Final Thesis: Open Source Governance: Getting Started Best Practices for Software Companies

Abstract: Open Source Software offers various advantages to software product companies. In order that companies reap the benefits of OSS, organizations should establish an OSS governance program to manage OSS license compliance issues. The introduction of OSS governance could be challenging. However, OSS governance program can be established and maintained properly by assigned teams with clearly defined policies and processes, and enhanced by means of automated tools. This thesis focuses on the main best practices for getting started with open source software governance at companies. In this paper, we conducted a literature review to build a theoretical foundation to derive the research question as well as the interview questions. We used 6 interviews as the main source for our research. Open qualitative survey method is applied to compose the research results. We formulated 25 best practices and categorized into four main categories, namely “Management, Processes, Supplementary and Tools”. We presented the findings in form of best practice patterns as a research result of this paper to be used as a handbook, which could be used at software product companies for building the initial phase of OSS governance program.

Keywords: Open Source Software, FLOSS, Open Source Governance, Best Practice, Qualitative Survey Method, Qualitative Data Analysis

PDFs: Master Thesis, Work Description

Reference: Gözde Hazer. Open Source Governance: Getting Started Best Practices for Software Companies. Master Thesis, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg: 2018.