Dirk Riehle's Industry and Research Publications

Category: 1. Software Industry

The economic case for open source foundations [Computer Magazine]

Abstract: An open source foundation is a group of people and companies that has come together to jointly develop community open source software. Examples include the Apache Software Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, and the Gnome Foundation. There are many reasons why software development firms join and support a foundation. One common economic motivation is to…

2010-01-06
2010 open source research workshops galore!

It is no big news that open source research has been growing strongly in recent years. However, the recent string of conference and workshop announcements is just amazing. Here is a short run-down of what reached me the last two weeks: 10.-12.02.2010: Workshop on the Future of Research on Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) 08.05.2010: 2010…

2009-11-24
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