Dirk Riehle's blog on everything computer science and more
In this short video, I explain the significance of the software industry for a country’s economy and how to strengthen it using open source. It is directed at public policy makers and the general public.
Next to the Youtube embed, there is also an ad-free version courtesy of FAU, my main employer, as well as a simple download available. Fast forward to the slides as well.
In diesem kurzen Video erkläre ich die Bedeutung der Softwareindustrie für die Wirtschaft eines Landes und wie Open-Source-Software diese stärken kann. Es richtet sich an Public-Policy-Maker und alle interessierten Personen.
Die englische Version dieses Videos folgt; die Folien wurden vom FAU Sprachdienst aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche übersetzt (und von mir nachkorrigiert).
Neben obigem Youtube embed gibt es eine werbefreie Version auf der FAU Website sowie eine runterladbare Datei.
The slides are also available (English only).
We will be hosting an industry talk on Continuous Integration / Delivery / Deployment. The talk is free and open to the public.
In this video, I explain the single-vendor open source business model (also: multi-licensing, open core) and in particular its intellectual property strategies. This talk is partly a reaction to the recent licensing changes by commercial open source firms and the resulting confusion. An upcoming article will go into more detail next year.
Next to the Youtube embed, there is also an ad-free version courtesy of FAU, my main employer, as well as a simple download available. Fast forward to the slides as well.
IAV GmbH (Berlin) will be hosting this winter semester’s AMOS demo day. Four student teams will present the results of their work, ranging from a logistics dashboard, through an ECU dashboard, a Git module configuration tool, to a next generation HMI app for Android Automotive OS.
| Date | 2020-02-06 |
| Time | 10:15am (start) to 11:45 (end) |
| Location | IAV DigiLab, Hallerstr. 6, (1tes OG), 10587 Berlin |
If you would like to attend, please drop me a note.
Marc Andreesen, venture capitalist at a16z, famously stated in 2011:
Wall Street Journal, 2011-08-11
Andreesen’s article describes the immediate impact of software, both as its own product category and as a component of increasing importance in existing (non-software) products.
I want to discuss what I consider the first derivative of Andreesen’s insight, the increase in innovation speed provided by software, and its impact on existing products.
Continue reading “The First Derivative of Software is Eating the World”
Abstract: Corporate use of open source in software products is on the rise. While this brings a number of technological and business benefits to companies, it also comes with potential legal and financial risks caused by license non-compliance and ungoverned use of open source components. Companies address these threats with free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) governance – internal guidelines and processes for using open source components in products. An essential aspect of FLOSS governance is component reuse and component repository, which enable efficient governance for the previously used components by the company’s developers. In our study, we aimed to identify the current industry best practices for FLOSS governance and component reuse. We conducted 15 expert interviews in companies with high governance maturity, analyzed these interviews and derived 19 best practices cast in the pattern format of context-problem-solution. The format was inspired by design patterns and enables higher applicability of our research results by practitioners. The 19 best practices form a handbook on FLOSS governance and component reuse that also includes workflows connecting the individual practices into process templates.
Keywords: Open Source Software, FLOSS, FOSS, Open Source Governance, Best Practice, Commercial Use of Open Source, Component Repository, Component Reuse, Industry Best Practice, Introduction of FLOSS in Companies, Pattern, Pattern Language
Reference: Harutyunyan, N., & Riehle D. (2019). Industry Best Practices for FLOSS Governance and Component Reuse. In Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (EuroPLoP 2019). ACM, article no. 21.
The paper is available a PDF file.
Sweble is a research project that I started in 2009 with the goal of helping Wikipedia. It is now a startup that is bringing GitHub-style collaboration to office documents. To that end, we acquired 720K Euro of seed funding from Germany’s EXIST Forschungstransfer (in German) startup fund. This is free money, as it is a gift and no equity is lost. However, with that, the trouble started.
Continue reading “Anecdotal Experience with Public Startup Funding in Germany”
I’m happy to report that the fifth article in the new Open Source Expanded column of IEEE Computer has been published.
| Title | How to select open source components |
| Keywords | Open Source Software, Licenses, Documentation, Computer Bugs, Software Project Management |
| Authors | Diomidis Spinellis, Athens University of Economy and Business |
| Publication | Computer vol. 52, no. 12 (December 2019), pp. 103-106 |
Abstract: With millions of open source projects available on forges such as GitHub, it may be difficult to select those that best match your requirements. Examining each project’s product and development process can help you confidently select the open source projects required for your work.
As always, the article is freely available (local copy).
Also, check out the full list of articles.
I was surprised to hear the other day that “the cloud is killing open source”. I thought we settled that one ten years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth:
Open source and cloud computing work together well.
Continue reading “Open Source is an On-ramp to the Cloud”