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Commercial Open Source Workshop Series

Registration for CROSS Members and UCSC Student/Faculty/Staff

Registration information for all other participant

 

In September 2020, CROSS is pleased to be hosting a workshop series facilitated by CROSS visiting researcher Dr. Dirk Riehle, Professor of Open Source Software at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. Professor Rielhe will hold two multi-session workshops (11 sessions in total); the first workshop runs from September 8-16 and second workshop runs from September 17-24. Each session will include a 45 to 60 minutes lecture followed by Q&A.

Workshop Topics

Workshop 1: How Commerical Open Source Works

Workshop 2: How to Spin-out a Startup from University

 

Registration

 

Registration is required to participate and registered participants will have access to recorded sessions for up to one-month after the workshop ends. Zoom links for each workshop will be emailed to participants after registration.

Registration for CROSS and UCSC affiliates (No cost)

Registration for non-affiliated participants

 

About the Instructor:
Prof. Dr. Dirk Riehle, M.B.A., is the Professor of Open Source Software at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. Before joining academia, Riehle led the Open Source Research Group at SAP Labs, LLC, in Palo Alto, California (Silicon Valley). He works on open source and inner source software engineering as well as agile software development methods and continuous delivery. Prof. Riehle holds a Ph.D. in computer science from ETH Zürich and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He welcomes email at dirk@riehle.org, blogs at https://dirkriehle.com, and tweets as @dirkriehle.


Workshop Outlines

Commercial Open Source Workshop 1: How Commercial Open Source Works

Summary

This series of workshops (combined lecture with discussion) introduces participants to the software industry, open source software, and then specifically commercial open source software strategies. 

Audience

Graduate students and professionals interested in learning more about open source opportunities.

 

Session Schedule

SESSION

DATE

TIME

TITLE

1

2020-09-08

9:00am PDT

The Software Industry

2

2020-09-09

9:00am PDT

Software Products

3

2020-09-10

9:00am PDT

Software Vendors

4

2020-09-14

9:00am PDT

Open Source Software

5

2020-09-15

9:00am PDT

Open Source Projects

6

2020-09-16

9:00am PDT

Community Management

Session Content

Session 1: The Software Industry
  1. Definition (software)
  2. The software industry
  3. A (very) short history
  4. The main players
  5. Software products
  6. Software platforms
  7. Software ecosystems

Session 2: Software Products

  1. Software as a product
  2. Intellectual property
  3. Core product
  4. Basic product
  5. Whole product
  6. Product architecture
  7. Product life-cycle

Session 3: Software Vendors

  1. Products and vendors
  2. Projects vs. product firms
  3. Business functions
  4. Core business processes
  5. The income statement
  6. Vendor life-cycle
  7. Example business models

Session 4: Open Source Software

  1. Legal definition (open source software)
  2. A (very) short history
  3. Traditional open source
  4. Challenges to traditional open source
  5. Open source foundations
  6. Open source control mechanisms
  7. Community vs. commercial open source

Session 5: Open Source Projects

  1. Process definition (open source)
  2. Project communities
  3. Users and contributors
  4. Roles and responsibilities
  5. Communication and collaboration
  6. Tools and engineering practices
  7. Example governance models

Session 6: Community Management

  1. Best practices
    • How to manage your time
    • How to empower community members
    • How to drive attention
    • How to engage contributors
    • How to manage expectations
    • How to govern well
  2. The economics of community

Commercial Open Source Workshop 2: How to Spin-out a Startup from University

Summary

This series of workshops (combined lecture with discussion) introduces students to how software startups work and how to turn an academic software project into a commercial startup. 

Audience

Entrepreneurial students, engineering students, ideally (but not necessarily) with an existing software project, and professionals interested in learning more about open source opportunities. 

Session Schedule

SESSION

DATE

TIME

TITLE

1

2020-09-17

9:00am PDT

Commercial Open Source

2

2020-09-21

9:00am PDT

Product Management

3

2020-09-22

9:00am PDT

Software Startups

4

2020-09-23

9:00am PDT

University spin-offs

5

2020-09-24

9:00am PDT

The funding ecosystem

 

Session Content

Session 1: Commercial Open Source

  1. Definition (commercial open source)
  2. Economic significance
  3. The three core strategies
  4. Single vendor open source firms
  5. Open source distributor firms
  6. Service and support firms
  7. Benefits by business function

Session 2: Product Management

  1. Product management in context
  2. Tools of the trade
  3. Feature differentiation
  4. The open core model
  5. IP rights management
  6. Cloud computing challenges
  7. Commercial open source life-cycle

Session 3: Software Startups

  1. Definition (startup)
  2. Teams, roles, responsibilities
  3. Customer discovery
  4. Customer discovery using open source
  5. Customer validation
  6. Customer validation using open source
  7. Startup life-cycle

Session 4: University Spin-offs

  1. Growing a university project
  2. Research vs. product
  3. IP rights management
  4. Public grants before spin-off
  5. IP valuation
  6. Spinning off
  7. Public grants after spin-off

Session 5: The Funding Ecosystem

  1. Public vs. private funding
  2. The main players
  3. How a startup is evaluated
  4. The mechanics of a funding round
  5. Expectations and risk profiles
  6. Growth and funding time-lines
  7. Working with a board






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