Commercializing Open Source Software: Do Property Rights Still Matter?

For several years now, open source software products have been gaining prominence and market share. Yet the products themselves are not as provocative as the way in which they are developed and distributed. Two related features of the open source model are distinctive: the use of collaborative development structures that extend beyond the boundaries of a single firm, and the lack of reliance on intellectual property ( IP ) rights as a means of appropriating the value of the underlying technologies. Firm-level control of intellectual property is replaced by a complex set of relations, both informal and sometimes contractual, among strategic partners not joined by firm boundaries. I argue here that those relations reflect not coalescence towards industry norms driven solely by superior output, but rather a series of strategic moves and countermoves that have had the effect of opening some markets while closing others, substantially reducing profit margins, and fostering consolidation of a traditionally fragmented industry. I have written elsewhere about the role of intellectual property rights in proprietary models of software development, where intellectual property rights are used (albeit somewhat ineffectively) by firms to exploit the value of their internal research and development ( R&D ) investments. In that work, I generally reject the idea that the sheer number of patents is creating a thicket that deters innovation, largely because of the evidence of a robust startup market and of investors\u27 lack of concern about patents held by competitors. More generally, I argue that many of the criticisms of software patents fail to account for the potential benefits those patents provide to smaller firms and focus much too heavily on the transaction costs associated with the massive patent portfolios that the larger industry participants have acquired (the so-called arms race build up). Open source development models work differently. Because open source development proceeds on the premise that no individual or firm will have proprietary control of the software, the firms participating in those development projects might have little need for patents. The cooperative nature of development obviates any need for the actual and implicit cross licensing that provides access to technology throughout the proprietary software sector. The problem, however, is that the open source community does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world in which participants in the industry are building up large portfolios of patents, portfolios that pose a serious threat to open source development. Therefore, any thorough analysis of the role of patents in the industry must take account of the effects of the current property rights system on all participants. This Article takes up that issue

Facilitating B2B E-business by IT-supported business process negotiation services

Due to the complexity of business transactions and growing business automation demands from the B2B e-business community to swiftly respond to the ever-changing environment, workflow technology has been receiving more attention recently. The increasing popularity and adoption of workflow management system (WfMS) within organisations make workflow-based B2B e-business practically viable since more and more business transactions are implemented as automated processes and executed by WfMSs. Having been viewed as services by many researchers and practitioners, process-driven B2B e-business are conducted through service discovery and runtime execution. However, if there is no existing service provided by a desired business partner that matches the requirement then such a process will have to be negotiated and then created. Unfortunately, direct people-to-people negotiation followed by manual transformation of the negotiation outcome into processdriven services can be very resource consuming. Therefore, it is identified that there is a research gap in computer-aided negotiation approach for process-driven B2B e-business. This paper introduces essentials of workflow technology and negotiation. It then describes ways of capturing elements of negotiation from an operational view point. Finally, it explains how to integrate the IT-supported negotiation services into an overall cross-organisational workflow collaboration (COWCO) supporting framework

Enterprise software : analysis of product strategies

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68).Since the invention of IBM 360, the first computing system about five decades ago, the processing and software capabilities have grown by leaps and have become major components of businesses. The software applications and capabilities for major business have become necessity rather than a "differentiating" factor to conduct their businesses. This thesis aims to analyze the product strategies in the enterprise software, specifically from the competitive point of view and their position in the market, new technology architectures and core competencies of an organization.by Krishna S. Boppana.S.M

Digital cockpits and decision support systems : design of technics and tools to extract and process data from heterogeneous databases

Tableau d'honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2006-200

Data limitations can be overcome to move toward effective business system integration

Investigation indicates that data quality and consistency issues will continue to be overwhelming impediments to the complete integration of all information systems in the current Information Technology (IT) environment. However, there is evidence that businesses can still move toward an effective Digital Business Design (DBD) by focusing on a relatively small number of critical success factors. The possible approaches to integration available in the current IT environment were reviewed to gain insight into candidate design bases available. The DBD implementations of sample firms were examined to explore what aspects of integration they considered in their implementations and whether or not they achieved significant levels of integration from a customer perspective. Based on these examinations, several key points that should be kept in focus when contemplating a DBD integration project were identified

