27 research outputs found
Collaboration in Open Government Data Ecosystems: Open Cross-sector Sharing and Co-development of Data and Software
Background: Open innovation highlights the potential benefits of external
collaboration and knowledge-sharing, often exemplified through Open Source
Software (OSS). The public sector has thus far mainly focused on the sharing of
Open Government Data (OGD), often with a supply-driven approach with limited
feedback-loops. We hypothesize that public sector organizations can extend the
open innovation benefits by also creating platforms, where OGD, related OSS,
and open standards are collaboratively developed and shared. Objective: The
objective of this study is to explore how public sector organizations in the
role of platform providers facilitate such collaboration in the form of OGD
ecosystems and how the ecosystem's governance may be structured to support the
collaboration. Method: We conduct an exploratory multiple-case study of two
such ecosystems, focused on OGD related to the Swedish labor market and public
transport sector, respectively. Data is gathered through interviews, document
studies, and prolonged engagement at one of the platform providers. Results:
The study presents governance structure and collaboration practices of the two
ecosystems and discusses how these contribute to the platform providers' goals.
The case studies highlight the need for platform providers to take an active
and multi-functional role in enabling the sharing of data and software from and
between the members of the ecosystem. Conclusions: We conclude that OGD
ecosystems offer public sector organizations a possibility to catalyze the
potential innovation output of OGD, but that it requires investment and
adoption of an open and collaborative mindset.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2208.0030
How to characterize the health of an Open Source Software project? A snowball literature review of an emerging practice
Motivation: Society's dependence on Open Source Software (OSS) and the
communities that maintain the OSS is ever-growing. So are the potential risks
of, e.g., vulnerabilities being introduced in projects not actively maintained.
By assessing an OSS project's capability to stay viable and maintained over
time without interruption or weakening, i.e., the OSS health, users can
consider the risk implied by using the OSS as is, and if necessary, decide
whether to help improve the health or choose another option. However, such
assessment is complex as OSS health covers a wide range of sub-topics, and
existing support is limited. Aim: We aim to create an overview of
characteristics that affect the health of an OSS project and enable the
assessment thereof. Method: We conduct a snowball literature review based on a
start set of 9 papers, and identify 146 relevant papers over two iterations of
forward and backward snowballing. Health characteristics are elicited and coded
using structured and axial coding into a framework structure. Results: The
final framework consists of 104 health characteristics divided among 15 themes.
Characteristics address the socio-technical spectrum of the community of actors
maintaining the OSS project, the software and other deliverables being
maintained, and the orchestration facilitating the maintenance. Characteristics
are further divided based on the level of abstraction they address, i.e., the
OSS project-level specifically, or the project's overarching ecosystem of
related OSS projects. Conclusion: The framework provides an overview of the
wide span of health characteristics that may need to be considered when
evaluating OSS health and can serve as a foundation both for research and
practice.Comment: Accepted for publication at Open Source Systems (OSS) Conference 202
Requirements engineering in open innovation: a research agenda
In recent years Open Innovation (OI) has gained much attention and made firms
aware that they need to consider the open environment surrounding them. To
facilitate this shift Requirements Engineering (RE) needs to be adapted in
order to manage the increase and complexity of new requirements sources as well
as networks of stakeholders. In response we build on and advance an earlier
proposed software engineering framework for fostering OI, focusing on
stakeholder management, when to open up, and prioritization and release
planning. Literature in open source RE is contrasted against recent findings of
OI in software engineering to establish a current view of the area. Based on
the synthesized findings we propose a research agenda within the areas under
focus, along with a framing-model to help researchers frame and break down
their research questions to consider the different angles implied by the OI
model
Open Data Ecosystems - an empirical investigation into an emerging industry collaboration concept
Software systems are increasingly depending on data, particularly with the rising use of machine learning, and developers are looking for new sources of data. Open Data Ecosystems (ODE) is an emerging concept for data sharing under public licenses in software ecosystems, similar to Open Source Software (OSS). It has certain similarities to Open Government Data (OGD), where public agencies share data for innovation and transparency.We aimed to explore open data ecosystems involving commercial actors. Thus, we organized five focus groups with 27 practitioners from 22 companies, public organizations, and research institutes. Based on the outcomes, we surveyed three cases of emerging ODE practice to further understand the concepts and to validate the initial findings. The main outcome is an initial conceptual model of ODEs’ value, intrinsics, governance, and evolution, and propositions for practice and further research.We found that ODE must be value driven. Regarding the intrinsics of data, we found their type, meta-data, and legal frameworks influential for their openness. We also found the characteristics of ecosystem initiation, organization, data acquisition and openness be differentiating, which we advise research and practice to take into consideration
Open innovation using open source tools: a case study at Sony Mobile
Despite growing interest of Open Innovation (OI) in Software Engineering
(SE), little is known about what triggers software organizations to adopt it
and how this affects SE practices. OI can be realized in numerous of ways,
including Open Source Software (OSS) involvement. Outcomes from OI are not
restricted to product innovation but also include process innovation, e.g.
