Thesis (MBA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / The objective of this research is to characterise the factors influencing Open Source Software (OSS) adoption decisions in South African organisations. OSS is used extensively throughout the world, but there is a large amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding decisions to adopt OSS. The research improved this situation by determining the adoption factors that are relevant to South African organisations. OSS adoption is influenced by individual and organisational technology adoption factors. An extensive literature revealed the technology adoption factors relevant to OSS adoption. Adoption factors identified in literature were localised to the South African context, taking into account both public and private sector organisations. The research has found that OSS adoption factors identified in literature are relevant in a South African context. Factors investigated include access to source code, adoption costs, software freedom and control, technological factors, support factors, organisational factors and environmental factors. An important factor in OSS adoption decisions is the choice between vendor and community based OSS and the skills and resource requirements. Choosing community based software requires additional training, skills and resources. Organisations should take into account the effect of OSS development methodology on adoption decision factors. Important adoption decision factors include software compatibility (open standards), compatibility different hardware platforms (cross platform capabilities) and software and hardware vendor independence. The research concludes with recommendations approaching OSS adoption decisions when considering the choice between OSS and proprietary software.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Open-source software (055) refers to software collaboratively developed by developers across the globe, which embraces the philosophy of sharing. The fundamental idea behind open-source is that when programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. The Internet plays an extremely important role in the distribution of the software and today, many 055 products are downloadable free from the Internet. Despite the inherent challenges, the research organisation Gartner predicts that the majority of mainstream IT organisations will successfully adopt formal open-source management strategies as core IT disciplines. What more, IT organisations and technology vendors who ignore the potential threats and opportunities of 055 will increasingly find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. However, organisations are not always clear on the appropriate strategy, direction, and approach to take when deciding on the role of 055 in their organisations. There is so much hype surrounding the use and the risks of open-source that it can be difficult for organisations to know what is real and what is not. Furthermore, organisations are intrigued but also stymied by the myths of the costs, support, and risks of 055. Also in South Africa, organisations and the South African Government are asking themselves how relevant the benefits and risks of the software are to them. Consequently, the aim of the study is to broaden the existing knowledge of 055 in South Africa by investigating a South African organisation's approach and decisions regarding the use of 055 in the organisation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: "Open-Source" sagteware (OSS) verwys na sagteware wat gesamentlik ontwikkel word deur programmeerders regoor die wêreld en die filosofie van "deel met mekaar" omvat. Die wesenlike idee agter "open-source" is dat wanneer programmeerders in staat is om die die bronkode van 'n program te kan lees, versprei en wysig, die sagteware verder en beter kan ontwikkel. Die Internet speel 'n belangrike rol in die verspreiding van die sagteware, en baie OSS- produkte is vandag gratis beskikbaar vir aflaai van die Internet af. Ongeag die inherente uitdagings, voorspel die navorsingsorganisasie Gartner, dat die meerderheid hoofstroom IT -organisasies formele "open-source" bestuurstrategieë suksesvol as kern IT-dissiplines sal aanneem. Wat meer is : IT-organisasies en verskaffers van tegnologie (harde en sagteware) wat die potensiële bedreigings en geleenthede van OSS ignoreer, sal hulself toenemend in 'n nadelig-kompeterende situasie bevind. Organisasies is dikwels nuuskierig, maar ook skepties ten opsigte van die mites rondom kostes, ondersteuningstelsels en risiko's verbonde aan OSS. Sommige organisasies het nie altyd helderheid rondom die toepaslike strategie, rigting en aanslag wat gevolg moet word, wanneer 'n besluit rondom die rol van OSS binne hul organisasies geneem moet word nie. Verder is soveel verkeerde persepsies en onsekerheid rondom die gebruik van, en risiko's verbonde aan "open-source", dat dit vir sommige organisasies moeilik raak om te onderskei tussen die feite en fiksie. Ook in Suid-Afrika vra organisasies en die Suid-Afrikaanse Regering hulself die vraag af hoe relevant die voordele en risiko's van die sagteware werklik is, en hoe dit hul raak. Die doel van hierdie studie is om die bestaande kennis rondom OSS in Suid-Afrika te verbreed, deur ondersoek in te stel na 'n Suid-Afrikaanse organisasie se benadering en besluite rondom die gebruik van OSS in hul organisasie.

ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / At ITC 2009, we described the real-world complications of fielding an airborne Synthetic beamforming Telemetry System, which simultaneously supports 20 individual beams (10 at each of 2 polarizations). We described how our layered Open-Source software approach helped us to modify the system rapidly after delivery without disrupting mission operations. Since then, we have further extended the software toolset that we developed to dissect the System behavior via post-mission replay and analysis, and to compare high-resolution in-flight measurements with our detailed physics simulations. This analysis has shown that the most significant factor affecting operational performance of the System was variation in the relative phase of the elements from day to day. These variations were traced to a variety of hardware issues, none of which could be resolved without major cost and effort. As an alternative approach, we developed a dynamic auto-tuning capability that optimizes the phase calibration of the System using each actual signal source as it is being tracked. This results in improved signal-to-noise performance while reducing the need for dedicated in-air calibration flights that we had previously created. We believe that the flexibility of digital beamforming, allied with a modular and easily-extensible software architecture, have again proven capable of quickly and cheaply mitigating real-world operational issues, without (so far) requiring any hardware modification of the delivered System.

Nowadays people and organizations are more and more interconnected in the forms of social networks: the nodes are social entities and the links are various relationships among them. The social network theory and the methods of social network analysis (SNA) are being increasingly used to study such real-world networks in order to support knowledge management and decision making in organizations. However, most existing social network studies focus on the static topologies of networks. The dynamic network link formation process is largely ignored. This dissertation is devoted to study such dynamic network formation process to support knowledge management and decision making in networked environments. Three challenges remain to be addressed in modeling and analyzing the dynamic network link formation processes. The first challenge is about modeling the network topological changes using longitudinal network data. The second challenge is concerned with examining factors that influence formation of links among individuals in networks. The third challenge is regarding link prediction in evolving social networks. This dissertation presents four essays that address these challenges in various knowledge management domains. The first essay studies the topological changes of a major international terrorist network over a 14-year period. In addition, this paper used a simulation approach to examine this network's vulnerability to random failures, targeted attacks, and real world authorities' counterattacks. The second essay and third essay focuses on examining determinants that significantly influence the link formation processes in social networks. The second essay found that mutual acquaintance and vehicle affiliations facilitate future co-offending link formation in a real-world criminal network. The third essay found that homophily in programming language preference, and mutual are determinants for forming participation links in an online Open Source social network. The fourth essay focuses on the link prediction in evolving social networks. It proposes a novel infrastructure for describing and utilizing the discovered determinants of link formation process (i.e. semantics of social networks) in link prediction to support expert recommendation application in an Open Source developer community. It is found that the integrated mechanism outperforms either user-based or Top-N most recognized mechanism.

To increase productivity, application developers are using tools that allow them to create higher quality applications faster. One such set of tools, open-source frameworks, allows application developers to reuse software artifacts and should increase application quality. However, given the vast number of open-source frameworks available, users must be able to differentiate among frameworks and select the one best suited for them. In this study, we expand the taxonomy of open-source frameworks and analyze the impact of the framework's characteristics, technical quality, and social pressure on perceived usefulness and continued framework usage intention. Our findings suggest that understandability and flexibility have a significant impact on perceived ease of use, while perceived usefulness is mainly determined by flexibility and efficiency. Our research can be used to understand what influences developers to continue using frameworks and to improve framework development. / viii, 129 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

Package party, implemented in the R system for statistical computing, provides basic classes and methods for recursive partitioning along with reference implementations for three recently-suggested tree-based learners: conditional inference trees and forests, and model-based recursive partitioning. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

Open source software (OSS) is typically created in a decentralized self-organizing process by a community of developers having the same or similar interests. A key factor for the success of OSS over the last two decades is the internet: Developers who rarely meet face-to-face can employ new means of communication, both for rapidly writing and deploying software. Therefore, many tools emerged that assist a collaborative software development process, including in particular tools for source code management (SCM) and version control. In the R world, SCM is not a new idea, in fact, the R Development Core Team has always been using SCM tools for the R sources; first by means of Concurrent Versions System (CVS), and then via Subversion (SVN). A central repository is hosted by ETH Zürich mainly for managing the development of the base R system. Mailing lists like R-help, R-devel and many others are currently the main communication channels in the R community. Also beyond the base system, many R contributors employ SCM tools for managing their R packages, e.g., via web-based SVN repositories like SourceForge (http://SourceForge.net/) or Google Code (http://Code.Google.com/). However, there has been no central SCM repository providing services suited to the specific needs of R package developers. Since early 2007, the R-project offers such a central platform to the R community. R-Forge (http://R-Forge.R-project.org/) provides a set of tools for source code management and various web-based features. It aims to provide a platform for collaborative development of R packages, R-related software or further projects. / Series: Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics

