Coopetition of software firms in Open source software ecosystems

Software firms participate in an ecosystem as a part of their innovation strategy to extend value creation beyond the firms boundary. Participation in an open and independent environment also implies the competition among firms with similar business models and targeted markets. Hence, firms need to consider potential opportunities and challenges upfront. This study explores how software firms interact with others in OSS ecosystems from a coopetition perspective. We performed a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three OSS projects. Finding shows that software firms emphasize the co-creation of common value and partly react to the potential competitiveness on OSS ecosystems. Six themes about coopetition were identified, including spanning gatekeepers, securing communication, open-core sourcing and filtering shared code. Our work contributes to software engineering research with a rich description of coopetition in OSS ecosystems. Moreover, we also come up with several implications for software firms in pursing a harmony participation in OSS ecosystems.Comment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version can be accessed at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-69191-6_10, Coopetition of software firms in Open source software ecosystems, 8th ICSOB 2017, Essen, Germany (2017

A Community Strategy Framework – How to obtain influence on requirements in meritocratic open source software communities?

Context: In the Requirements Engineering (RE) process of an Open Source Software (OSS) community, an involved firm is a stakeholder among many. Conflicting agendas may create miss-alignment with the firm's internal requirements strategy. In communities with meritocratic governance or with aspects thereof, a firm has the opportunity to affect the RE process in line with their own agenda by gaining influence through active and symbiotic engagements. Objective: The focus of this study has been to identify what aspects that firms should consider when they assess their need of influencing the RE process in an OSS community, as well as what engagement practices that should be considered in order to gain this influence. Method: Using a design science approach, 21 interviews with 18 industry professionals from 12 different software-intensive firms were conducted to explore, design and validate an artifact for the problem context. Results: A Community Strategy Framework (CSF) is presented to help firms create community strategies that describe if and why they need influence on the RE process in a specific (meritocratic) OSS community, and how the firm could gain it. The framework consists of aspects and engagement practices. The aspects help determine how important an OSS project and its community is from business and technical perspectives. A community perspective is used when considering the feasibility and potential in gaining influence. The engagement practices are intended as a tool-box for how a firm can engage with a community in order to build influence needed. Conclusion: It is concluded from interview-based validation that the proposed CSF may provide support for firms in creating and tailoring community strategies and help them to focus resources on communities that matter and gain the influence needed on their respective RE processes

Motivating the contributions : An Open Innovation perspective on what to share as Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) ecosystems have reshaped the ways how software-intensive firms develop products and deliver value to customers. However, firms still need support for strategic product planning in terms of what to develop internally and what to share as OSS. Existing models accurately capture commoditization in software business, but lack operational support to decide what contribution strategy to employ in terms of what and when to contribute. This study proposes a Contribution Acceptance Process (CAP) model from which firms can adopt contribution strategies that align with product strategies and planning. In a design science influenced case study executed at Sony Mobile, the CAP model was iteratively developed in close collaboration with the firm's practitioners. The CAP model helps classify artifacts according to business impact and control complexity so firms may estimate and plan whether an artifact should be contributed or not. Further, an information meta-model is proposed that helps operationalize the CAP model at the organization. The CAP model provides an operational OI perspective on what firms involved in OSS ecosystems should share, by helping them motivate contributions through the creation of contribution strategies. The goal is to help maximize return on investment and sustain needed influence in OSS ecosystems

Requirements Engineering for Innovative Software Ecosystems: A Research Preview

[Context and motivation] In order to stay competitive in the Digital Transformation era, many organizations are engaging in innovative software ecosystems (SES). However, there is a lack of specific methods for tackling SES engineering challenges. [Question/problem] This paper presents a Requirements Engineering (RE) decision framework and a process for guiding key SES partners in the process of shaping their SES. [Principal ideas/results] Both the framework and the process build upon the results of a literature review and interviews with practitioners, and have undergone a preliminary qualitative evaluation. [Contribution] The systematic approach for shaping SES together with an explicit and clear definition of its application context will enable practitioners and researchers to apply it and/or translate it to other application contexts

An ecosystem perspective on developing data collaboratives for addressing societal issues: The role of conveners

With the open and big data movement in full swing, data sharing becomes more ubiquitous and more often crosses sectoral boundaries. The promise of data to help address societal issues and foster innovation requires public organizations to work together with businesses and researchers. Data collaboratives whereby actors collaborate to share and use data for public good gain increasing interest. Most of these collaborations, however, tend to be one-off, small, and limited in impact due to a complex web of legal, technical, ethical, commercial, and organizational challenges. Initiators of data collaboratives, termed as conveners, can potentially alleviate some of these concerns by playing various roles in developing a more sustainable data ecosystem for the data collaboratives. Our study investigates what convener roles are perceived to be critical in developing data collaboratives. By drawing on data ecosystems thinking, we developed a framework of convener roles and sub-roles which we further used to analyze four cases in the Netherlands and Sweden. We conclude that connecting role and learning catalyst role are critical at the initiation stage, while stimulating and mediating roles emerge as future critical roles as the data ecosystem develops. We further identified convener meta-roles that are associated with particular data ecosystem structures (keystone-centric, marketplace-based, intermediary-based, and platform-centric). Our research can be instrumental to actors leading the efforts of creating such data ecosystems as it provides insights on the needs and resources that can be leveraged to stimulate development and innovation

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

Open Innovation through the Lens of 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. This shift enabled Sony Mobile to utilize the Jenkins and Gerrit communities to make their internal development process better for its software developers and testers.open access</p