Future of the Creation of Software

. Good start.  
. The driving forces you have done have generic titles, and do not indicate a direction.  Something like "economic forces" should be "increase in economy as prime driver in societies" which explores how we have moved from systems of social capital, to capital (i.e. youth caring for the old, to pension schemes caring for the old)
. Would like to see at least 8 driving forces (that is 2 DF /per person in the group)
. Have you found other groups DF to be useful to you?
. The systems diagram looks GREAT, but it does not label the links!!  The reason we are making a systems diagram is that we can map how things interconnect.  Without the labels we do not differentiate the connections from each other.  Otherwise it is a good map.
. GOOD LUCK!

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GROUP COMPOSITION

We are the MBA students at the Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Future of the Creation of Software is presented to you by:

1. Chikako Okada
2. Shubhra Deshmukh
3. Sonja Srubar
4. Yin-Chen Hsu

INTRODUCTION

Two models of software creation are locked in a battle to the end. Will most software be created as proprietary systems or created as open source in all it hybrid forms. Can 25 000 best in class developers in Redmond produce a superior operating system in contrast to a million registered Linux amateur developers? At the heart of the debate are conceptions of ownership, creativity, professionalism, and the consumer economy. Will software patents make a comeback, as a possible limitation of open source in the future? Is there a third way, with open standards such as used in MPEG4 and by SAP?

UNCERTAINTIES

The software creation is plagued with different uncertainities. These can be grouped into following:

1. Technological Uncertainities
2. Impact of Industry
3. Impact of Government
4. Impact of Economic conditions

These are elaborated in next section.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

To check answers please click on the topic heading.

1. What is open source software?
2. How is the open source software developed?
3. Is the open source easier to develop than closed source?
4. Who would be responsible for maintenance, quality and reliability control?
5. Can software created on open-source OS be copy righted?
6. Won’t adoption of open source software stifle innovation of software?
7. How does open standards used in MPEG4 and SAP work? Does this mean part of these software is changeable/copyrighted while is part is not?
8. Does system thinking work in open source development?
9. Security issues in open source
10. Commercialization of open source software.
11. How is the role of the programmer affected by changing technology?
12. What is automatic software development?
13. What are the implications of an automatic code developer?
14. What is generic software?
15. Is there any automated self generating software system? If yes, How does it works?
16. What role does industry play?
17. Who are the major players supporting open source and proprietary software?
18. Mixing of the open and closed source - why firms want to do it? Effect on industry as whole?
19. Future of coexistence of Linux and Windows
20. What is the history of open source versus proprietary software?
21. How does open source work in line (or violates) intellectual property rights?
22. Problems of monopoly in case of closed source?
23. What role does government play in this debate? Which type of software creation will it support?
24. What are the economic benefits and detriments of developing open source system?
25. What are the factors that influence companies’ decision whether to use open source application?
26. How does society influence creation of software?

DRIVING FORCES

Based upon the research question and answers, we came up with following driving forces:

1. Software industry moves from developed countries to emerging market. i.e. from US to India China, Brazil etc.
   
2. Promotion of open source software by governement
   
3. Loosened fiscal policy increases capital flow
   
4. Education level differences drive creation of software
   
5. Increase in concentration of software industry
   
6. Further fragmentation of software industry
   
7. NGO's increases awareness of society about software industry
   
8. Rapid advancement in technology drives innovation in software
   
9. Increase demand for user friendly software
   
10. Increase in demand for secure software
    
11. Increase in demand for web-service based applications
    

System Diagram

Different relationships are represented by lines of different colors. The legend is as given below.

SCENARIOS

Based on the driving forces we came up with following scenarios:

The tentative scenarios are as listed below:

1. Scenario 1: "Internet Era"
   
2. Scenario 2: "Fight Club"
   
3. Scenario 3: "E-pocalypse Now"
   

SCENARIOS PRESENTATION

Please click on the link below to see the presentation for these scenarios.