In this study, the researcher created a model and software application for identifying the factors that are relevant in the decision making process to select and implement Open-source applications in higher education. Open-source applications provide the programming syntax to the user for customization. Unlike proprietary software, where the source code is unavailable and illegal to alter, an Open-Source Software (OSS) application authorizes the user to edit and recompile the application to meet the specific needs of the institution or organization. OSS applications are either free or purchasable for a one-time fee. The rising cost of proprietary software has motivated many academic institutions to consider implementing OSS. Many IT professionals are investigating the advantages and disadvantages of open-source applications in an attempt to mitigate expensive yearly fees, licensures and maintenance costs required by proprietary software vendors. The data collected in the study represented OSS and non-OSS enabled institutions that were members of the Council of Higher Education and Accreditation (CHEA) Organization. Of the data collected from the institutions, a portion of the information was set aside for validation purposes. The model created in this research addressed the OSS concerns in higher education by identifying the experiences, institutional characteristics, and technical systems relevant to the selection and implementation of OSS applications. The researcher used the Visual Basic .NET programming language to create the model and software application that provided academic institutions with technical OSS information and support. The Intelligent Software Agent (ISA) simplified the data analysis process by providing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the user to enter and receive data. The results of this research allowed institutions to specify certain criteria such as highest degree awarded, relevant characteristics, and technological factors and then receive implementation suggestions for adopting OSS applications. The validation process indicated that the tabled data in the model and generated suggestions of the ISA were statistically comparable with the data that was set-aside for validation purposes.

Um processo de software é definido pelas diversas atividades comumente efetuadas durante o desenvolvimento de software, considerando que tais atividades sejam realizadas sob políticas bem definidas e procedimentos bem estabelecidos. Assim, existem diversos modelos de processo de desenvolvimento de software, que visam garantir a qualidade do produto desenvolvido por meio de tal processo. Identificando a necessidade de processos de software específicos para o desenvolvimento de software livre, devido aos modelos tradicionais não considerarem as características do desenvolvimento deste tipo de software, foi proposto no contexto do Projeto QualiPSo o modelo OMM (Open Source Maturity Model). Com o intuito de contribuir com o modelo OMM e a comunidade de software livre, esse trabalho teve como um de seus objetivos a análise do emprego de wikis no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Outro objetivo dessa pesquisa foi o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para mensurar o quanto de documentação e registro de Design Rationale tem sido realizado em uma wiki / A software process is defined by several activities commonly performed during the software development, whereas such activities are conducted under well defined policies and and well established procedures. Thus, there are various models of software development process designed to ensure the quality of the product developed through this processes. By identifying the need for software processes specific to the development of free software, due to traditional models do not consider the characteristics of this type of software, the OMM Model (Open Source Maturity Model) was proposed in the the QualiPSos project context. Aiming to contribute with the OMM model and free software community, one of this work objectives was the analysis of using wikis in the software development process. The other objective of this research was to develop a tool to measure how much documentation and registration of Design Rationale has been performed in a wiki

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo apresentar as licenças de software livre mais importantes, sob a luz dos seus principais aspectos jurídicos e da inter-compatibilidade, de forma a auxiliar pessoas envolvidas no desenvolvimento de software a compreender as implicações destas licenças ao fazer uso delas em seus projetos. A dissertação contextualiza as licenças, tanto no tocante à legislação brasileira, quanto no que diz respeito às restrições de licenciamento, de forma a viabilizar a análise de compatibilidade que se segue. Casos de projetos proeminentes de software livre cujo desenvolvimento foi afetado pelas implicações mencionadas ilustram a investigação, que é complementada por uma análise de ferramentas e metodologias existentes que auxiliam na gestão dos aspectos de licenciamento. / The purpose of this Master thesis is to present the most common free software licenses, regarding their main legal and inter-compatibility aspects, to help people involved in software development understand the implications of these licenses when using them in their projects. It contextualizes the licenses, both in terms of the Brazilian legislation, and regarding licensing restrictions, to make the subsequent compatibility analysis possible. Cases of free and open source software in which development was affected by the mentioned implications illustrate the research, and it is complemented by an analysis of existing tools and methodologies that assist in the management of licensing issues.