Industry Best Practices for Corporate Open Sourcing

Companies usually don’t share the source code for the software they develop. While this approach is justified in software that constitutes differentiating intellectual property, proprietary development can lead to redundant development and other opportunity costs. In response, companies are increasingly open sourcing some if not all of their non-differentiating software. Given the limited academic research on this emerging topic, we bridge the gap between industry and academia by taking a practice-based approach. We investigate why and how companies engage in corporate open sourcing. We take an exploratory case study approach. Our cases are four companies with multibillion-dollar revenues each: A major e-commerce company based in Germany; a leading social networking service company based in the USA; a cloud computing software company based in the USA; and a manufacturing and media software company based in the USA. We present the resulting theory in an actionable format of state-of-the-art best practice patterns

Getting Started with Corporate Open Source Governance: A Case Study Evaluation of Industry Best Practices

Ope​n source software usage in companies is on the rise, often resulting in lower development costs, higher quality, and quick availability of code. However, using open source software in products comes with legal, business, and technical risks. Experienced companies prevent and address these risks through corporate open source governance. In our previous work, we studied how top-tier companies got started with corporate open source governance. We proposed a set of industry best practices on the topic, using the practical format of interconnected context-problem-solution patterns. In this study, we put the proposed state-of-the-art practices to the test by evaluating their real-life application in a case study at a Germany-based multibillion-dollar corporation with products in four distinct industries and more than 17000 employees worldwide. In the course of two and a half years, we conducted 35 semi-structured employee interviews and workshops in five divisions of the company to assess the initial situation of open source governance, the process of getting started with governance following our recommendations, and the outcomes. In this paper, we report the results of this longitudinal case study by presenting the artifacts created while getting started with open source governance, as well as the transferability evaluation of the proposed best practices, both individually and collectively

The Commercial Open Source Business Model

Commercial open source software projects are open source software projects that are owned by a single firm that derives a di- rect and significant revenue stream from the software. Commercial open source at first glance represents an economic para- dox: How can a firm earn money if it is making its product available for free as open source? This paper presents the core properties of commercial open source business models and discusses how they work. Using a commercial open source ap- proach, firms can get to market faster with a superior product at lower cost than possible for traditional competitors. The pa- per shows how these benefits accrue from an engaged and self-supporting user community. Lacking any prior comprehensive reference, this paper is based on an analysis of public statements by practitioners of commercial open source. It forges the various anecdotes into a coherent description of revenue generation strategies and relevant business functions

Open Source Software Governance: A Case Study Evaluation of Supply Chain Management Best Practices

Corporate open source governance aims to manage the increasing use of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) in companies. To avoid the risks of the ungoverned use, companies need to establish processes addressing license compliance, component approval, and supply chain management (SCM). We proposed a set of industry-inspired best practices for supply chain management organized into a handbook. To evaluate the handbook, we ran a one-year case study at a large enterprise software company, where we performed semi-structured interviews, workshops, and direct observations. We assessed the initial situation of open source governance, the implementation of the proposed SCM best practices, and the resulting impact. We report the results of this study by demonstrating and discussing the artifacts created while the case study company implemented the SCM-focused governance process. The evaluation case study enabled the real-life application and the improvement of the proposed best practices

Understanding Sustainable Growth in Online Communities of Open-Source Software : Case: Open Core Business

