%0 Journal Article %J Empirical Software Engineering %D 2016 %T An empirical study of integration activities in distributions of open source software %A Adams, Bram %A Kavanagh, Ryan %A Hassan, Ahmed E. %A Daniel M. German %X Reuse of software components, either closed or open source, is considered to be one of the most important best practices in software engineering, since it reduces development cost and improves software quality. However, since reused components are (by definition) generic, they need to be customized and integrated into a specific system before they can be useful. Since this integration is system-specific, the integration effort is non-negligible and increases maintenance costs, especially if more than one component needs to be integrated. This paper performs an empirical study of multi-component integration in the context of three successful open source distributions (Debian, Ubuntu and FreeBSD). Such distributions integrate thousands of open source components with an operating system kernel to deliver a coherent software product to millions of users worldwide. We empirically identified seven major integration activities performed by the maintainers of these distributions, documented how these activities are being performed by the maintainers, then evaluated and refined the identified activities with input from six maintainers of the three studied distributions. The documented activities provide a common vocabulary for component integration in open source distributions and outline a roadmap for future research on software integration. %B Empirical Software Engineering %I Springer %V 21 %P 960–1001 %U http://mcis.soccerlab.polymtl.ca/publications/2016/integration_oss_distribution.pdf %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/integration_oss_distribution.pdf %0 Conference Paper %B OSS2005: Open Source Systems %D 2005 %T Experiences teaching a graduate course in Open Source Software Engineering %A Daniel M. German %K course %K FOSS %K MOTIVATION %K open source %K open source software engineering %X This paper describes the early experiences of a graduate course in open source software engineering at the Department of Computer Science at the University Victoria. It includes a description of the motivation for the course, its structure and evaluation methods. It concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned and its future. %B OSS2005: Open Source Systems %P 326-328 %U http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/971 %0 Conference Paper %B Proceedings of the 2nd ICSE Workshop on Open Source %D 2002 %T The evolution of the GNOME Project %A Daniel M. German %K commercial software %K gnome %K organizational sponsorship %X The GNOME Project is an attempt to create a GUI desktop for Unix systems. Originally started by a handful of volunteers in 1996, GNOME has become the desktop of choice for Solaris, HP-UX, and Red Hat Linux, and it is currently developed by a team of approximately five hundred people around the world. The importance of GNOME to the Unix world has attracted the attention of several software companies who are actively participating in its development. At the same time, some of its volunteer developers have created enterprises who expect to sell services and products around GNOME. This extended abstract describes, first, the development model of GNOME, then the influence that private companies had had on the project: on one hand they are contributing a large amount of resources to the project, accelerating its development, and increasing its reliability and documentation; and on the other hand, the GNOME Foundation has been created to maintain the goal of the project to provide a free (as in freedom) software desktop for Unix, and avoid that the commercial interests of these partners could jeopardize the interests of the community. %B Proceedings of the 2nd ICSE Workshop on Open Source %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/German.pdf