RISCOSS creates a link between Open Source Software and Risk factors


Jun 06 2014

Interview: Alessandra Bagnato, Research Scientist and Project Manager at SOFTEAM R&D

What do you think of the RISCOSS project?

RISCOSS aims at helping users making smart decisions about the open source software to be selected, providing an automated platform that focuses on risk identification.

What do you expect from RISCOSS?

I would expect the delivery of the RISCOSS automated platform to be able to provide an answer to the following question: "Given the information available on this OSS project and my specific needs, what risks and at which level will I be confronted to if I choose to integrate this open source software? RISCOSS will be a new platform providing an online service improving OSS adoption, helping the user selection focusing on specific users perceived risks.

What do you want to bring to the RISCOSS project?

I will be happy to bring the OSSMETER Project experiences and results, OSSMETER is a collaborative project, financially supported by the European Commission.
OSSMETER aims to extend the state-of-the-art in the field of automated analysis and measurement of open-source software (OSS), and develop a platform that will support decision makers in the process of discovering, comparing, assessing and monitoring the health, quality, impact and activity of open-source software.
To achieve this, OSSMETER will compute trustworthy quality indicators by performing advanced analysis and integration of information from diverse sources including the project metadata, source code repositories, communication channels and bug tracking systems of OSS projects. OSSMETER does not aim at building another OSS forge but instead at providing a meta-platform for analysing existing OSS projects that are developed in existing OSS forges and foundations such as OW2, SourceForge, Google Code, GitHub, Eclipse, Mozilla and Apache.

RISCOSS is a research project for the moment, what future do you see for it?

I would expect a platform able to provide a link between Open Source Software and Risk factors during the adoption decision making process in a cross industry fashion, being that RISCOSS enables the user to make decisions that are adapted to its business context and its risk profile, e.g. we could imagine a profile for Software Industry including Integrity risk and Perceived Information assurance risks where Integrity risk is present when information is no longer reliable or accurate. It is about the data integrity where data could have been changed inappropriately by accident or by malign activity or Perceived Information Assurance refers to make sure all safeguards, legal, compliance and other aspects are fully met and upon expectations. I would expect a SaaS business model.

A word on Alessandra Bagnato, Research Scientist and Project Manager at SOFTEAM R&D
Alessandra_Bagnato.jpg
Research Scientist and Project Manager at SOFTEAM R&D Department. Actively involved in fostering R&D in Europe and in the Open Source promotion and adoption by the industry, Alessandra is also member of the RISCOSS Advisory Board. Currently she is involved in the FP7 project OSSMETER (Automated Measurement and Analysis of Open Source Software) funded by European Commission for the improvement of the state-of-the-art in the field of automated analysis and measurement of open-source software.