Latest in Industry and Research Publications
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Design Pattern Density and Design Maturity
JUnit is a widely-adopted unit testing framework for Java, developed by Kent Beck and Erich Gamma. In their discussion of JUnit 3.8’s design, the authors state: Notice how TestCase, the central abstraction in the framework, is involved in four patterns. Pictures of mature object designs show this same ‘pattern density’. The star of the design…
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FOSSBazaar: Open Source Under the CIO’s Radar Screen: Good or Bad?
Commercial open source has a peculiar sales process. Frequently, when a firm decides to buy (license) a specific type of software like a content management system or a wiki engine, they’ll find that their company already employs multiple solutions, downloaded for free from the Internet. By some measures, this is dangerous to IT governance, as…
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Object-Oriented Software Design Documentation
Software researchers need case studies to validate new tools and methods of object-oriented software design. A good thing to do is to standardize on a set of open source frameworks and libraries that are known and available to everyone. Basically, a benchmark set for new tools and methods in object-oriented software design. JUnit and JHotDraw…
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SDN: Is Open Source Competing Unfairly?
Commercial open source firms go to market trying to create an “unfair” competitive advantage that lets them win customers more easily than their competitors. So do most other companies. Commercial open source firms do this by bypassing the traditional purchasing process by getting their software into customer companies for free, before the customers even know…
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SE Radio Interview on Open Source Business Models
Markus Völter of the Software Engineering Radio podcast show interviewed me about open source business models. Why not listen to the Open Source Business Model podcast while running rather than reading it as papers on my website?
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Commercial, Professional, and Community Open Source: Resolving the Naming Confusion
As a researcher, imprecise naming bothers me. The general confusion around the terms commercial open source, professional open source, and community open source warrants closer analysis. First my proposal, then some litmus tests, followed by a bit of history. Commercial open source is software provided as open source where a single legal entity owns the…