Increasing adoption of Open Source Software (OSS) in information system engineering has led to the emergence of different OSS business strategies that affect and shape organizations’ business models. In this context, organizational modeling needs to reconcile efficiently OSS adoption strategies with business strategies and models. In this paper, we propose to embed all the knowledge about each OSS adoption strategy into an i* model that can be used in the intentional modeling of the organization. These models describe the consequences of adopting one such strategy or another: which are the business goals that are supported, which are the resources that emerge, etc. To this aim, we first enumerate the main existing OSS adoption strategies, next we formulate an ontology that comprises the activities and resources that characterise these strategies, then based on the experience of 5 industrial partners of the RISCOSS EU-funded project, we explore how these elements are managed in each strategy and formulate the corresponding model using the i* vframework.

1. Modelling and Applying OSS Adoption
Strategies
Lidia López, Dolors Costal, Claudia P. Ayala,
Xavier Franch, Ruediger Glott, Kirsten Haaland

2. Agenda
 Introduction
 OSS Adoption Strategies Ontology
 OSS Adoption Strategies Models
 OSS Adoption Strategies applied to Organizations
 Conclusions and Future Work
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

3. Motivation
 Business Model
– Way to create value and achieve revenues according to a
Business Strategy
– It aims at achieving organizational goals
 Many factors impact the Business Model
– IT is one of them
 OSS has become a driver for business in various
sectors
– At 2016, 95% all commercial software will include OSS
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

4. Motivation
 OSS adoption impacts in fact far beyond technology
 It is necessary to support organizations that want to
adopt OSS
– by analyzing the influences of such adoption
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Modelling and Applying OSS
Adoption Strategies
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

5. OSS Adoption Strategies - Background
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Not Involvement on
OSS Community
OSS Integration
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014
Involvement on
OSS Community
Consuming OSS
Producing OSS
OSS Acquisition
OSS Initiative
OSS Takeover
OSS Fork
OSS Release

6. Context
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

7. Research Questions
Objective: Supporting organizations adopting OSS
through modelling and applying OSS Adoption
Strategies
 RQ1: Which activities and resources characterize
OSS projects?
 RQ2: How do OSS activities and resources map to
OSS adoption strategies?
 RQ3: How OSS strategies relate to organizational
goals?
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
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8. RQ1: Which activities and resources characterize OSS projects?
AN ONTOLOGY FOR OSS ADOPTION
STRATEGIES

9. OSS Ecosystem Ontology
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
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OSS
Community
OSS Adopter
Organization
OSS Ecosystem

10. OSS Community Ontology
10
OFLOSSC
Ontology for
Free/Libre OSS
development Communities
Dhruv SIOC
OSDO O’CoP
Open
Source
Development
Ontology
Ontology
dedicated to
Communities
of
Practice
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014
Semantically-
Interlinked
Online
Communities
Ontology
supporting
OSS bug
resolution

11. OSS Adopter Ontology
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OSS Adopter Organization
Software
Development
Activities
Community
Oriented
Activities
Communication
Activities
Personnel
Activities
Resources
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

12. Community oriented Activities
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Concept Definition Identifier
Create OSS community Creation of an OSS Community Act-
Release Act-RELEASE
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
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NewCOMM
Decide Activity of taking a decision related to an OSS
Component
Act-DECIDE
Decision of the roadmap of an OSS
component. It includes planning of releases
and which features are included.
Act-DECIDE-Roadmap
Decide Acceptance Acceptance of a contributor in an OSS
Community
Act-DECIDE-Acc
Decide OSS Wishlist Deciding the desired features for the next
releases of an OSS component
(but without a concrete planning).
Act-DECIDE-Wishlist
Making available a software component
under OSS license
Decide Roadmap

13. RQ2: How do OSS activities and resources map to OSS adoption
strategies?
OSS ADOPTION STRATEGIES
MODELS

14. Building OSS Adoption Strategy Models
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Integration Initiative
Take-over
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014
Fork Acquisition Release
Community oriented Activities
Act-NewCOMM X X
Act-DECIDE-Roadmap X X
Act-DECIDE-Acc X X
Act-DECIDE-Wishlist X X
Act-RELEASE X X
Act-RepPATCH X X X X
Act-RepBUG X X X X
Act-SUPP X X X X

15. OSS Adoption Strategy Models
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 Activities and resources describing strategies
 Evaluate the impact on the organizational
goals
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
ER 2014, 27-29th October 2014

16. OSS Adoption Strategy Models
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17. Models Content
 2 Actors
 Dependencies between them
 Actor’s Strategic Rationale
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OSS
Comm
unity
Organi
zation
OSS
Comm
unity
Organi
zation
OSS Component
Organi
OSS OSS
zation
Comm
unity OSS Component
Component
adopted

18. OSS Acquisition
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19. OSS Integration
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20. RQ3: How OSS strategies relate to organizational goals?
APPLYING OSS ADOPTION
STRATEGY MODELS

21. Business goals and Strategy requirements
High-level
goals
Adoption
Strategy
requirements
21
Taking into account that…
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
i* Workshop, 15-16 June 2014.

22. Models Coverage
… we define …
 Coverage of the Organizational model
– org-complete/incomplete
 Coverage of the OSS adoption strategy model
requirements
– srt-complete/incomplete
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Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
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23. Organizational and Adoption Models
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Organizational Model Coverage Strategy Requirements Coverage
org-complete str-complete
org-complete str-incomplete
org-incomplete str-complete
org-incomplete str-incomplete
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
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24. Calculating Coverage: Example
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25. Calculating Coverage: Example
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26. Organizational model Coverage
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org-complete

27. Strategy Requirements Coverage
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Strategy
requirements
strs-tirn-complete

28. Final Organization Model
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29. CONCLUSIONS FUTURE WORK

30. Conclusions
30
RQ1 RQ2
RQ3
Applying Business Strategy Models in Organizations.
i* Workshop, 15-16 June 2014.

31. Future Work
 Links between business models and OSS Adoption
Strategies
 Explore levels of coverage
 Using i* roles in order to refine the OSS Community
actor
 Combining OSS Adoption Strategies
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32. Thank you
Lidia López – llopez@essi.upc.edu
www.essi.upc.edu/~gessi
@gessi_upc