Adopting Free/Libre/Open Source Software Practices, Techniques and Methods for Industrial Use

Today’s software companies face the challenges of highly distributed development projects and constantly changing requirements. This paper proposes the adoption of relevant Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) practices in order to improve software development projects in industry. Many FLOSS projects have proven to be very successful, producing high quality products with steady and frequent releases. This study aims to identify FLOSS practices that can be adapted for the corporate environment. To achieve this goal, a framework to compare FLOSS and industrial development methodologies was created. Three successful FLOSS projects were selected as study targets (the Linux Kernel, the FreeBSD operating system, and the JBoss application server), as well as two projects from Ericsson, a large telecommunications company. Based on an analysis of these projects, FLOSS best practices were tailored to fit industrial development environments. The final results consisted of a set of key adoption opportunities that aimed to improve software quality and overall development productivity by importing best practices from the FLOSS environment. The adoption opportunities were then validated at three large corporations

An analysis of the adoption of OSS by local public administrations: Evidence from the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy

The wide diffusion of open source software (OSS) is driving discussion among scholars on a set of issues, including its adoption by public administrations (PA). Previous works only discussed one or a few factors that drive the decision to adopt OSS and did not addressed the potential benefits in terms of e-government that OSS may bring to PA. Our paper attempts to fill these gaps. The analysis is based on the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and studies the adoption of software (both proprietary and open source) by local PA. The results show there is increased adoption of OSS in several different domains of application, both servers and desktop clients. Among the motivations to adopt OSS, only dependence on software suppliers seems to be important. Its adoption also positively affects the variety and extent of interactivity of local public e-services.open source software; public administration; online public services; empirical research

Research Tool Patents and Free-Libre Biotechnology: A Unified Perspective.

This paper proposes a unified conceptual framework to analyse the multiple role and consequences of patents in the case of biotechnology research tools. We argue that the knowledge/information and independent/complementary nature of research tools define heterogeneous frameworks in which the patent system plays different roles. In particular, using the analogy with the free-libre open source movement in software, we show that patents can promote open innovation by ensuring the freedom of some pieces of knowledge. A strong conclusion of the paper is therefore that, against common belief, an adequate use of the patent system may contribute to preserving freedom of access to upstream research tools within a framework that we call free-libre biotechnology.Intellectual property rights, sequential innovation, open source, life science, collective invention.

Myths and Realities about Online Forums in Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Study

The use of free and open source software (OSS) is gaining momentum due to the ever increasing availability and use of the Internet. Organizations are also now adopting open source software, despite some reservations, in particular regarding the provision and availability of support. Some of the biggest concerns about free and open source software are post release software defects and their rectification, management of dynamic requirements and support to the users. A common belief is that there is no appropriate support available for this class of software. A contradictory argument is that due to the active involvement of Internet users in online forums, there is in fact a large resource available that communicates and manages the provision of support. The research model of this empirical investigation examines the evidence available to assess whether this commonly held belief is based on facts given the current developments in OSS or simply a myth, which has developed around OSS development. We analyzed a dataset consisting of 1880 open source software projects covering a broad range of categories in this investigation. The results show that online forums play a significant role in managing software defects, implementation of new requirements and providing support to the users in open source software and have become a major source of assistance in maintenance of the open source projects

The effect of open-source software technologies in health-tech startups

Abstract. The research investigates how open-source technology improves product efficiency and identifies the challenges encountered by startups when introducing open-source software technologies in the startups. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare startups based in Oulu. Thematic data analysis was performed to analyse the collected data and identified common themes and sub-themes to the research objective