Category Archives: Wikimedia

The Economic Case for Open Source Foundations

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Abstract: An open source foundation is a group of people and companies that has come together to jointly develop community open source software. Examples include the Apache Software Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, and the Gnome Foundation. There are many reasons why software development firms join and support a foundation. One common economic motivation is to save costs in the development of the software by spreading them over the participating parties. However, this is just the beginning. Beyond sharing costs, participating firms can increase their revenue through the provision and increased sale of complementary products. Also, by establishing a successful open source platform, software firms can compete more effectively across technology stacks and thereby increase their addressable market. Not to be neglected, community open source software is a common good, creating increased general welfare and hence goodwill for the involved companies.

Reference: Dirk Riehle. “The Economic Case for Open Source Foundations.” IEEE Computer, vol. 43, no. 1 (January 2010). Page 86-90.

Available as HTML or as a PDF file.

Talk Slides: Design Pattern Density Defined

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Here the slides for my OOPSLA Onward! 2009 talk on “Design Pattern Density Defined.” First the abstract:

Design pattern density is a metric that measures how much of an object-oriented design can be understood and represented as instances of design patterns. Expert developers have long believed that a high design pattern density implies a high maturity of the design under inspection. This paper presents a quantifiable and observable definition of this metric. The metric is illustrated and qualitatively validated using four real-world case studies. We present several hypotheses of the metric’s meaning and their implications, including the one about design maturity. We propose that the design pattern density of a maturing framework has a fixed point and we show that if software design patterns make learning frameworks easier, a framework’s design pattern density is a measure of how much easier it will become.

The talk slides are available as a PDF file and are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

For a discussion of the talk’s contents I recommend reading the original article.

Open Access and Open Source

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This morning, I read that the main Swedish research funding agency has decided to enforce open access to research results of projects it funds. This is a big deal for Swedish researchers relying on these funds: The status of a researcher is determined by the prestige of the journals in which they publish (and how much they publish). Many of these journals are not open access but rather require hefty fees to give you access. Hence, researchers might not be getting some of the expected reputation for their work.

Such a requirement is likely to come down the pipe in many other countries as well. Its impact on the academic publishing industry is not to be underestimated, it is nothing short of Schumpeterian. Economics is aligning itself against the publishers of high-priced journals. As open access journals as well as professional organizations like the ACM show, it is possible to have a publishing process at a much cheaper price tag than those of the likes of Elsevier and Springer.

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Busy at the Open Source Research Group

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We had a busy first week over at the website of the Open Source Research group:

Fun! And don’t be shy, take a look!

Why Open Source is Hard for Closed Source Vendors (Alpha Release)

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It is difficult for many closed source software vendors to embrace open source. Why is this so? After all, over the last years we have come to understand the many business benefits of employing open source as part of a software vendor’s strategy toolbox. In this presentation, I make a first attempt at answering this question (and also include a few remedies). In a nutshell,

open source is hard for closed source vendors, (1) because they have a different risk/reward profile than startups and have a higher fear around legal uncertainties, (2) because they would have to undergo substantial and painful organizational change, easily involving lay-offs, and (3) because current sales incentives are not set up to support cross-selling open source.

This presentation is an alpha release, which is to say, I doubt I’ve nailed it all. Please tell me what you think I’ve missed or where you dis/agree with my thoughts! Because of this, I maintain full copyright of the presentation. Later revisions will hopefully include your feedback (and give proper credits) and will be released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

The presentation is available as a PDF file.

My Open Source Research Agenda (as of 2009)

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As you may seen in an earlier blog post, I’m starting in a new position as a professor of software engineering focussing on open source software at the University of Erlangen. In this post, I’m laying out my abbreviated research agenda as of September 2009.

The overarching goal of my group’s research is to comprehensively define “the next big” software development method. To that end, we will work to unify agile software development methods with open source software development. Agile methods can cope with changing requirements but don’t scale up well. Open source methods can cope with changing requirements and also scale up well. However, open source remains poorly understood as a development method and practices vary significantly from project to project. Agile methods are increasingly being adopted in the enterprise, but it is open source methods that innovate intra- and inter-company collaboration as well as vendor-customer relationships. Given prior significant research on agile methods, the focus of my group’s work will be on understanding open source methods and practices in both an engineering and a business context.

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Professor for Open Source Software at University of Erlangen

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After 12 years of working in the high-tech industry, I’m changing gears. I left my prior industry job and am starting today, September 1st, as the “professor for open source software” in the computer science department of the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Bavaria, Germany. This is a free (not tied to a chair) full (fully tenured) professorship. I’m looking forward to joining the department and collaborating with my new colleagues at the university, local industry, and beyond.

The professorship is well-funded and I’ll be seeking to hire Ph.D. students right away. For my research plans, please see the upcoming blog post. For now, I’ll let my favorite (ex-)Stanford comic strip do the talking. If you aren’t reading Ph.D. comics yet, check it out.

Talk Slides: The Commercial Open Source Business Model

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For my AMCIS 2009 talk on the single-vendor commercial open source business model, first the abstract, then the slides:

Commercial open source software projects are open source software projects that are owned by a single firm that derives a direct and significant revenue stream from the software. Commercial open source at first glance represents an economic paradox: How can a firm earn money if it is making its product available for free as open source? This paper presents the core properties of commercial open source business models and discusses how they work… [more]

The talk slides are available as a PDF file and are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

For a discussion of the talk’s contents I recommend reading the original article.

Commercial Open Source: Faster, Better, Cheaper, and More Easily?

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I’m trying to create a pithy statement as to how commercial open source firms are superior to traditional (closed source) software development firms. For that, I need to define what the specific effects are that using an open source go-to-market strategy has on the bottom line. (If your answer is “it’s the community, naturally”—that’s not the intent of my question.) So far, I’ve been enumerating the benefits by business function, that is:

A commercial open source firm can

  1. go to market faster
  2. with a superior product
  3. at lower overall costs, and
  4. sell it more easily

than possible for traditional closed source competitors. I think that’s it: Faster, better, cheaper, and more easily.

As you can see, I’ve basically enumerated the various business functions as you might find them on a firm’s income statement. (1) and (2) address product management and engineering, (3) addresses pretty much all business functions, and (4) addresses marketing and sales. Anything that I should add? Rearrange things? Take a totally different perspective? Thanks for any thoughts you might have!

Red Hat on Patents and Total Growth of Open Source

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A couple of days ago, Red Hat filed a brief with the EPO (European Patent Office), arguing that patents hinder software innovation (as masterfully summarized by Glynn Moody). From Red Hat’s press release:

Today Red Hat took its efforts to confront the problem of software patents to new ground by filing a brief with the European Patent Office. The brief explains that software patents hinder software innovation, and that there is a sound legal basis not to expand availability of such patents in Europe.

I particularly liked that Red Hat uses Amit Deshpande’s and my work on the Total Growth of Open Source software as evidence of the significance of open source. An added bonus is that our little academic paper is referenced right next to the work of one of my heroes, Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation.

The good news is that I have tons of material to make an even stronger case for the economic significance and future impact of open source. The bad news is that time and resources are in short supply… but that will change eventually.