Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 1. Software Industry

Open source vendor lock-in

Yesterday, SAP’s CTO Vishal Sikka called for a more open approach to the Java standardization process (JCP), asking SUN to stop ruling it with a heavy hand. Not surprisingly, he got some pushback using the argument that SAP isn’t one to talk about being more open, given its slow involvement with open source. I don’t…

2009-11-11
OpenOffice.org at Oracle after the Sun acquisition

Yesterday, I participated in the local JUG’s discussion of the Sun acquisition by Oracle. Somewhat to my surprise, the general opinion was dismissive of OpenOffice’s future at Oracle. I haven’t spent much prior thought on this, but to me, OpenOffice seems to fit much better with Oracle than with Sun, at least on a strategic…

2009-10-09
Why open source is hard for closed source vendors (alpha release)

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…

2009-09-11
The commenting practice of open source (completed, for now) [Onward! 2009]

For now, the final paper in this sequence of short publications of how open source software projects document their code. The paper is basically a more comprehensive summary of prior articles, with a bit more of data. Here the abstract and reference: Abstract: The development processes of open source software are different from traditional closed…

2009-08-27
Pre-test survey on what drives enterprise micro-blogging adoption

My collaborators on the Enterprise Micro-blogging Adoption study at the Humboldt University of Berlin are at it again. In this second step, we are working to refine our understanding of what drives micro-blogging adoption in the enterprise. For this, we are looking for participants in a short pre-test survey. Here the survey summary: You are…

2009-08-19
Talk slides: The commercial open source business model

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…

2009-08-07