Voice-enabled applications, applications that interact with a user via an audio channel, are used extensively today. Their use is growing as speech related technologies improve, as speech is one of the most natural methods of interaction. They can provide customer support as IVRs, can be used as an assistive technology, or can become an aural interface to the Internet. Given that the telephone is used extensively throughout the globe, the number of potential users of voice-enabled applications is very high. VoiceXML is a popular, open, high-level, standard means of creating voice-enabled applications which was designed to bring the benefits of web based development to services. While VoiceXML is an ideal language for creating these applications, VoiceXML gateways, the hardware and software responsible for interpreting VoiceXML applications and interfacing with the PSTN, are still expensive and so there is a need for a low-cost gateway. Asterisk, and open-source, TDM/VoIP telephony platform, can be used as a low-cost PSTN interface. This thesis investigates adding a VoiceXML service to Asterisk, creating a low-cost VoiceXML prototype gateway which is able to render voice-enabled applications. Following the Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) paradigm, the VoiceXML gateway is divided into a set of components which are sourced from the open-source community, and integrated to create the gateway. The browser requires a VoiceXML interpreter (OpenVXI), a Text-To-Speech engine (Festival) and a speech recognition engine (Sphinx 4). The integration of the components results in a low-cost, open-source VoiceXML gateway. System tests show that the integration of the components was successful, and that the system can handle concurrent calls. A fully compliant version of the gateway can be used in the real world to render voice-enabled applications at a low cost. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.55 Paper Capture Plug-in

One of the main challenges that modern software developers face is the coordination of dependent agents such as software projects and other developers. Transparent development environments that make low-level software development activities visible hold much promise for assisting developers in making coordination decisions. However, the wealth of information that transparent environments provide is potentially overwhelming when developers are wading through information from potentially millions of developers and millions of software repositories when making decisions around tasks that require coordination with projects or other developers. Overcoming the risk of overload and better assisting developers in these environments requires a principled understanding of what exactly developers need to know about dependencies to make their decisions. My approach to a principled understanding of how developers use information in transparent environments is to model the process using signaling theory as a theoretical lens. Developers making key coordination decisions often must determine qualities about projects and other developers that are not directly observable. Developers infer these unobservable qualities through interpreting information in their environment as signals and use this judgment about the project or developer to inform their decision. In contrast to current software engineering literature which focuses on technical coordination between modules or within projects such as modularity or task assignment mechanisms, this work aims to understand how developers use signals to information coordination decisions with dependencies such as other projects or developers. Through this understanding of the signaling process, I can create improved signals that more accurately represent desired unobservable qualities. My dissertation work examines the qualities and signals that developers use to inform specific coordination tasks through a series of three empirical studies. The specific key coordination tasks studied are evaluating code contributions, discussing problems around contributions, and evaluating projects. My results suggest that when project managers evaluate code contributions, they prefer social signals over technical signals. When project managers discuss contributions, I found that they attend to political signals regarding influence from stakeholders to prioritize which problems need solutions. I found that developers evaluating projects tend to use signals that are related to how the core team works and the potential utility a project provides. In a fourth study, using signaling theory and findings from the qualities and signals that developers use to evaluate projects, I create and evaluate an improved signal called “supportiveness” for community support in projects. I compare this signal against the current signal that developers use, stars count, and find evidence suggesting that my designed signal is more robust and is a stronger indicator of support. The findings of these studies inform the design of tools and environments that assist developers in coordination tasks through suggestions of what signals to show and potentially improving existing signals. My thesis as a whole also suggests opportunities for exploring useful signals for other coordination tasks or even in different transparent environments.

