Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This will result in some kind of an informal or even formally set up consor-
tium of co-developing firms and a so called “open source eco-system” around
this core is most likely to evolve. This has been demonstrated by many sim-
ilar FLOSS projects. The effect of cooperation of otherwise in competition
operating firms, based on a common standard core product, is often called
“co-competition”.
In analogy with other similar “open” projects the name “openETCS” has
been suggested for such a project. Occasionally expressed concern that such
a model would squander costly acquired intellectual property of the manu-
facturers to competitors does not really hit the point, because on the one
hand the essential functional knowledge, which is basically concentrated in
the specification, has already been published by UNISIG and ERA within the
SRS and cannot be used as unique selling point. On the other hand implemen-
tation know-how for specific hardware architecture and vehicle integration as
well as service knowledge will not be affected and has the potential to become
part of the core business for the industry. In addition, for the pioneering man-
ufacturer open up his own software could not be better investment money, if
this software becomes part of an industrial standard, which is very likely (if
others are not quickly following this move) as demonstrated several times in
the software industry. Not only that, but since safety related software prod-
ucts are closely related to the design process, tools and quality assurance
measures, the pioneering OSS supplier would automatically make his way of
designing software to an industrial standard as well (process standardization).
Late followers had simply to accept those procedures and may end up with
more or less higher switching costs, giving the pioneer a head start. Even
in the case that one or two competitors would do the same thing quickly,
those companies could form a consortium sharing their R&D cost and utiliz-
ing the effect of quality improving feedback from third parties and therefore
improving their competitive position compared to those firms sticking with
a proprietary product concept. The UNU-MERIT study on FLOSS [22] has
shown cost lowering (R&D average of 36%) and quality improving effects of
open source compared with closed source product lines.
3.2
ETCS Vehicle On-Board Units with “openETCS”
Software that comes with a FLOSS license and a Copy-Left, represent some
kind of a “gift with a commitment”, namely as such that the “donor” has
almost a claim to receive any improvements made and further distributed
by the “recipient”. That means all the technical improvements, which have
been based on collective experiences of other users/developers and integrated
into product improvements need to be distributed so that even the original
investor gets the benefits. By recalling the fact that during the life cycle of a
large software product, as shown in figure 4, more than 90% of the code and
improvements were made after the first product launch, means that sharing
the original software investment with a community (eco-system) becomes a
