Prof. Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Latest in Industry and Research Publications

Open Source Dependencies are Investments

The Linux Foundation’s research arm just published a report about interviews with 32 maintainers of critical open source projects (local copy). Only 62% of these maintainers, i.e. 20 people, were employed by their organizations to work on these open source components. I consider this low and would have expected a higher number. What’s worse, only…

2023-08-02
The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify It [CSUR Journal]

Abstract Inner-source software development is the practice of using open source practices for firm-internal software development. Practitioner reports have shown that inner source can increase flexibility and reduce costs. Despite the potential benefits of inner source, there has been little research on its impact on businesses and their processes. To address this gap, we conducted…

2023-07-31
How to Win with Open Source and Openness (in German) [F.A.Z.-Institut Managementkompass]

I’m happy to report about a new trade magazine publication, aimed at the German C-level suite, about how to win in business using open source and openness. The article is written in German and you can read it here. The overall issue including all other articles is also available (local copy). Reference: Riehle, D. (2023).…

2023-07-25
Open Source Promises Not Made and Broken

Using open-source software in products and projects is not a no-brainer. Like with any software, introducing a dependency on an open source component creates a lock-in that should be thought through well. All too often, people are lazy when thinking (or not thinking) through such decisions. Case in point 1: An open source programmer on…

2023-07-16
Openness is a Red Herring, Lock-in is the Real Deal

If you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it should be easy to switch to Suse Linux Enterprise Server, right? You’d do that if you disagree with Red Hat’s pricing and Suse provides a better deal. Sadly, a real-world calculation has to take the switching costs into account, because RHEL and SLES are not exactly…

2023-07-05
The Corporate Open Source Strategy [Rebooting Computing Conference]

Today I’m giving a talk on the corporate open source strategy at the TTI Vanguard Rebooting Computing conference. In the available 30 min. I’m focusing on the perspective of software users, as this is not a conference for the software industry but for everyone else (with a stronghold in financial services). Below please find a…

2023-06-23