In recent years, a surprising new phenomenon has emerged in which globally-distributed online communities collaborate to create useful and sophisticated computer software. These open source software groups are comprised of generally unaffiliated individuals and organizations who work in a seemingly chaotic fashion and who participate on a voluntary basis without direct financial incentive. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between the social network structure of these intriguing groups and their level of output and activity, where social network structure is defined as 1) closure or connectedness within the group, 2) bridging ties which extend outside of the group, and 3) leader centrality within the group. Based on well-tested theories of social capital and centrality in teams, propositions were formulated which suggest that social network structures associated with successful open source software project communities will exhibit high levels of bridging and moderate levels of closure and leader centrality. The research setting was the SourceForge hosting organization and a study population of 143 project communities was identified. Independent variables included measures of closure and leader centrality defined over conversational ties, along with measures of bridging defined over membership ties. Dependent variables included source code commits and software releases for community output, and software downloads and project site page views for community activity. A cross-sectional study design was used and archival data were extracted and aggregated for the two-year period following the first release of project software. The resulting compiled variables were analyzed using multiple linear and quadratic regressions, controlling for group size and conversational volume. Contrary to theory-based expectations, the surprising results showed that successful project groups exhibited low levels of closure and that the levels of bridging and leader centrality were not important factors of success. These findings suggest that the creation and use of open source software may represent a fundamentally new socio-technical development process which disrupts the team paradigm and which triggers the need for building new theories of collaborative development. These new theories could point towards the broader application of open source methods for the creation of knowledge-based products other than software.

Online collaborative translation has received increased attention from Translation Studies, mostly with a focus on explaining the various models it exhibits and the factors that shape these models. This study takes a new perspective on this phenomenon by focusing on its outcome through the lens of terminology. A terminometric analysis is carried out on the terminology used in the discussions of Francophone users on online forums of the Ubuntu-Québec open-source software community. The implantation of terms used in the forums and those stored in a selection of major term banks is examined with the objective of identifying potential correlations between term implantation and term formation patterns. The examination indicates that most terms formed through the use and modification of existing linguistic resources have higher implantation rates than terms formed through the creation of new lexical items. A new avenue of terminometric research is introduced by shifting the focus from the institution to the community, aligning with the global shift in content production and distribution. The study provides insight into online collaboration in the context of localization and points out correlations between term formation patterns and term implantation. These observations can mark a starting point for terminological decision-making that is informed by user behaviour and may thus improve the reception of localized content by adapting to users' terminological expectations.

Cílem této práce je porovnání komerčních business intelligence nástrojů s nástroji Open Source v procesu implementace BI řešení ve střední firmě. V práci jsou porovnávány komerční aplikace Oracle (http://www.oracle.com) ? Oracle Warehouse Builder, Oracle Discoverer a Open Source nástroje z projektu Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.com) ? Kettle, Cube Designer a BI Platforma. Hodnocení obou systémů probíhá na základě předem definovaných metrik. Práce kromě popisu realizace obou řešení a jejich vzájemného porovnání také dává odpověď na zcela zásadní otázku, zda může Open Source řešení konkurovat tomu komerčnímu. Dalším přínosem je návrh modifikovatelného a znovupoužitelného stromu metrik, který je k hodnocení systémů použit.

This work concerns with possibilities of licensing. There are mentioned advantages and disadvantages of particular models. Further on, the prediction of future situation in the IT market, new techniques, trends and reasons of these changes are introduced. Work addresses to both types of software -- proprietary software and Open Source software. Next part of work deals with software piracy and problems, which are connected with it. In second part of the work are theoretical knowledge converted into practice. There is examined license politics of Microsoft and possibilities which are offered to different customers. The final part concerns with two firms which operate on Czech market. There is a view to licenses, which are owned by firms, followed by recommendation of optimization.

