Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Author: Dirk Riehle

  • Open source license inconsistencies on GitHub [TOSEM Journal]

    Open source license inconsistencies on GitHub [TOSEM Journal]

    Abstract: Almost all software, open or closed, builds on open source software and therefore needs to comply with the license obligations of the open source code. Not knowing which licenses to comply with poses a legal danger to anyone using open source software. This article investigates the extent of inconsistencies between licenses declared by an…

  • Challenges of working from home in software development during COVID-19 lockdowns [TOSEM Journal]

    Challenges of working from home in software development during COVID-19 lockdowns [TOSEM Journal]

    Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2022 and the resulting lockdowns forced many companies to switch to working from home, swiftly, on a large scale, and without preparation. This situation created unique challenges for software development, where individual software professionals had to shift instantly from working together at a physical venue to working remotely from home.…

  • Open source legal debt

    Open source legal debt

    Open source legal debt is unwanted open-source code in your products and projects. Code may be unwanted, if it does not fit your (a company’s) business model. An example is code that has been copied from StackOverflow into your code base. That’s because code from StackOverflow has a copyleft license, which means that as you…

  • Non-software-industry user-led open source consortia

    Non-software-industry user-led open source consortia

    tl;dr We observe sustained growth in what we call non-software-industry user-led open-source consortia. These are open-source consortia (non-profit organizations) created by companies from outside the software industry with the goal of developing the applications these companies need to run their business. Their behaviors are different from other open-source consortia and we can see this expressed…

  • The Pegel Alarm open data challenge (a thread)

    The Pegel Alarm open data challenge (a thread)

    The struggles of @LilithWittmann to make the Handelsregister of Germany freely available and easily accessible reminded me of our own struggles with different German state-level organizations, trying to get access to open data for rivers and water ways in 2014. 1/ We had developed an open-source app called PegelAlarm @EichhornPhilipp (now defunct) which lets users…

  • Open source and the hyphen

    Open source and the hyphen

    You may have seen the repeated fights over whether open-source software should be spelled with a hyphen or not. It just flared up on Wikipedia, again. The rules are clear, in my opinion. Still, the situation is a misery. First things first: If “open source” is used as an adjective (attribute) in front of a…