Monthly archives: May 2010


External event: Leveraging Open Source Software for Commercial Advantage

Andrew Katz has asked us to pass on details of the above event. Apologies for the short notice!

Andrew Katz, partner at Moorcrofts, and a former programmer himself, will be giving a brief presentation on the practical steps that companies can take to avoid the “viral” issues that many people perceive to be an issue with open source software, and will demonstrate that by taking some simple steps, companies can take advantage of the vast pool of high quality software code and use it to their own commercial advantage, after which he and the rest of the Moorcrofts team will be available to discuss the issues, and there will also be an opportunity to network over a pint and some nibbles.

When
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 6:00 PM (GMT+0100)
Where
George and Dragon The Causeway (Lower High Street)
SL7 2AA Marlow
United Kingdom

Further details at http://moorcrofts.eventbrite.com/


2nd Call for Papers: OpenCert 2010

4th International Workshop on Foundations and Techniques for OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE CERTIFICATION

Location and date
Pisa, Italy – 17-18 September 2010
Satellite Event to SEFM 2010
Website
http://opencert.iist.unu.edu/
Submission deadline
28 June, 2010

News


A special issue of Science of Computer Programming with selected papers is planned.
A final decision on this issue depends on the number and quality of the submissions.

CONTEXT & OBJECTIVES

Over the past decade, the Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon has had a global impact on
the way software systems and and software-based services are developed, distributed and deployed.
Widely acknowledged benefits of OSS include reliability, low development and maintenance costs,
as well as rapid code turnover. Linux distributions, Apache and MySQL serve, among many other examples,
as a testimony to its success and resilience.

However, state-of-the-art OSS, by the very nature of its open, unconventional, distributed
development model, make software quality assessment, let alone full certification, particularly
hard to achieve and raises important challenges both from the technical/methodological and
the managerial points of view.

This makes the use of OSS, and, in particular, its integration within complex industrial-strength
applications, with stringent security requirements, a risk. And, simultaneously an opportunity and
a challenge for rigourous, mathematically based, methods in software analysis and engineering.

In such a context, the aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from academia and industry
who are broadly interested in the quality assessment of open source software projects, ultimately leading
to the establishment of coherent certification processes, at different levels.

Following the success of the three previous editions (colocated to ETAPS’07, in Braga, and OSS’08,
at IFIP WCC, in Milan, and ETAPS’09, in York), the workshop will focus on formal methods and
model-based techniques that appear promising to facilitate OSS certification.
Both foundational, methodological and pragmatic issues will be addressed, through both standard
technical communications and reports on concrete case-studies and experimental data.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Contributions are expected to foster a broad debate on OSS assessment and certification, integrating
techniques and elements from areas as different as

  • product and process certification
  • certification standards
  • formal modelling and verification (model checking and theorem proving)
  • software quality and reverse engineering
  • static analysis, testing and inspection
  • safety, security and usability certification
  • language design and evolving systems
  • automated source code analyses
  • empirical studies

SUBMISSION

The two-day workshop will feature invited talks, a pannel discussion and contributed
paper presentations. All contributions, in the form of either full technical papers,
between 10 and 16 pages, or short position papers, will undergo a peer-review process.
All papers should be written in English and in ECEASST format.

Detailed information on the submission procedure are available at http://opencert.iist.unu.edu

PUBLICATION

Accepted papers will be published in Electronic Communications of the EASST (ECEASST)
A special issue of Science of Computer Programming with selected papers is planned.
A final decision on this issue depends on the number and quality of the submissions.

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Abstract submission: 21 June, 2010
  • Paper submission deadline: 28 June, 2010
  • Acceptance notification: 27 July, 2010
  • Final version due: 14 August, 2010

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

  • B. Aichernig, Graz, Austria
  • A. Abdurahmanovic, PrimeKey, Sweden
  • L. Barbosa, Minho, Portugal (co-chair)
  • A. Capiluppi, East London, UK
  • A. Cerone, UNU-IIST, Macau, SAR China (co-chair)
  • G. Ciobanu, A.I. Cuza, Romania
  • E. Damiani, Milano, Italy
  • J. Davies, Oxford, UK
  • R. di Cosmo, Paris Diderot, France
  • F. Fabbrini, ISTI-CNR, Italy
  • M. J. Frade, Minho, Portugal
  • J. Fisteus, Madrid Carlos III, Spain
  • D. Ghica, Birmingham, UK
  • T. Janowski, UNU-IIST, Macau, SAR China
  • P. Krishnan, Bond, Australia
  • P. Milazzo, Pisa, Italy
  • J. Miranda, Multicert, Portugal
  • J. Noll, LERO, Ireland
  • A. Petrenko, ISP-RAS, Russia
  • S. Pickin, Madrid Carlos III, Spain
  • S. Shaikh, Coventry, UK (co-chair)
  • S. K. Sowe, UNU-MERIT, The Netherlands
  • R. Treinen, Paris Diderot, France
  • J. Visser, SIG, The Netherlands
  • D. von Oheimb, Siemens, Germany
  • T. Vos, UP Valencia, Spain
  • A. Wasserman, CMU, USA

CONTACTS

opencert-2010@iist.unu.edu