Online communities are crucial for the survival and success of companies using the open core model, as they rely on attracting developers to use their open-source software (OSS) and con-verting some of those free users into paying customers. Current research focuses on the success factors of OSS projects, motivations to contribute, and the sustained participation from the community perspective. This thesis provides the company’s point of view and adds the concept of sustainability to the growth of online communities, which makes this topic very relevant. The main objective of thesis is to uncover the characteristics of successful communities that propitiate sustainable growth, and what are the main challenges that stand in the way by finding answers to following questions, in the context of OSS. a) What is the nature and relevance of online communities of OSS? b) What are the main factors that drive sustainable growth in online communities of OSS? c) What are the barriers for sustainable growth in online communities of OSS? To achieve this understanding, the literature review widely covers the phenomenon of open-source software communities from what they are to why are they relevant, and how can the success of these online communities be measured. Finally, the current research on sustain-able growth in online communities and its success factors and barriers are covered. To expand the current knowledge on the sustainable growth of OSS communities, a case study is con-ducted by interviewing six key members that work with the community in an open core company by using the standardized open-ended interview approach and a six-phased thematic analysis. The findings of the study identify four areas to look after when planning for sustainable growth: member’s activities, communication platforms, company involvement, and product & marketing. Among the success factors, support, engagement, and recognition are brought up as some of the key drivers. On the other hand, the data suggests the main challenges are found in the form of communication barriers, inadequate resources, brand misconceptions, social issues, and challenges in product development

User Experience Design in Software Product Lines

User experience design is an important part of software product development, and yet software product line engineering has largely ignored this topic. This paper presents a set of industry best practices for user experience design in software product lines. We conducted multiple-case case study research using two different product lines within the multinational company Siemens AG: in a healthcare software division and in an industrial automation software division. We performed a preliminary exploratory study that will serve as a baseline for future research in the design, implementation, and management of user experience design in the context of software product lines. Practitioners can use our findings and the resulting best practices to improve their user experience design, particularly within healthcare and industrial automation software product lines

Zyklo-Pädisch. Einen Kreis des Wissens bilden

Das WWW wächst und verändert sich in Echtzeit. Es kann keine „runde Sache“ werden, denn dazu müßte seine Dynamik eingefangen und einer Homogenisierung unterworfen werden. Konzeptionell sind Wikis eine Verstärkung der Tendenz zum unmoderierten, spontanen Wachstum. Die Vorbedingungen zur augenblicklichen Teilnahme am kooperativen, global verteilten Schreiben werden auf ein Minimumm reduziert. Bemerkenswert ist daher die Entwicklung der Wikipedia, die als on-line Enzyklopädie den Kreis als Programm proklamiert. Das Ideal der abgerundeten Wissensbilanz eines Zeitalters verbindet sich mit den Herausforderungen der Tagesaktualität. Die Wikipedia hat der Konkurrenz das Wagnis dieses Konventionsbruches voraus.\ud \ud <br /> <br />\ud \ud Orientiert an einer solchen Doppelbewegung kann man sich fragen, ob die impulsive Teilnahme an der Schriftlichkeit des Webs zugleich mit der Herstellung wohlorganisierter Argumentationszusammenhänge auch im kleineren Maßstab gelingen. Die Wikipedia rekurriert auf das traditionsgestützte Modell der komprehensiven Welterfassung. So anspruchsvoll können gewöhnliche Versuche nicht sein. Aber das Grundkonzept ist auch für sie anwendbar: die wechselseitige Herausforderung von Komplexität und Komplettierung. Die Praxis des universitären Einsatzes eines Mediawikis beleuchtet Bildungsvorgänge im Verlauf von Textexpansion

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Der Schwerpunkt der aktuellen Ausgabe: Gut gefördert an die Spitze: Stifter und Mäzene engagieren sich an der Universitä

On infrastructure for facilitation of inner source in small development teams

The phenomenon of adopting open source software development practices in a corporate environment is known by many names, one being inner source. The objective of this study is to investigate how an organization consisting of small development teams can benet from adopting inner source and assess the level of applicability. The research has been conducted as a case study at a software development company. Data collection was carried out through interviews and a series of focus group meetings, and then analyzed by mapping it to an available framework. The analysis shows that the organization possesses potential, and also identied a number of challenges and benets of special importance to the case company. To address these challenges, the case study synthesized the organizational and infrastructural needs of the organization in a requirements specication describing a technical infrastructure, also known as a software forge, with an adapted organizational context and work process