Software Research and the Industry - Page 2 of 59 - Dirk Riehle's blog on everything computer science and more

2020-03-122020-05-10

The Ecosystem of openKONSEQUENZ, a User-Led Open Source Foundation (OSS 2020 Paper)

Companies without expertise in software development can opt to form consortia to develop open source software to meet their needs, as an alternative to the build-or-buy decision. Such user-led foundations are little understood, due to a limited number of published examples. In particular, almost nothing is known about the ecosystems surrounding user-led foundations. Our work seeks to address this gap, through an exploratory qualitative survey of openKONSEQUENZ, from the German energy sector. We find that the technological goals are quite homogeneous, independent of a participant’s role in the ecosystem, but that economic conflicts exist between foundation members and supplier companies due to the consortium’s efforts to transform the software market structure to limit dependency on specific vendors.

2020-03-102020-05-09

An Analysis of Copyleft Compliance Behavior

It is the year 2020 and my Twitterverse and other professional time sinks are still full of … comments about Copyleft. So for the first time ever, I decided to venture into that pit. I see four observable behaviors when it comes to complying with copyleft.

Kickin’ and screamin’
No use
Dump and run
Enlightened self-interest

2020-03-052020-05-09

Pattern Discovery and Validation Using Scientific Research Methods (Technical Report)

Abstract: Pattern discovery, the process of discovering previously unrecognized patterns, is usually performed as an ad-hoc process with little resulting certainty in the quality of the proposed patterns. Pattern validation, the process of validating the accuracy of proposed patterns, has rarely gone beyond the simple heuristic of “the rule of three”. This article shows how to use established scientific research methods for the purpose of pattern discovery and validation. The result is an approach to pattern discovery and validation that can provide the same certainty that traditional scientific research methods can provide for the theories they are used to validate. This article describes our approach and explores its usefulness for pattern discovery and evaluation in a series of studies.

Keywords: Patterns, pattern discovery, pattern validation, theory codification, theory building and evaluation, research design

Reference: Riehle, D., Harutyunyan, N., & Barcomb, A. (2020). Pattern Discovery and Validation Using Scientific Research Methods. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Dept. of Computer Science, Technical Reports, CS-2020-01, February 2020.

The article is available as a PDF file and on FAU’s OPUS server.

2020-02-272020-05-09

Sorting out the Ethical Licensing Mess

Software developers who give the world, for free, usage rights to the code they write often use open source licenses to make this gift legally explicit. These free usage rights (and then some) are encoded in all valid open source licenses, next to the obligations one has to fulfill to receive the rights grant. Recently, the desire of some developers has surged to tie their gift to causes they care about. Some want to protect Chinese workers from abusive working hours, some want to stop companies from working with US immigrations, and some want to ensure that users vaccinate their children and themselves according to current medical best practice.

2020-02-212020-05-09

Traditional Theory Building and Validation in (Computer) Science

Many computer science degree programs do a lousy job at teaching science. A high school student, entering university, often has a good idea what science is about, based on their physics and chemistry classes. At least, it involves controlled experiments. At university, this is rarely picked up, and computer science students are given the idea that programming something novel constitutes science. With that idea, they are often bewildered when I teach them rigorous research methods, in particular if those originated in the social sciences (like qualitative interviews or hypothesis-testing surveys).

2020-02-202020-05-09

Managing the Open Source Dependency (Tomas Gustavsson, IEEE Computer Column)

I’m happy to report that the sixth article in the Open Source Expanded column of IEEE Computer has been published.

Title	Managing the open source dependency
Keywords	Computer Applications, Open Source Software
Authors	Tomas Gustavsson, PrimeKey
Publication	Computer vol. 53, no. 2 (February 2020), pp. 83-87

Abstract: Organizations use open source software in a majority of computer application programs. Here we describe some of the technical challenges and offer recommendations about how to manage open source software dependencies and avoid the most common pitfalls that might be encountered through decision-making, automated scanning, upgrading, and strategic contributions.

As always, the article is freely available (local copy).

Also, check out the full list of articles.

2020-02-192020-05-09

The Three Hats of a Professor in Germany

There are lots of infographics on the web of how a professor spends their time, and they mostly miss the point. At the core, and after ten years of living it, I feel confident to say that it really is three roles that a professor in Germany has to play to be successful. I also have to say that it is pretty hard to be good at all three of them. These roles are:

2020-02-182020-05-09

Photo Impressions from the Winter 2019/20 AMOS Projects

Continue reading “Photo Impressions from the Winter 2019/20 AMOS Projects”

2020-02-172020-05-09

Summary of the Winter 2019/20 AMOS Projects

This winter semester, students of TU Berlin completed four AMOS projects. Each section below describes the final result of one of the projects:

Logistics Dashboard (an app to provide easy communications between employees),
App4UCU (an app which interacts with the core functions of UCU and shows internal signals),
Configaroo (an app which enables the management of large distributed code bases), and
Ne:xt HMI (an integration of a trip computer app, a podcast app and messaging app to create an integrated car operating system)

2020-02-162020-05-09

The Real Problem with Pay-walled Publications

Pay-walled publications are just that: Publications that nobody reads unless someone pays the publisher’s fee. I have no problem with that, because I don’t read pay-walled work and don’t consider it published research and prior art that I should care about.

The real problem starts with researchers and editors who expect me to find, read, and consider pay-walled work as prior art. That’s an unacceptable proposition to me and an unfair one to the world.