improved SE practices and methods. This study explores the involvement of a
software organization (Sony Mobile) in OSS communities from an OI perspective
and what SE practices (requirements engineering and testing) have been adapted
in relation to OI. It also highlights the innovative outcomes resulting from
OI. An exploratory embedded case study investigates how Sony Mobile use and
contribute to Jenkins and Gerrit; the two central OSS tools in their continuous
integration tool chain. Quantitative analysis was performed on change log data
from source code repositories in order to identify the top contributors and
triangulated with the results from five semi-structured interviews to explore
the nature of the commits. The findings of the case study include five major
themes: i) The process of opening up towards the tool communities correlates in
time with a general adoption of OSS in the organization. ii) Assets not seen as
competitive advantage nor a source of revenue are made open to OSS communities,
and gradually, the organization turns more open. iii) The requirements
engineering process towards the community is informal and based on engagement.
iv) The need for systematic and automated testing is still in its infancy, but
the needs are identified. v) The innovation outcomes included free features and
maintenance, and were believed to increase speed and quality in development.
Adopting OI was a result of a paradigm shift of moving from Windows to Linux
A Survey on the Perception of Innovation in a Large Product-Focused Software Organization
Context. Innovation is promoted in companies to help them stay competitive.
Four types of innovation are defined: product, process, business, and
organizational. Objective. We want to understand the perception of the
innovation concept in industry, and particularly how the innovation types
relate to each other. Method. We launched a survey at a branch of a
multi-national corporation. Results. From a qualitative analysis of the 229
responses, we see that the understanding of the innovation concept is somewhat
narrow, and mostly related to product innovation. A majority of respondents
indicate that product innovation triggers process, business, and organizational
innovation, rather than vice versa. However, there is a complex interdependency
between the types. We also identify challenges related to each of the types.
Conclusion. Increasing awareness and knowledge of different types of
innovation, may improve the innovation. Further, they cannot be handled one by
one, but in their interdependent relations
Public Sector Open Source Software Projects -- How is development organized?
Background: Open Source Software (OSS) started as an effort of communities of
volunteers, but its practices have been adopted far beyond these initial
scenarios. For instance, the strategic use of OSS in industry is constantly
growing nowadays in different verticals, including energy, automotive, and
health. For the public sector, however, the adoption has lagged behind even if
benefits particularly salient in the public sector context such as improved
interoperability, transparency, and digital sovereignty have been pointed out.
When Public Sector Organisations (PSOs) seek to engage with OSS, this
introduces challenges as they often lack the necessary technical capabilities,
while also being bound and influenced by regulations and practices for public
procurement. Aim: We aim to shed light on how public sector OSS projects, i.e.,
projects initiated, developed and governed by public sector organizations, are
developed and structured. We conjecture, based on the challenges of PSOs, that
the way development is organized in these type of projects to a large extent
disalign with the commonly adopted bazaar model (popularized by Eric Raymond),
which implies that development is carried out collaboratively in a larger
community. Method: We plan to contrast public sector OSS projects with a set of
earlier reported case studies of bazaar OSS projects, including Mockus et al.'s
reporting of the Apache web server and Mozilla browser OSS projects, along with
the replications performed on the FreeBSD, JBossAS, JOnAS, and Apache Geronimo
OSS projects. To enable comparable results, we will replicate the methodology
used by Mockus et al. on a purposefully sampled subset of public sector OSS
projects. The subset will be identified and characterized quantitatively by
mining relevant software repositories, and qualitatively investigated through
interviews with individuals from involved organizations.Comment: Registered Report accepted at MSR'2
How do companies collaborate in open source ecosystems? An empirical study of OpenStack
OpenSourceSoftware (OSS) has come to play a critical role in the software industry. Some large ecosystems enjoy the participation of large numbers of companies, each of which has its own focus and goals. Indeed, companies that otherwise compete, may become collaborators within the OSS ecosystem they participate in. Prior research has largely focused on commercial involvement in OSS projects, but there is a scarcity of research focusing on company collaborations within OSS ecosystems. Some of these ecosystems have become critical building blocks for organizations worldwide; hence, a clear understanding of how companies collaborate within large ecosystems is essential. This paper presents the results of an empirical study of the Open Stack ecosystem, in which hundreds of companies collaborate on thousands of project repositories to deliver cloud distributions. Based on a detailed analysis, we identify clusters of collaborations, and identify four strategies that companies adopt to engage with the Open Stack ecosystem. We also find that companies may engage in intentional or passive collaborations, or may work in an isolated fashion. Further, we find that a company’s position in the collaboration network is positively associated with its productivity in Open Stack. Our study sheds light on how large OSS ecosystems work, and in particular on the patterns of collaboration within one such large ecosystem
Requirements Engineering in Open Innovation
Abstract. During the last two decades a slow but steady change of external factors has set-up new conditions affecting the way in how software producing firms create and leverage innovations. Firms now need to look outside of their boundaries and start interacting with the open environment that encompasses them in order to stay innovative and keep a competitive advantage. To facilitate this shift Requirements Engineering needs to consider the increase and complexity of new requirements sources as well as networks of stakeholders. Based on the research agenda described in this paper we expect to make a contribution by establishing guidelines and tools for how Requirements Engineering should be adapted to cope with possible challenges implied by Open Innovation, foremost in the areas requirements selection and decision making when using Open Source Software as a way to leverage Open Innovation