Companies and other organizations have to change and adapt their strategies and redefine their goals constantly. Actions and steps that are needed in order to achieve the defined goals and to realize the change are often executed in a form of a project. There is no doubt that projects need to be managed in an appropriate way. In organizations where there are more than one project executed in parallel and other projects are being planned or proposed at the same time it is necessary to manage not only the individual projects but the entire portfolio of projects and programmes. Portfolio management is needed to ensure that the selected projects are best aligned with the defined goals and the strategy but this requires an analysis of a large amount of data about current and upcoming projects or about available resources and their utilization. It is not always easy to get all required data and to perform the analysis. This is the reason why deployment of some project and portfolio management software tool should be considered. This thesis deals with a search for suitable open source project and portfolio management tools and with assessment of costs and benefits of deployment of selected open source tool in a hypothetical IT company. The goal of this thesis is to define the term project and portfolio management tool and to find at least five open source tools of this type that are suitable for deployment in an organization. At least one of these tools should be suitable for deployment in the IT company. Another goal is comparison of features and functionality provided by the open source tools with functionality provided by the robust proprietary project and portfolio management solution deployed on premise and with one solution offered in the Software-as-a-Service model. Creation of a business case dealing with implementation of the selected open source tool is the last goal of this thesis. Identification and description of available open source tools and comparison of these tools with representatives of the robust project and portfolio management tools developed and distributed in models different from open source are considered the main benefits of this thesis. The terms "open source software" and "project and portfolio management tool" are defined in the first part of this work. The definition of terms is followed by the definition of the overall approach to the assessment of the open source tools which involves definition of assessment criteria and obligatory requirements. Next part of the work is dedicated to the selection of the open source tools that are suitable for deployment in an organization and which represent candidates for project and portfolio management tools. Assessment of these tools using the defined criteria is performed as the next step which is followed by the comparison with representatives of proprietary project and portfolio management tools. Last part of the work is dedicated to the business case which deals with deployment of the selected open source tool. This work concludes with discussion whether the defined goals were met or not, and with the summary of the results.

The purpose of this thesis is to design and implement integration interface, which represents the core of the Integrated testing tool. Integrated testing tool provides support in the whole process of software testing. This support involves requirement specification and management of the corresponding tests, bug management and creation and execution of automated testing scripts. Integrated testing tool uses existing open-source tools to provide this functionality. The communication of these tools is provided by the integration interface, implementation of which is the purpose of this thesis. Currently there is no so complex open-source solution in the testing area, Integrated testing tool endeavours to fill this gap. The tool is being developed within the activity of the competence centre Software Quality Assurance at the University of Economics in Prague. The analytical phase of the development is described in the diploma thesis written by Bc. Jan Ženíšek Project of the development of Integrated testing tool.

Methods and ways of implementation of changes and innovations in companies through project management are in today's society very well established. There exists methodologies, techniques and tools for the management of individual projects. However in a role of project manager, I very often faced the fact that companies are performing the project portfolio management in very intuitive way. This in itself leads to failed and prematurely terminated projects, initiation of the wrong projects or realisation of correct projects, but at the wrong time. Very often I have also recognized, that there is lack of awareness of fact, that there are also Open Source applications that can help with the organization's portfolio. This thesis deals with the definition of requirements, search and selection of proper OSS application and subsequent implementation. In the first part of this thesis I prepare a theoretical framework about PPM, and on that basis then identify and verify a set of requirements for selection of right OSS PPM application. The next section of thesis describes searching for suitable applications from a variety of sources, assessment against the requirements and the final selection. In the last part the implementation project is drafted, which aims to serve other colleagues in project management as one of the possible implementation paths. The outputs are then continuously confronted with experts in matter of projects and project management in the field of IT in order to maximize symbiosis between theory and real life experiences. Virtually every project management methodology defines the collection of already-proven techniques, best practices or lessons learned from the previous similar implementations. The main contribution of this thesis I see in fact that it contains not only the design of the project implementation, but also describes a logical path, what leads to the result. Therefore this thesis could be used as a base or discussed best practice, when a project of implementation of PPM application in place.

The main goal of master thesis is to analyze and propose possible low cost Business Intelligence solution with open source technologies and comparison of available tools for implementation in middle size company. We compare Pentaho and Jaspersoft tools implemented on local hardware and cloud environment with Microsoft Azure services. The theoretical part focuses mainly on understanding the business intelligence and its architecture, because architecture is an important part of the work. Actual tools are designed as stand alone modules for specific activities in the business intelligence lifecycle. Low cost tools are often connected with open source technologies and cloud computing. This part of the work contains explanation of these terms and their advantages and disadvantages for our chosen target group of companies. The analytical part includes defined parameters by which it is conducted analysis of tools and their comparison. Business Intelligence solutions are divided according to arcitectural layers. The evaluation criteria are divided into financial, technical and user category. In conclusion, chosen tools are compared and evaluated. The main contribution of this thesis is comparison of open source business intelligence tools for implementation in middle size company. According to the EU directive, middle size company does not exceed 250 employees or profit is less than 50 million euros. The reader can compare the different solutions and their pitfalls or shortcomings that could be critical for the implementation.