Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 1. Software Industry

  • Open source distributions by life-cycle

    Open source distributions by life-cycle

    An open source distribution is a set of open source components configured and put together to work well as one piece of software. A commercial open source distribution is a product that you pay for, and a non-commercial distribution is freely available software. Commercial distributions may be complex products, but not all complex products are…

  • Open source explained (in German, without jargon, in 1500 Words)

    Open source explained (in German, without jargon, in 1500 Words)

    Open-Source-Software, im engeren Sinne, ist Computer-Software (Programme), die kostenfrei genutzt, modifiziert, und weitergegeben werden können. Bekannte Beispiele für Open-Source-Software sind das Linux Betriebssystem und der Firefox Web-Browser. Open Source im weiteren Sinne ist ein von Menschen getragenes Phänomen, das uns ungeahnte Möglichkeiten der weltweiten Zusammenarbeit sowie neue Geschäftsmodelle gegeben hat. 1. Open-Source-Lizenzen Am Anfang standen…

  • Financial accounting software as a first-person shooter game (future article)

    Financial accounting software as a first-person shooter game (future article)

    After listening to yet another report about the negative effects of computer gaming, I decided to publish today the abstract of an article about research I might undertake ten years from now. Abstract: Today’s employees learned key computing skills while playing computer games as children. These early experiences inform their expectations of user experience with…

  • Historic periods in (single-vendor) commercial open source

    Historic periods in (single-vendor) commercial open source

    While a comparatively young industry, the software industry nevertheless has a history, and taking from the playbook of other disciplines, understanding our history is important to understanding our future. So I want to ask: What (if any) historic periods are there in single-vendor open source firms? Please note that I’m asking about single-vendor open source…

  • Open source community governance the Apache Way (Drost-Fromm & Tompkins, IEEE Computer)

    Open source community governance the Apache Way (Drost-Fromm & Tompkins, IEEE Computer)

    I’m happy to report that the 14th article in the open source column of IEEE Computer has been published. Title Open Source Community Governance the Apache Way Keywords Open Source Software, Distributed Computing, Documentation Authors Isabel Drost-Fromm, Apache Software Foundation; Rob Tompkins, Apache Software Foundation Publication Computer vol. 54, no. 4 (April 2021), pp. 70-75…

  • What is an open source company?

    What is an open source company?

    An open source company is a company whose business model is built on a customer acquisition process in which customers first use a free-to-use open source version of the product before being upsold to a commercial offering by the company. When we talk about commercial open source firms, the word commercial is redundant, because all…