Contributing to Free Open Source Software Learning from a decade of experience of creating various IoT and Big Data solutions for various companies in Alto Adige/Südtirol, in this talk, the speaker will highlight the emerging trends & challenges in the acceptance and adoption of open source solutions in the Alto Adige/Südtirol region. Particularly, how various factors like cost, functionality, features, subscription model, support and product life-cycle impact, positively or negatively, such an adoption. At times, such factors have to be traded-off with each other, in order to convince companies and individuals to use more open-source solutions. The speaker will highlight the current and past trends and challenges in Alto Adige/Südtirol. Furthermore, he will also focus on various strategies that can be adopted to further support the acceptance of open-source solutions by the companies of the region.

1. Open Source Solutions in
Alto-Adige/Sud-Tirol:
Emerging Trends & Challenges
Abid Munir Bajwa, Refstal Solutions

2. About the presenter
Abid Munir Bajwa
● Graduated from Free University of
Bozen-Bolzano in 2013, with majors in
mobile applications development
● Founded Refstal Solutions with focus on
providing IoT and Big Data solutions

3. Open source code is written by
developers and for developers.

4. Advantages of open source solutions
● Higher scalability: Open Source Software can easily be scaled up or down,
depending on requirements. We can grow more and get started with fewer
resources.
● Reduced software costs: By using OSS can help to reduce the overall cost.
Minimize resources could be minimize expenditure.
● Great support: Many organizations who are providing OSS solutions,
providing free online assistance, community forums. Responsive time could be
shorter or longer.

5. Factors influencing the acceptance and adoption of
open source solutions
● Cost
● Features & Functionality
● Subscription model
● Support (Community, Blog etc.)

6. Factors influencing the acceptance and adoption of
open source solutions
● Such factors have to be traded-off with each other, in order to convince
companies and individuals to use more open-source solutions

7. Current & Past Trends
OSS Technology Trends is playing a vital role in modern era, especially in IT
infrastructure and application development.
Rise of Kubernetes: It’s an OSS to automate scaling, deployment applications on premises public or hybrid
cloud infrastructure. Allows scaling without increasing the team.
Fog Computing: It’s a distributed network connecting edge computing and IoT or Cloud. It’s providing more
choices to process data. It used for enhancing the data privacy. The data could be analysed locally instead
of centralised system.
Big Data: It will continue to bigger and better. Popular choice in business operations. It facilitates in various
kinds of activities, starting from data storing and management to mapping customer preferences.

8. Open Source Security Challenges:
● Attacks Due to Publicity: In Open Source community, source code has a lot
of advantages, allowing a developer to freely play with the code, but it is also
show hackers how to exploit code and cause potential harm to its users.
● Risks Due to Legacy Code: Reuse of the source code to speed up the
development. There could be security risks to reuse the legacy code as well as
the dependencies issues.

9. How To Overcome These Challenges:
● Adapt Automation to Find Vulnerabilities: Testing the OSS and investigating
for vulnerabilities is a great step for any organisation who uses the open
source code. Try to do it at early stage because of the health of the software.
There are many automation tools that can help to scan the software and
making the process easier.
● Stay Up-To-Date On Security Patch: Mostly the source code for OSS is
constantly tested for vulnerabilities and the code owners fix it according to the
community posts and release security patches to help users. So it’s best to
stay up-to-date with the releases to protect your application.

10. Open Source Solutions & Support:
● In commercial products, depending on the subscription plan, there might be
dedicated support available, even 24/7
● In open source solutions, the support depends on the popularity of the
solution.
○ Active community support can be readily available
○ Support may disappear overtime, as a solution becomes less popular

11. My experience at Refstal

12. My experience at Refstal
● In the modern era, companies usually prefer to use OSS.
● Sometimes companies are more interested in the working product instead of
OSS vs Commercial solutions.
● In my experience in past few years, around 60% of projects had OSS
components.

13. Strategies for more acceptance of open-source
solutions by the companies of the region?

14. Strategies for more acceptance of open-source
solutions by the companies of the region.
● Government departments and agencies can insist to use open-source
solutions instead of closed proprietary solutions, for its projects.
● Incentives for private companies for using OSS.

15. Strategies for more acceptance of open-source
solutions by the companies of the region.
● Competitions and Bounties for finding vulnerabilities in OSS
○ Google’s Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program
○ HackerOne’s Internet Bug Bounty
○ Local competitions and bounties

16. Strategies for more acceptance of open-source
solutions by the companies of the region.
● Involving university students:
○ encouraging them to use open source solutions
○ encouraging them to make their projects open source.

17. Conclusions
● As with everything, open-source solutions have their pros and cons
● But it has the potential to make Alto-Adige/Südtirol lead in the adoption of open
source solutions.
● All stakeholders like developers, users, companies, government and the
university has to play their part.

18. Thank you !
www.refstalsolutions.com
info@refstalsolutions.com