Open source, building products, software startups, and industry strategy by Prof. Dr. Dirk Riehle
An open source distribution is a set of open source components configured and put together to work well as one piece of software. A commercial open source distribution is a product that you pay for, and a non-commercial distribution is freely available software. Commercial distributions may be complex products, but not all complex products are distributions.
Continue reading “Open Source Distributions by Life-Cycle”
Open-Source-Software, im engeren Sinne, ist Computer-Software (Programme), die kostenfrei genutzt, modifiziert, und weitergegeben werden können. Bekannte Beispiele für Open-Source-Software sind das Linux Betriebssystem und der Firefox Web-Browser. Open Source im weiteren Sinne ist ein von Menschen getragenes Phänomen, das uns ungeahnte Möglichkeiten der weltweiten Zusammenarbeit sowie neue Geschäftsmodelle gegeben hat.
Continue reading “Open Source Explained (in German, without Jargon, in 1500 Words)”
Abstract: This article presents a succinct and minimal handbook of best practices of how to create and grow community open source projects. We start with the assumption that the handbook’s user has a minimal but useful piece of software at hand that they want to open source and build a community around.
Keywords: Open source, open source projects, open source communities, creating open source projects, growing open source projects
Reference: Riehle, D. (2020). Creating and Growing Community Open Source Projects. In Proceedings of the 27th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP 2020). ACM, 14 pages.
The paper can be downloaded as a PDF file.
After listening to yet another report about the negative effects of computer gaming, I decided to publish today the abstract of an article about research I might undertake ten years from now.
Continue reading “Financial Accounting Software as a First-Person Shooter Game (Future Article)”
While a comparatively young industry, the software industry nevertheless has a history, and taking from the playbook of other disciplines, understanding our history is important to understanding our future. So I want to ask:
Continue reading “Historic Periods in (Single-Vendor) Commercial Open Source”What (if any) historic periods are there in single-vendor open source firms?
Inner source is the use of open source practices within companies. Engineers generally love it, but any open-source-style collaboration across business unit boundaries will usually get stopped dead in its tracks by the financial compliance department. That’s because financial compliance is likely to worry that to the tax authorities such inner source collaboration will look like attempts at profit shifting.
Below, please find a 20min. presentation on inner source and transfer pricing that I prepared for a workshop at the German Ministry of Finance. It is aimed at non-technical people.
You can also skim the slides, though the video offers significantly more information. Feel free to shoot any questions you might have my way.
I’m happy to report that the 14th article in the Open Source Expanded column of IEEE Computer has been published.
| Title | Open Source Community Governance the Apache Way |
| Keywords | Open Source Software, Distributed Computing, Documentation |
| Authors | Isabel Drost-Fromm, Apache Software Foundation Rob Tompkins, Apache Software Foundation |
| Publication | Computer vol. 54, no. 4 (April 2021), pp. 70-75 |
Abstract: An open source project without the people is a dead project—or at least one that is fairly deep asleep. While all successful open source projects understand that they need to build a community around their project, the exact options for doing so differ.
As always, the article is freely available (local copy).
Also, check out the full list of articles.
An open source company is a company whose business model is built on a customer acquisition process in which customers first use a free-to-use open source version of the product before being upsold to a commercial offering by the company.
Continue reading “What is an Open Source Company?”
In 2006, we set-up SAP forge to make finding and collaborating on inner source projects easy. The advice of how to design a forge or portal for this purpose hasn’t really changed over the years. The most important advice is:
Make the forge available at one place (and one place only) with a memorable URL like forge.acme.corp
The second most important advice is on the design of the home page of the forge. There are a couple of independent mechanisms that should be present. In order of descending importance (read: prominence of screen real estate given):
Continue reading “How to Make Finding Inner Source Projects Easy”This 5min. video discusses basics of turning your research into a startup. It focuses on public funding. The video was created for the March 2021 DAAD PRIME workshop, but is not restricted to a postdoc audience. Indeed, it works for anyone with a good idea and ideally a team who is willing to move to Germany to benefit from its rich ecosystem for public funding of startups.