Implementation E-commerce application using Lotus Domino

E-commerce technologies enable enterprises to exchange information instantaneously, eliminate paperwork, and advertise their products and services to a global market. The Domino Server family, an integrated messaging and Web application software platform, is easy to build and manage integrated, collaborative solutions. In this project, I build a basic functional Domino-powered e-commerce application named E-Bookstore. The EBookstore web site contains three main components of an e-commerce web site (catalog of items, shopping cart, and checkout function), and provides a powerful search function to the customer. The unique session ID for each E-Bookstore web user is generated and stored, and is attached to every item a user adds to his shopping cart. This application also provides the back end maintenance functions such as add book category or book entry. Comparing to popular commercial software, the functions provided in E-Bookstore cover most of useful tools. The E-Bookstore, built on the Domino Application Server R5 platform, has a performance that scales appropriately as the amount of data set increasing and the whole system environment is security

Information sharing architecture using internet\u27s XML and SOAP

Businesses should be able to share information among each other irrespective of the platform, operating systems and programming languages. Using Internet as the Information Systems Architecture has many values. Internet is affordable, easily available and is not tied to any specific vendor. Internet is simple and runs under any kind of operating system. Information sharing across the Internet is challenging but rewarding. Data Transfer using the Internet requires structure and discipline. To integrate diverse group of systems we need specialized protocols that can connect different platforms that use different languages together. Extensible Markup Language enables the creation of application dependent vocabulary which can be used to store data and information in a structured fashion. Simple Object Access Protocol can be used to carry information electronically from one end to the other. Simple Object Access Protocol uses the World Wide Web\u27s extensible Markup Language in encoding the message contents and its Hypertext Transport Protocol in carrying the message packet. This thesis work is focused upon sharing of information among enterprises using extensible Markup Language, Simple Object Access Protocol and decentralized database systems. An online Shopping cart application has been implemented using the notion of XML and SOAP. SOAP is used as a protocol to share information between AsiStore and its business partners Store 1 and Store2. XML have been used as a part of the application to drive the shopping cart, which users can view on the web browser

Web services strategy

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2003.June 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-123).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Everything is connected to everything. El Aleph (1945), by Jorge Luis Borges[1] This thesis addresses the need to simplify and streamline web service network infrastructure and to identify business models that best leverage Web services technology and industry dynamics to generate positive business results. Web services have evolved from the simple page-display protocol of their origin and now reach beyond the links that simply updated web data dynamically from corporate databases, to where systems can automatically transact. These Web services represent a series of network business technology standards and capabilities that irrevocably change the way in which businesses will do business. In fact, every business today is a networked business and has opportunities to grow using Web services. This study focuses on the implementation challenges in the financial services market, specifically the On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) sector where legacy mainframes interface with multiple tiers of distribution through proprietary EDI links. The OLTP industry operates under stringent regulatory requirements for availability and audit-ability of not only who performed what transaction, but who had access to the information about the information. In this environment organizational demands on network infrastructure including hardware, software and personnel are changing radically, while concurrently Information Technology (IT) budgets are under pressure. The strategic choices for deploying web services in this environment may contain lessons for other industries where cost effective large scale processing, high availability, security, manageability and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) are paramount concerns. In this paper we use a systems dynamics model to simulate the impact of market changes on the adoption of innovative technologies and their commoditization on the industry value chain, with the aim of identifying business models and network topologies which best support the growth of an Open Systems network business. From the results of the simulation we will derive strategic recommendations for networked business models and web services integration strategies to meet Line Of Business (LOB) objectives.by Stephen B. Miles.S.M.M.O.T

Web Engineering for Workflow-based Applications: Models, Systems and Methodologies

This dissertation presents novel solutions for the construction of Workflow-based Web applications: The Web Engineering DSL Framework, a stakeholder-oriented Web Engineering methodology based on Domain-Specific Languages; the Workflow DSL for the efficient engineering of Web-based Workflows with strong stakeholder involvement; the Dialog DSL for the usability-oriented development of advanced Web-based dialogs; the Web Engineering Reuse Sphere enabling holistic, stakeholder-oriented reuse