Topic "Business Models"

Developing software primarily is about getting problems solved and making money. The introduction of the open source development paradigm seems to threaten the secured foundation of commercial software development and has therefore drawn harsh critiscm by its proponents. This seminar topic shall position open source inside the business world and put facts and figures up to justify the hype.

Key Questions

  • How can we make money with software that does not cost anything?
  • How big is the market for Open Source software anyway?
  • How can critics be appeased that talk about jobloss in IT due to OSS?
  • How cheap is free software anyway when considering Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?
  • Which incentives are there for closed source software companies to get involved? How can these entry decision being made?

References

  • Raphael Leiteritz, 2004. Open Source-Geschäftsmodelle. In Open Source Jahrbuch 2004 (PDF, 355KB)
  • A. Brown and G. Booch, Reusing Open Source Software and Practices: The Impact of Open Source on Commercial Vendors , Proc. 7th International Conference on Software Reuse, 123-136, Austin, TX, USA, April 15-19, 2002. Appears in, C. Gacek (Ed.), Software Reuse: Methods, Techniques, and Tools, LNCS 2319, Spring-Verlag, May 2002. (PDF, 174KB)
  • Jesper Holck, Michael Holm Larsen & Mogens Kühn Pedersen: "Identifying Business Barriers and Enablers for the Adoption of Open Source Software." Presented at ISD 2004, Vilnius, Lithuania, September 2004. (PDF)
  • Lothar Gläßer: "Open Source Software", May 2004, Publicis Corporate Publishing Verlag, ISBN 3-89578-240-8, Pages 50-55
  • Robert A. Gehring & Bernd Lutterbeck, "Open Source Jahrbuch", Lehmanns Media Verlag, ISBN 3-936427-78-X, Pages 139-170
  • Bernd Brügge, Dietmar Harhoff & Arnold Picot, "Open-Source-Software", Springer Verlag, ISBN: 3-540203-66-4
  • Andrew St. Laurent, "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing", Oreilly & Associates Inc, ISBN: 0-596005-81-4
  • Raphael Leiteritz, "Der kommerzielle Einsatz von Open Source Software und kommerzielle Open Source-Geschäftsmodelle", Diplomarbeit 2002 (PDF)
  • Helena Schulz, "OSS-Geschäftsmodelle", April 2004, (html)

Contact

EMail: kruczyk@inf.fu-berlin.de