Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 1. Software Industry

The Missed Opportunity in Defining Open Source #OpenCoreSummit

I’m at my Ph.D. student retreat, following the Open Core Summit, a commercial conference on the use of open source strategies by product vendors, on Twitter. From afar, it appears that the attack on the definition of open source has made it to the conference. This is regrettable, but possible because of a root problem…

2019-09-20
Industry best practices for corporate open sourcing [HICSS 2020]

Abstract: Companies usually don’t share the source code for the software they develop. While this approach is justified in software that constitutes differentiating intellectual property, proprietary development can lead to redundant development and other opportunity costs. In response, companies are increasingly open sourcing some if not all of their non-differentiating software. Given the limited academic…

2019-09-17
Managing commercial conflicts of interest in open source foundations [ICSOB 2019]

Abstract: When companies opt to open source their software, they may choose to offer the project to an open source foundation. Donating the software to an open source foundation offers a number of advantages, such as access to the foundation’s existing tools and project management. However, in donating the software, the company relinquishes control of…

2019-09-09
Industry requirements for FLOSS governance tools to facilitate the use of open-source software in commercial products [JSS Journal]

Abstract: Virtually all software products incorporate free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) components. However, ungoverned use of FLOSS components can result in legal and nancial risks, and risks to a rm’s intellectual property. To avoid these risks, companies must govern their FLOSS use through open source governance processes and by following industry best practices. A…

2019-08-22
Why Self-Enlightened Contribution to Open Source Projects is Difficult

Self-enlightened contributions to open source projects are (code) contributions that come about because a company chooses to contribute. The opposite is forced open sourcing, which typically happens when a reciprocal license like the GPLv2 forces a company to lay open some source code. Self-enlightened contribution is hard! Here are three examples that might make a…

2019-08-08
Open source license compliance⸺Why and how? (Hendrik Schoettle, IEEE Computer)

I’m happy to report that the third article in the new open source column of IEEE Computer has been published. Title Open Source License Compliance⸺Why and How? Keywords Open-source software, licenses, software packages Authors Hendrik Schoettle, Osborne Clarke, Munich, Germany Publication Computer vol. 52, no. 8 (August 2019), pp. 63-67 Abstract: Compliance with open source…

2019-08-08