Software Research and the Industry

Community open source is open source that is not owned by any particular company. Rather, ownership is shared among a large number of diverse stakeholders. Given the right (read: permissive) license, commercial companies can provide extensions to the community project, earning a living. Since such extensions are a unique selling point of these companies, one [...]

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This upcoming Wikimania 2008 tutorial discusses the three principles of “open collaboration” which I believe are underlying wikis, open source, and other forms of peer production. It is a follow-up to last year’s tutorial about open collaboration at Wikimania 2007.
If the slideshow doesn’t play, please use the PDF file download below.

Reference: Dirk Riehle. “Bringing Wikipedia [...]

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For your information, a note from Dave Humphrey on LUX, a new graduate program on Linux and Open Source System Administration at Seneca College, Toronto, ON.

I wanted to let you know about a new graduate program we’re launching in September on Linux and open source system administration. LUX is designed for industry people who want [...]

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For your information, a research workshop on open source and business.
CALL FOR PAPERS
OSS 2.0 : Leveraging the Open Source community for business
Workshop at OSS 2008 Conference, co-located with IFIP WCC 2008 Milan (Italy)
http://conferenze.dei.polimi.it/oss20
Deadline for submission: 21st June 2008
Notification of acceptance: 11th July 2008
Final submission due: 25th July 2008
Workshop: 10th September 2008

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Following up on related discussions, another common confusion in my opinion is to think that “open source” is a business model. It is not. Open source is a business strategy, in support of a business model. You still need to know how to make money, and it doesn’t happen by giving software away for free. [...]

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Commercial open source has a peculiar sales process. Frequently, when a firm decides to buy (license) a specific type of software like a content management system or a wiki engine, they’ll find that their company already employs multiple solutions, downloaded for free from the Internet. By some measures, this is dangerous to IT governance, as [...]

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Software researchers need case studies to validate new tools and methods of object-oriented software design. A good thing to do is to standardize on a set of open source frameworks and libraries that are known and available to everyone. Basically, a benchmark set for new tools and methods in object-oriented software design. JUnit and JHotDraw [...]

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Commercial open source firms go to market trying to create an “unfair” competitive advantage that lets them win customers more easily than their competitors. So do most other companies. Commercial open source firms do this by bypassing the traditional purchasing process by getting their software into customer companies for free, before the customers even know [...]

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Markus Völter of the Software Engineering Radio podcast show interviewed me about open source business models. Why not listen to the Open Source Business Model podcast while running rather than reading it as papers on my website?

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As a researcher, imprecise naming bothers me. The general confusion around the terms commercial open source, professional open source, and community open source warrants closer analysis.
First my proposal, then some litmus tests, followed by a bit of history.

Commercial open source is software provided as open source where a single legal entity owns the rights [...]

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