Addressing Lock-in, Interoperability, and Long-Term Maintenance Challenges Through Open Source: How Can Companies Strategically Use Open Source?

Abstract

Abstract. This industry paper reports on how strategic use of open source in company contexts can provide effective support for addressing the fundamental challenges of lock-in, interoperability, and longevity of software and associated digital assets. The fundamental challenges and an overview of an ongoing collaborative research project are presented. Through a conceptual model for open source usage in company contexts we characterise how companies engage with open source and elaborate on how the fundamental challenges can be effectively addressed through open source usage in company contexts.

Effective Strategies for Using Open Source Software and Open Standards in Organizational Contexts: Experiences From the Primary and Secondary Software Sectors

“…8 If, on the other hand, a company which has integrated externally developed OSS does not contribute back bug fixes into the main branch of the OSS project there will be additional costs associated with modification of the internal code base for each new release by the external OSS project, something which may be very costly. 4,11 Further, in some scenarios it may be advantageous for a company to open up an internally developed (closed source) software application and release this as an OSS project on an open collaborative platform with a view to establish a vibrant community related to the project (strategy 4b). For example, for a company which has developed a software application that (over time) has become commodity for its own business, it may be advantageous to share development and maintenance costs, and instead seek business opportunities (e.g.…”

“…This has caused a number of challenges related to software and associated digital assets for private and public sector organisations in different usage contexts and domains. 2,4,5,7,10,11,[13][14][15] Over time companies in the primary and secondary software sectors need to deal with an increasing amount of software provided through industrial products and innovative software applications and services. Several primary software sector 11 companies have extensive experience and business offerings as service providers related to development and deployment of software solutions, whereas many software intensive companies in the secondary software sector 12 develop software as part of their product and service offerings in different domains, such as automotive, avionics, and outdoor power products.…”

“…A standard which complies with the definition presented by the European Interoperability Framework version 1.0 constitutes an open standard. 11 Since such standards allow for implementation in software under different licences and thereby allow for competition, the Swedish National Procurement Services requires that when organisations use their framework agreements they are only allowed to reference open standards when expressing mandatory requirements in public procurement projects. 9, 11 There are complex relationships between development of standards and OSS projects, something which has received attention amongst policy makers and organisations involved with standards development.…”

Sustainable digitalisation through different dimensions of openness

“…the Netherlands and the U.K.) have adopted various policy initiatives for mandating use of open standards in public sector organisations [38,49]. Further, the Swedish National Procurement Services has published a list of open standards [23], which all can be referenced as mandatory requirements in public procurement [32]. Open standards that are included in this list can be implemented and distributed under different licenses for proprietary software and under all OSIapproved licenses for open source software (OSS).…”

“…Previous research commissioned by the Swedish Competition Authority [31] identified significant lock-in caused by references to closed IT-standards and "found that many IT-projects in the Swedish public sector refer to closed standards which cannot be implemented in open source software" [32]. Further, the same study identified widespread practices amongst public sector organisations to request compatibility (instead of interoperability) with specific proprietary technologies, products and trademarks, something which inhibits interoperability.…”