verfügbar. Dies ist meine Übersetzung des Klassikers “Design Patterns” von Erich Gamma et al. aus dem Amerikanischen. Mit der neuen Ausgabe kommen einige Neuerungen und Änderungen. An erster Stelle zu nennen wäre der neue Umschlag:

Erster Vorschlag für den Umschlag der neuen Ausgabe

Der tatsächliche Inhalt der Sprechblase in der endgültigen veröffentlichten Fassung ist ein anderer und lautet: “We present you the book that changed software design.” Da die Viererbande (Gang-of-four) noch auf ein Nachfolgebuch mit weiteren Mustern hofft, habe ich Addison-Wesley’s ursprünglichen Vorschlag entsprechend geändert.

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Curating, Preserving, and Showing Software at the Computer History Museum

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Last Saturday I visited the Computer History Museum’s new exhibition “R|Evolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing”. The exhibition is fantastic, and they’ve come a long way from the early days of their “visible storage” exhibition. If you live in or visit the Silicon Valley, I highly recommend you pay it a visit.

That said, every time I visit the museum, I ask about the state of curating, preserving, and showing not only hardware, but also software. Like most exhibitions, the R|Evolution exhibition focusses on physical objects and complements them with textual explanations on plates as well as videos. Software is being discussed in the Software Theatre and in some smaller videos. However, these videos are about software and programming in general, not about actual software artifacts. Software is mostly shown through physical objects, i.e. the boxes they came in as packaged software.

Packaged Software Box Arc

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Honoring Peter Naur on the Community Wall at the Computer History Museum

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Last Saturday I visited the “R|Evolution” exhibition at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum (more on that later). One reason why I went there was to see the “community wall” of plaques sponsored by small-time donors. I had sponsored one and my saying on it was:

In honor of Peter Naur: To program is to learn.

I’m sure Peter Naur is being honored by the CHM elsewhere and in a more appropriate style than my whimsical plaque, but I wanted to use this blog post to explain the plaque and the meaning of the saying on it.

Like every non-profit, the CHM is always looking for support and donations, and so they had called for financial support in late 2009 and promised a plaque on a community wall as a way of saying thanks for the support.

Community wall (of small-time donors) at the CHM, Feb 2011

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Micro-Blogging Adoption in the Enterprise: An Empirical Analysis

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Abstract: Given the increasing interest in using social software for company-internal communication and collaboration, this paper examines drivers and inhibitors of micro-blogging adoption at the workplace. While nearly one in two companies is currently planning to introduce social software, there is no empirically validated research on employees’ adoption. In this paper, we build on previous focus group results and test our research model in an empirical study using Structural Equation Modeling. Based on our findings, we derive recommendations on how to foster adoption. We suggest that micro-blogging should be presented to employees as an efficient means of communication, personal brand building, and knowledge management. In order to particularly promote content contribution, privacy concerns should be eased by setting clear rules on who has access to postings and for how long they will be archived.

Reference: Valentin Schöndienst, Hanna Krasnova, Oliver Günther, and Dirk Riehle. “Micro-Blogging Adoption in the Enterprise: An Empirical Analysis.” In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2011). Page 931-940.

The paper is available in PDF form. You may also like the prior paper “Modeling Micro-Blogging Adoption in the Enterprise” as well as my “patterns of effective tweeting”.

Das AMOS Projektkonzept (2011)

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NACHHALTIGE PROJEKTE ZUM LERNEN UND AUSGRÜNDEN

Dieser Artikel stellt das AMOS Projektkonzept vor, welches ich in der Informatik-Lehre an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg einsetze. Ziel des AMOS Projekts ist es, Studierenden professionelle Softwareentwicklung in einem konkreten Projekt zu vermitteln, welches idealerweise zu einer Startup durch die am Ende ihres Studiums befindlichen Studierenden führt.

Das AMOS Projekt ist für mich eine neue Erfindung: Ich habe es das erste Mal 2010 so abgehalten. Deswegen dient dieser Artikel nicht nur der Schilderung des Projektkonzepts, sondern sollte auch als Aufforderung zum Kommentieren gelesen werden. Ich vermute, dass es anderswo in ähnlicher Form betrieben wird und würde gern von den dortigen Erfahrungen lernen.

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Control Points and Steering Mechanisms in Open Source Software Projects

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Following up on my Lisog talk earlier this month, I was asked to write up the talk’s content. So here we go, my analysis of what commercial open source firms do to manage or steer open source projects they depend on.

Abstract: Most commercial software today depends on open source software. The commercial software might be using an underlying open source platform, or it might be incorporating open source components, or it might be provided as a commercial open source product itself. Whichever the case, the software firm behind the commercial software needs to ensure that its interests are met by the open source software projects it depends on. This article shows how commercial software firms manage or steer open source software projects to meet their business needs.

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Upcoming Talk: Steering and Control Mechanisms in Open Source Software Projects (in German)

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Next week, on Nov 11, 2011, I’ll give the keynote talk (in German) at the annual Lisog gathering. Lisog is a non-profit organization working to create a sustainable co-existence of open and closed source software.

Title: Steering and Control Mechanisms in Open Source Software Projects

Abstract: Open source has become commercial. With commercial interests, it has become important to understand how for-profit entities steer or control projects in support of their business model. First, this talk describes the main points of control in open source software projects. Next, it describes patterns of combining and utilizing these points of control for the economic benefit of those who control them. This talk will distinguish the use of control points by single-vendor-owned vs. community open source as well as traditionally delivered vs. cloud computing business models.

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