Abstract: A key part of taxation, controlling, and management of international collaborative programming workflows is determining the costs of a supplied software artifact. The OECD suggests the use of the Cost Plus method for calculating these costs. However, in the past, this method has been implemented using only coarse-grain data from the costs of whole organizational units. Due to the move to inner source software development, we need a much more fine-grain solution for computing the detailed time spent on programming specific components. This is necessary, because a more accurate work time distribution is required to fulfill the fiscal and administrative challenges posed by collaborating across organizational boundaries. In this article, we present a novel method to determine the time spent on an individual code contribution (commit) to a software component for use within cost calculation, especially for taxation purposes. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by application to a real-world data set gathered at a large multi-national corporation. We evaluate our work through feedback received from this corporation and from the German Ministry of Finance.
Continue reading “Calculating the Costs of Inner Source Collaboration by Computing the Time Worked [HICSS 2022]”A Validation of QDAcity‑RE for Domain Modeling Using Qualitative Data Analysis [RE Journal]
Abstract: Using qualitative data analysis (QDA) to perform domain analysis and modeling has shown great promise. Yet, the evaluation of such approaches has been limited to single-case case studies. While these exploratory cases are valuable for an initial assessment, the evaluation of the efficacy of QDA to solve the suggested problems is restricted by the common single-case case study research design. Using our own method, called QDAcity-RE, as the example, we present an in-depth empirical evaluation of employing qualitative data analysis for domain modeling using a controlled experiment design. Our controlled experiment shows that the QDA-based method leads to a deeper and richer set of domain concepts discovered from the data, while also being more time efficient than the control group using a comparable non-QDA-based method with the same level of traceability.
Continue reading “A Validation of QDAcity‑RE for Domain Modeling Using Qualitative Data Analysis [RE Journal]”Pattern Discovery and Validation Using Scientific Research Methods [TPLoP Journal]
Abstract: Pattern discovery, the process of discovering previously unrecognized patterns, is often 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, remains dominated by 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. We present a specific approach, called the handbook method, that uses the qualitative survey, action research, and case study research for pattern discovery and evaluation, and we discuss the underlying principle of using scientific methods in general. We evaluate the handbook method using three exploratory studies and demonstrate its usefulness.
Continue reading “Pattern Discovery and Validation Using Scientific Research Methods [TPLoP Journal]”Creating and Growing Healthy Community Open Source Projects [PLoP 2020]
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.
Industry Best Practices for Component Approval in Open Source Governance [EuroPLoP 2020]
Abstract: Increasingly companies realize the value of using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) in their products, but need to manage the associated risks. Leading companies introduce open source governance as a solution. A key aspect of corporate FLOSS governance deals with choosing and evaluating open source components for use in products. Following an industry-based research approach, we present 13 best practices in the pattern format of context-problem-solutions paired with consequences. In this paper, we cover an excerpt of the Component Approval section of our FLOSS governance handbook. This article builds upon our previous EuroPLoP publication covering Component Reuse in FLOSS governance processes, as well as other publications on the topic. Analyzing qualitative data gathered from 15 expert interviews, we derive and interconnect the common industry recommendations for reviewing, tracking, and approving open source components in a company environment. We conclude by presenting workflow templates that put various best practices in relation to each other.
Keywords: Commercial use of open source, component approval, FLOSS, FOSS, industry best practice, open source software, open source governance, pattern language
Reference: Harutyunyan, N. & Riehle, D. (2020). Industry Best Practices for Component Approval in FLOSS Governance. In Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (EuroPLoP ’20). ACM, article 33.
The paper can be downloaded as a PDF file.
The Innovations of Open Source Article Republished in IEEE Computing Edge’s April 2020 Issue
IEEE’s Computing Edge magazine is a practitioner-oriented publication that republishes particularly popular content from other IEEE publications. In the April 2020 issue, they republished last year’s The Innovations of Open Source article that I wrote to open the Computer magazine’s Open Source Expanded bimonthly column.
Best of all, it is free! (Original version, local copy.)
I didn’t know about the republication until someone pointed me to it. Check it out, if you missed the article the first time around.
Single-Vendor Open Source Firms [Computer Magazine]
I’m happy to report that the seventh article in the Open Source Expanded column of IEEE Computer has been published.
| Title | Single-Vendor Open Source Firms |
| Keywords | Open Source, Single-vendor Open Source, Commercial Open Source |
| Authors | Dirk Riehle, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg |
| Publication | Computer vol. 53, no. 4 (April 2020), pp. 68-72 |
Abstract: This article present a particular business model for commercial open source firms, called the single-vendor open source model. This model has long dominated venture capital funding for open source software firms, contributing to the long-term sustainability of open source. As such, it is of high economic relevance. It is also an excellent example to show how open source licensing and related strategies really are just tools in the design of a business model and not philosophies.
As always, the article is freely available (local copy or HTML page).
Also, check out the full list of articles.
Managing Episodic Volunteers in Free/Libre, and Open Source Software Communities [TSE Journal]
Abstract: We draw on the concept of episodic volunteering (EV) from the general volunteering literature to identify practices for managing EV in free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) communities. Infrequent but ongoing participation is widespread, but the practices that community managers are using to manage EV, and their concerns about EV, have not been previously documented. We conducted a policy Delphi study involving 24 FLOSS community managers from 22 different communities. Our panel identified 16 concerns related to managing EV in FLOSS, which we ranked by prevalence. We also describe 65 practices for managing EV in FLOSS. Almost three-quarters of these practices are used by at least three community managers. We report these practices using a systematic presentation that includes context, relationships between practices, and concerns that they address. These findings provide a coherent framework that can help FLOSS community managers to better manage episodic contributors.
Keywords: Best practices, community management, episodic volunteering, free software, open source software
Reference: Barcomb, A., Stol, KJ, Fitzgerald, B., & Riehle, D. (2022). Managing Episodic Volunteers in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Communities. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering vol. 48, no. 1 (January 2022), pp. 260-277.
The paper can be downloaded as a PDF file.
Challenges of Tracking and Documenting Open Source Dependencies in Products [OSS 2020]
Software vendors need to manage the dependencies of the open source components used in their products. Without this management, license compliance would be impossible, export restrictions could not be maintained, and security vulnerabilities would remain unknown to the vendor. The management of these dependencies has grown in an ad-hoc fashion in most companies. As such, vendors find it hard to learn from each other and improve practices. To address this problem, we performed exploratory single-case study research at one large established software vendor. We gathered and analyzed the key challenges of tracking and documenting open source dependencies in products. We wanted to understand whether these ad-hoc solutions could be based on a single unified conceptual model for managing dependencies. Our study suggests that underlying the various point solutions that we found at this vendor lies a conceptual model that we tentatively call the product (architecture) model. In future cross-vendor work, we will investigate whether this conceptual model can be expanded to become a unifying model for all open source dependency management.
Continue reading “Challenges of Tracking and Documenting Open Source Dependencies in Products [OSS 2020]”The Ecosystem of openKONSEQUENZ, a User-Led Open Source Foundation [OSS 2020]
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.
Continue reading “The Ecosystem of openKONSEQUENZ, a User-Led Open Source Foundation [OSS 2020]”