Øyvind Hauge

Adoption of open source software in software-intensive organizations - A systematic literature review

Context: Open source software (OSS) is changing the way organizations develop, acquire, use, and commercialize software. Objective: This paper seeks to identify how organizations adopt OSS, classify the literature according to these ways of adopting OSS, and with a focus on software development evaluate the research on adoption of OSS in organizations. Method: Based on the systematic literature review method we reviewed publications from 24 journals and seven conference and workshop proceedings, published between 1998 and 2008. From a population of 24,289 papers, we identified 112 papers that provide empirical evidence on how organizations actually adopt OSS. Results: We show that adopting OSS involves more than simply using OSS products. We moreover provide a classification framework consisting of six distinctly different ways in which organizations adopt OSS. This framework is used to illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges organizations meet when approaching OSS, to show that OSS can be adopted successfully in different ways, and to organize and review existing research. We find that existing research on OSS adoption does not sufficiently describe the context of the organizations studied, and it fails to benefit fully from related research fields. While existing research covers a large number of topics, it contains very few closely related studies. To aid this situation, we offer directions for future research. Conclusion: The implications of our findings are twofold. On the one hand, practitioners should embrace the many opportunities OSS offers, but consciously evaluate the consequences of adopting it in their own context. They may use our framework and the success stories provided by the literature in their own evaluations. On the other hand, researchers should align their work, and perform more empirical research on topics that are important to organizations. Our framework may be used to position this research and to describe the context of the organization they are studying.

Adoption of Open Source in the Software Industry

Is Open Source Software (OSS) undergoing a transformation to a more commercially viable form? We have performed a survey to investigate the adoption of OSS in the Norwegian software industry. The survey was based on an extensive screening of software companies, with more than 700 responses. The survey results support the transformation predicted by Fitzgerald [4]. Close to 50% of the software industry integrate OSS components into vertical solutions serving all major business sectors. In addition, more than 30% of the 95 respondents in our survey have more than 40% of their income from OSS related services or software. The extensive adoption of OSS in the software industry may be a precursor of the OSS adoption in other business sectors.

Selection of third party software in Off-The-Shelf-based software development-An interview study with industrial practitioners

The success of software development using third party components highly depends on the ability to select a suitable component for the intended application. The evidence shows that there is limited knowledge about current industrial OTS selection practices. As a result, there is often a gap between theory and practice, and the proposed methods for supporting selection are rarely adopted in the industrial practice. This papers goal is to investigate the actual industrial practice of component selection in order to provide an initial empirical basis that allows the reconciliation of research and industrial endeavors. The study consisted of semi-structured interviews with 23 employees from 20 different software-intensive companies that mostly develop web information system applications. It provides qualitative information that help to further understand these practices, and emphasize some aspects that have been overlooked by researchers. For instance, although the literature claims that component repositories are important for locating reusable components; these are hardly used in industrial practice. Instead, other resources that have not received considerable attention are used with this aim. Practices and potential market niches for software-intensive companies have been also identified. The results are valuable from both the research and the industrial perspectives as they provide a basis for formulating well-substantiated hypotheses and more effective improvement strategies.

An empirical study on selection of Open Source Software - Preliminary results

Growing attention on component-based development has inspired the development of several normative methods for selection of software components. Despite these efforts, empirical studies show only minor adoption of such methods. To understand how research can contribute to improving the selection of components we interviewed developers from 16 Norwegian software companies which integrate Open Source Software (OSS) components into their systems. We find that the selection of OSS components has a situational nature where project specific properties significantly constrain the selections outcome, and that developers employ a ‘first fit’ rather than ‘best fit’ approach when selecting OSS components. This could explain the limited adoption of normative selection approaches and general evaluation schemas. Moreover, it motivates a shift from developing such methods and schemas towards understanding the situational nature of software selection.

Understanding Open Source in an Industrial Context

This paper discusses the meaning of open source in an industrial context. Building a grounded theory from an industry-driven R&D project, our analysis shows that open source in an industrial context is multifaceted. We find that the meaning of open source must be established in the context of the individual organization.

Surveying Industrial Roles in Open Source Software Development

Industry uses Open Source Software (OSS) to a greater and greater extent. We have defined four industrial OSS roles; OSS provider, OSS integrator, OSS participant and Inner Source Software (ISS) participant. Based on these four roles we have performed a survey in the ITEA COSI project. We provide initial answers to what motivates companies to undertake these roles, what are the advantages and challenges of undertaking them, and which development practices they use while undertaking these roles.

Risks and Risk Mitigation in Open Source Software Adoption: Bridging the Gap between Literature and Practice

The possible benefits of open source software (OSS) have led organizations into adopting a variety of OSS products. However, the risks related to such an adoption, and how to reduce these risks, are not well understood. Based on data from interviews, a questionnaire, and workshops, this paper reports ongoing work in a multi-national telecom company. The paper has three main contributions. First, it identifies and discusses several risks related to OSS adoption. Second, it identifies steps for reducing several of these risks. Third, it shows how research can be used to increase the visibility of, and involve the employees in, ongoing OSS efforts.

Challenges of the Open Source Component Marketplace in the Industry

The reuse of Open Source Software components available on the Internet is playing a major role in the development of Component Based Software Systems. Nevertheless, the special nature of the OSS marketplace has taken the “classical” concept of software reuse based on centralized repositories to a completely different arena based on massive reuse over Internet. In this paper we provide an overview of the actual state of the OSS marketplace, and report preliminary findings about how companies interact with this marketplace to reuse OSS components. Such data was gathered from interviews in software companies in Spain and Norway. Based on these results we identify some challenges aimed to improve the industrial reuse of OSS components.

Providing Commercial Open Source Software: Lessons Learned

Even though companies like Sun, IBM, MySQL and others have released several commercial Open Source Software (OSS) products, little evidence exist of how to successfully launch such products and establish a living community around them. This paper presents a case study from a small software company succeeding at establishing a business model and a vivid community around their own OSS products. Based on this case study, the paper presents lessons learned which could help other OSS providers.

Conceptualization Maturity Metrics for Expert Systems

Metrics used on development of expert systems is not a well investigated problem area. This article suggests some metrics to be used to measure the maturity of the conceptualization process and the complexity of the decision process in the problem domain. We propose some further work to be done with these metrics. Applying those metrics makes new and interesting problems, concerning the structure of knowledge to surface.