Category Archives: OpenSym 2014

Utilization and Development Contribution of Open Source Software in Japanese IT Companies: An Exploratory Study of the Effect on Business Growth

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Utilization and Development Contribution of Open Source Software in Japanese IT Companies: An Exploratory Study of the Effect on Business Growth

Authors: Terutaka Tansho (Shimane University, Japan), Tetsuo Noda (Shimane University, Japan)

Abstract: The usage of Open Source Software (OSS) has been more general these days and OSS are utilized in a wide range of business fields not only IT industries. Behind the expansion, there exist OSS development communities, where voluntary engineers dedicate their time and effort for the improvement. Considering development engineers in the companies as input resources, it is important to investigate the output of business growth. In this study, we conducted questionnaire survey to Japanese IT companies in 2013, and then analyzed the present state and relation between OSS utilization and development contribution. Our study revealed that Japanese IT companies are rather free riders of OSS, the volume of development contributions are far less than that of utilization. With regard to the effect on the business growth, the results of correlation analysis implicate that OSS utilization is related to the sales growth in the present term and that development contribution is related to the future growth of the employee number in the company. In order to explore the direct effect on the business growth, we constructed the models of multiple-logistic and logistic analyses, however, no direct and explicit determinants are found from the results of the analyses. Our research endeavors to investigate the OSS effect on the business growth are still on the way, but it is meaningful to provide the present state in numbers and hopefully this will lay some foundation for further study in this field.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

How You Run a Meeting Says a Lot About Your Values: Participatory Practices for Open Communities

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Keynotes / Invited Talks, OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014 is proud to announce one of the conference’s invited talks!

Title: How You Run a Meeting Says a Lot About Your Values: Participatory Practices for Open Communities

Speaker: Laura Hilliger and Michelle Thorne, both of the Mozilla Foundation

Abstract: Live events are some of the best ways to see the power dynamics and philosophical bent of a community. Many communities, open and closed, glorify sitting in a darkened room and being inspired by a sage on the stage. And then there are events about participation: making and learning with fellow participants around shared passions and interests. The session argues for the use of participatory methods at events as a way to manifest open values. We’ll unpack some techniques and case studies, as well as practice ourselves.

Biography: Michelle Thorne is the Senior Director of Mozilla’s global Webmaker Mentor program. She trains communities of geeks, educators, makers and passionate people who want to help others learn not just to consume the web, but to make it. Through mentoring, live events and connectivist learning, she helps people level up their web literacies. Thorne embraces the spirit of “less yak, more hack” and believe that making drives learning and deeper participation. She organizes Mozilla’s largest public-facing event, the Mozilla Festival, which takes place in London. Previously, Thorne was the International Project Manager at Creative Commons, coordinating teams in over seventy countries (jurisdictions) worldwide to localize Creative Commons tools and to promote legal sharing and Free Culture. She co-organized the Free Culture Research Conference, an academic event dedicated to exploring the commons and hybrid economies.

Designing an Integrated Open Innovation System: Towards Organizational Wholeness

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions

Title: Designing an Integrated Open Innovation System: Towards Organizational Wholeness

Authors: Vasiliki Baka

Abstract: Increasing use of collaborative technologies has transformed organizational dynamics in novel ways. In this paper, we adopt the principle of wholeness in designing an  integrated open innovation system. We provide an overview of existing collaborative technologies and situate the proposed sociotechnical arrangement within the paradigm of open innovation. We explore how effectively technological platforms address emergent collaboration and innovation practices within and across organizations and to which extent existing technologies act as strategic catalysts of open innovation. We argue that in embracing wholeness and in treating technologies as inseparable constitutive  parts of organizational architecture, we foster organizational and institutional collaboration and encourage innovative practices. The focus of the paper is on how the design of sociotechnical systems as wholes, that is systems that are concurrently acting as corporate websites, internal collaboration spaces, extranets and social media aggregators, actively promotes open innovation in practice. We close with a presentation of six cases that are illustrative of how such a system could be applicable within the open innovation paradigm, namely, citizen participation, crowdsourcing and open innovation contests, open source innovation, reviews and social media, social enterprises and open teaching.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Filling the Gaps of Development Logs and Bug Issue Data

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Filling the Gaps of Development Logs and Bug Issue Data

Authors: Bilyaminu Auwal Romo (Brunel University London), Andrea Capiluppi (Brunel University London), Tracy Hall (Brunel University London)

Abstract: It has been suggested that the data from bug repositories is not always in sync or complete compared to the logs detailing the actions of developers on source code. In this paper, we trace two sources of information relative to software bugs: the change logs of the actions of developers and the issues reported as bugs. The aim is to identify and quantify the discrepancies between the two sources in recording and storing the developer logs relative to bugs. Focussing on the databases produced by two mining software repository tools, CVSAnalY and Bicho, we use part of the SZZ algorithm to identify bugs and to compare how the ”defects-fixing changes” are recorded in the two databases. We use a working example to show how to do so. The results indicate that there is a significant amount of information, not in sync when tracing bugs in the two databases. We, therefore, propose an automatic approach to re-align the two databases, so that the collected information is mirrored and in sync.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Socio-Technical Congruence in the Ruby Ecosystem

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Socio-Technical Congruence in the Ruby Ecosystem

Authors: Mahbubul Syeed (Tampere University of Technology), Klaus Marius Hansen (University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark), Imed Hammouda (Chalmers and University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Konstantinos Manikas (University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark)

Abstract: Existing studies show that open source projects may enjoy high levels of socio-technical congruence despite their open and distributed character. Such observations are yet to be confirmed in the case of larger open source ecosystems in which developers contribute to different projects within the ecosystem. In this paper, we empirically study the relationships between the developer coordination activities and the project dependency structure in the Ruby ecosystem. Our motivation is to verify whether the ecosystem context maintains the high socio-technical congruence levels observed in many smaller scale FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) projects. Our study results show that the collaboration pattern among the developers in Ruby ecosystem is not necessarily shaped by the communication needs indicated by the dependencies among the ecosystem projects.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Preliminary OpenSym 2014 Program Published!

