Category Archives: Open Collaboration

Call for Papers: 7th International Workshop on Foundations and Techniques for Open Source Software Certification (OpenCert 2013)

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7th International Workshop on Foundations and Techniques for Open Source Software Certification (OpenCert 2013), Monday 23 September 2013, Madrid, Spain,
http://opencert.iist.unu.edu, at the 11th International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM 2013), September 25-27, 2013, Madrid, Spain, http://antares.sip.ucm.es/sefm2013

Context / Objectives

Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on the way software systems and software-based services are developed, distributed and deployed. Widely acknowledged benefits of OSS include reliability, low development and maintenance costs, as well as rapid code turnover. Linux distributions, Apache and MySQL server, and Moodle LMS are, among many other examples, a testimony to its success and resilience.

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On the Technology Behind the Wikipedia Sexism Debate on “American Women Novelists”

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The English Wikipedia is currently embroiled in a debate on sexism (local copy), because of classifying female American novelists as “American Women Novelists” while leaving male American novelists in the more general category “American Novelists”, suggesting a subordinate role of female novelists. I find this debate regrettable for the apparent sexism but also interesting for the technology underlying such changes, which I would like to focus on here.

With technology, I mean bureaucratic practices, conceptual modeling of the world and Wikipedia content, and software tools to support changes to those models.

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A Dual Model of Open Source License Growth

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Abstract: Every open source project needs to decide on an open source license. This decision is of high economic relevance: Just which license is the best one to help the project grow and attract a community? The most common question is: Should the project choose a restrictive (reciprocal) license or a more permissive one? As an important step towards answering this question, this paper analyses actual license choice and correlated project growth from ten years of open source projects. It provides closed analytical models and finds that around 2001 a reversal in license choice occurred from restrictive towards permissive licenses.

Keywords: Open source; open source license; software license; open source project growth

Reference: Gottfried Hofmann, Dirk Riehle, Carsten Kolassa, Wolfgang Mauerer. “A Dual Model of Open Source License Growth.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2013). Springer Verlag, 2013, to appear.

The paper is available as a PDF file.

A Model of Product Features in Commercial Open Source Software

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Abstract: Commercial open source software has become an important part of the packaged software product industry. This paper provides a model of individual product features, rather than full-fledged business models, and their perceived value to customers. The model is the result of a three-iteration study, including interview analysis, literature review and the implementation of an empirical survey. Companies can use the feature model to determine their products and business model.

Keywords: Commercial open source; software product features

Reference: Florian Weikert, Dirk Riehle. “A Model of Commercial Open Source Software Product Features.” In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB 2013). Springer Verlag, 2013, to appear.

The paper is available as a PDF file.

Call for Participation: OC13 – Open Commons Kongress in Linz, Austria, 2013-05-14

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Please consider participating in the Open Commons Kongress, OC13, in Linz, Austria (I’m on the advisory board.) More information below (in German). [DR]

OC13 – Open Commons Kongress

14.05.2013, 9:00 – 16:30 Uhr

Wissensturm Linz, Austria

Lernen und Leben mit digitalen Gemeingütern

Zum zweiten Mal veranstaltet die Johannes Kepler Universität Linz und die Open Commons Region Linz den Open Commons Kongress. Der heurige Titel lautet “OC13: Lernen und Leben mit digitalen Gemeingütern”. Die Veranstaltung findet am Dienstag, 14. Mai im Wissensturm statt.

Read on…

Best of Our Empirical Open Source Work (Abstract)

I’m at SOFSEM 2013, where I’ll present my current stock research talk: “Best of Our Empirical Open Source Work.” It is an invited talk. I’ve given it a few times now and expect to do many more during the course of 2013. Here is the abstract of this “best-of” talk:

Open source software is publicly developed software. Thus, for the first time, we can broadly analyse in data-driven detail how people program, how bugs come about, and how we could improve our tools. In this talk, I’ll review six years of our open source empirical (data) research and highlight the most interesting insights, including how different (or not) open source is from closed source programming.

Let me know if you are interested!

Announcing OpenSym 2013, the Open Symposium!

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OpenSym is the conference for open collaboration researchers and practitioners, including free/libre/open source software, but also open access, open data, open government, and open innovation. OpenSym 2013 will be held for the first time in 2013, on Aug 5-7, in Hong Kong, China. OpenSym joins hands with WikiSym, an established conference that brings together wiki and Wikipedia researchers and practitioners. WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 will co-locate with Wikimania 2013, the Wikipedia (and related) user conference.

OpenSym is unique in bringing together all strands of “open researchers” and I can’t wait to see how it works out! It is truly an exciting time to experience how researchers and practitioners join hands across disciplines to make the world a better place!

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Looking Back on One Year of Public Policy Consulting

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2012 was the year when I first did some serious public policy consulting. I found it quite informative to see how politicians work and what the impact of lobbyists is.

I’m a professor of computer science at a German technical university. I also have an M.B.A. from Stanford. I consult on open source, software development, and the software industry. I’m also a civil servant of the state of Bavaria in Germany. Thus, I try to maintain a policy-neutral stance, consulting on mechanism more than on policy. The German people elect politicians, politicians choose policy, and I help politicians choose and define mechanisms that will turn those policies into reality.

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Planned Inner Source: Code Reuse Across Profit-Center Boundaries (in German)

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Abstract: Wiederverwendung von Softwarekomponenten verspricht, Softwareentwicklung schneller und günstiger zu machen und die Ergebnisqualität zu steigern. Trotz diverser methodischer Ansätze ist es für viele Softwareentwicklungsorganisationen schwierig geblieben, diese Ziele auch nur ansatzweise zu erreichen. Vor diesem Hintergrund bietet „Inner Source“, die Verwendung von Open-Source-Praktiken in der firmeninternen Softwareentwicklung, neue Chancen. Inner-Source-Software ist Software, die innerhalb eines Unternehmens über Profit-Center-Grenzen hinweg in Gemeinschaftsarbeit entwickelt wird und von allen Abteilungen genutzt werden kann. In diesem Artikel stellen wir die bisher gewonnenen Erfahrungen mit Inner-Source-Entwicklung dar, definieren organisatorische Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten und prognostizieren die Entstehung von Inner-Source-Organisationen, einer neuen Form der Organisation für die Wiederverwendung.

Keywords: Open source; inner source; software code reuse; knowledge sharing; firm-internal open source; open collaboration

Reference: Dirk Riehle, Detlef Kips. Geplanter Inner Source: Ein Weg zur Profit-Center-übergreifenden Wiederverwendung. Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg Technical Report CS-2012-05. Erlangen, Germany: 2012.

The paper is available as a PDF file.

The Commit Size Distribution of Open Source Software (Summary)

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We finished our work on modeling the commit sizes of open source, called the commit size distribution of open source. This is relevant work for anyone who’d like to know how much code developers are writing for a single commit (code contribution) to a project. For example, if you are developing software development tools, you might want to know about this. The work pairs nicely with an upcoming publication on the commit frequency of open source, that is, the ETA (estimated time of arrival) of the next commit to a project.

There are three papers, in descending order of importance:

  1. A Model of the Commit Size Distribution of Open Source (2013)
  2. Developer Belief vs. Reality on Commit Size Distribution (2012)
  3. The Original Data behind the Commit Size Distribution (2009)

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