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

We just published the preliminary OpenSym 2014 program. For easy access, here is a link to an overview program spreadsheet. We are excited about the keynotes and invited talks, the research and practitioner contributions, and the open space track! Stay tuned in to this blog as we unveil the details of the program blog post by blog post, every day at 9am CET. See you in Berlin!

Strategies for Promoting OER in Course Development and Course Delivery in an ODL Environment

Announcement, Community Contributions, Conference Contributions, Experience Reports, OpenSym 2014

Title: Strategies for Promoting OER in Course Development and Course Delivery in an ODL Environment

Authors: Sheng Hung Chung (Wawasan Open University)

Abstract: This study discusses the phases involved for the development of  OER-based course materials namely the OER course integration using Wikibooks; evaluation of Quality Assurance (QA) in OER learning content; promoting and exploring OER repositories; CC licensing discussions and establishment of collective feedback sessions at Wawasan Open University (WOU), Penang, Malaysia. The learning design for the computing courses with engagement of learning experiences and feedbacks from different stakeholders in Open Distance Learning (ODL) environment are taken into consideration as one of the major components in the OER-based course development and revision phases. The OER-based computing course comprises of course units, self-test, unit practice exercises, assessments, mini project and activities are delivered in ODL mode in three consecutive semesters span from 2013 till 2014. Evaluations and studies are being carried out at end of each semesters for the by the course team members on the primary aspects focusing on learners’ participation rate of OER resources; LMS learners’ activities and assessments evaluation. The OER development engagement involved multiple stakeholders (i.e. learners, instructors, course coordinators and External Course Assessors) from different levels aiming to promote the use and understanding of OER in ODL environment.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Strata: Typed Semi-Structured Data in DokuWiki

Announcement, Community Contributions, Demos, OpenSym 2014

Title: Strata: Typed Semi-Structured Data in DokuWiki

Authors: Brend Wanders (University of Twente), Steven Te Brinke (University of Twente)

Abstract: A semantic wiki is a wiki that has a model of the knowledge contained in its pages. Currently, semantic wikis are not adopted by a large user base, because most implementations are research prototypes that implement their own wiki engine. To increase familiarity with semantic wikis and quick adoption of semantic technologies we present Strata, a plugin for the well known wiki DokuWiki. Strata allows the use of semi-structured data in any DokuWiki installation, normalizes values based on their types, and allows extensive data modeling and querying on complex data structures.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

The Impact of Automatic Crash Reports on Bug Triaging and Development in Mozilla

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: The Impact of Automatic Crash Reports on Bug Triaging and Development in Mozilla

Authors: Iftekhar Ahmed (Oregon State University), Nitin Mohan (Oregon State University), Carlos Jensen (Oregon State University)

Abstract: Free/Open Source Software projects often rely on users submitting bug reports. However, reports submitted by novice users may lack information critical to developers, and the process may be intimidating and difficult. To gather more and better data, projects deploy automatic crash reporting tools, which capture stack traces and memory dumps when a crash occurs. These systems potentially generate large volumes of data, which may overwhelm developers, and their presence may discourage users from submitting traditional bug reports. In this paper, we examine Mozilla’s automatic crash reporting system and how it affects their bug triaging process. We find that fewer than 0.00009% of crash reports end up in a bug report, but as many as 2.33% of bug reports have data from crash reports added. Feedback from developers shows that despite some problems, these systems are valuable. We conclude with a discussion of the pros and cons of automatic crash reporting systems.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Let’s Build the Road Network of Civic Tech

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Keynotes / Invited Talks, OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014 is proud to announce the conference’s opening keynote!

Title: Let’s Build the Road Network of Civic Tech

Speaker: Stef van Grieken of Google Inc.

Abstract: Your awesome petition app is like a sports car without a freeway to drive on. Over the past several years we’ve built amazing civic apps that are improving public service delivery, engaging more citizens in the political process, and making governments more accountable around the world. But we’re rapidly approaching a point common to all new public technologies: the need for common infrastructure to enable massive scale. This talk will discuss three tenets of civic technology that will take us towards a common framework, and present research and examples of work doing this today. It’s time for developers, governments, corporations, academics, funders and citizens to come together and lay the groundwork for what’s next.

Biography: Stef van Grieken studied Industrial Engineering and Philosophy and describes himself as “a tech-entrepreneur and a bit of a geek.” He currently works as a Technical Program Manager at Google. His goal is to promote civic innovation through technology. Before joining Google Stef founded the Dutch civic technology organization Open State Foundation. With projects such as Nu.nl Public, Hack the Government, and Apps for the Nederland he worked on increasing public accountability and transparency. Some of these projects were awarded with ‘Time Magazine Top Website of 2012’ and a ‘European Public Sector Award’.