MARKOS The Market for Open Source

An Intelligent Virtual Open Source Marketplace

MARKOS BACKGROUND
The request for global knowledge of available, reusable code,
algorithms and knowledge in Open Source Software (OSS)
projects highlights the need to free the software analysts and
developers from the technological barriers caused by the het
erogeneity of approaches adopted by each OSS project to
provide similar information on the software characteristics.
Technology heterogeneity is not the only obstacle. Strong legal
competencies are required for evaluating how to combine soft
ware components adopting different licences.
In this context, the MARKOS project aims to create a prototype
of an interactive application and a Linked Data API providing
an integrated view and semantic query features on the OSS
projects available on the web, focusing on functional, struc
tural and licensing aspects of software code.
A TYPICAL MARKOS USE-CASE
Currently, the web offers several code search tools, which
index Open Source projects to allow a software engineer to
search and analyze the source code published on the web.
Nevertheless, such services are mainly based on the textual
representation of the code. Limited support is provided, for
example, to search for a specific class or a specific package
(i.e. the static semantics of the code), or to analyse the
depen
dency between components made available by dif
ferent projects. Moreover, there is limited support to highlight
licensing incompatibilities.
Imagine for instance a software developer that needs an Open
Source version of a software component implementing a piece
of functionality represented by a standard interface or API. The
desired component could be a single class, such as an imple
mentation of the Java interface java.util. list, or the implemen
tation of a full API such as the Java JDBC API identified by
the package names java.sql and javax.sql.
With current tools it is difficult for the developers to distin
guish projects that only use a specific code from projects that
implement it. Due to the intricacy of dependencies between
different projects and the heterogeneity of licence models it is
also more challenging to judge whether a project suffers of any
legal infringement.

Thanks to its software analysis capabilities MARKOS will be

able to recognize software components of different projects
that import and extend the same interfaces or API. It will show
the dependencies between components coming from differ
ent projects. Moreover, it will automatically analyse possible
licence violations providing legal argumentations, explaining
the reason of such an infringement.
EXPECTED IMPACT
The MARKOS system itself will be an Open Source Software,
which, thanks to the offered features, is expected to facilitate
software development based on the Open Source paradigm in
a global context.
The MARKOS project is expected to give a considerable contri
bution in terms of:
enabling software developers to use an intuitive and ad
vanced searching platform with an advanced service frontend allowing the easy identification of the more suitable
Open Source solutions needed;
providing the analysis of code dependencies, software
structures, and potential license infringements at a global
level instead of within single projects;
facilitating the publication of the description of Open
Source Software as Linked Data and the production of new
tools for software analysis and development that leverage
this semantic data;
allowing a faster adoption and integration of Open Source
components and libraries, mitigating issues related to
licensing incompatibility;
strengthening the European community of Open Source de
velopers, as it will increase quality of Open Source Software,
reducing time to market/use and establishing a validated
path to integrate Open Source components among them
and without the risks linked to complex and incompatible
licensing.
SUSTAINABILITY OF THE MARKOS PROJECT
The MARKOS project is expected to support analysts and de
velopers in research and collaboration and to be sustainable
after the end of the project. To do this, a well-defined path is
put in place, including:

Facts
30 Months Project
7 Partners in 5 Countries
Over 3,5 Million of potential users
registered Source Forge and BerliOS

How to participate
Interested parties, EU projects or other organisations are
welcome to participate in the planned project workshops.
They are encouraged to access the project website for regu
lar news and updates: www.markosproject.eu
For other forms of participation such as validation activi
ties, please contact the project coordinator or the technical
manager.

meaningful linkages to other EU similar projects and initia

tives;
promotion of project results through the partners web
sites, newsletters and other communication channels such
as SourceForge.net and Fraunhofer FOKUS test beds and
laboratories, whose goal is to bring together customers,
vendors, and administrations to discuss IT strategies and
solutions.

The Validation Process

Exploitation of project results

The MARKOS system will be validated in the project partners

environments and then directly in the Open Source developer
communities that the project seeks to support, such as BerliOS
and SourceForge.net. This assessment is focused not only on
the fulfillment of the project scientific and technical challenges,
but also conducting a fit-for-purpose evaluation that assesses
the MARKOS system in real life scenarios.

For a successful commercial uptake of the project results and

the developed system after the project, the MARKOS consor
tium is forging a specific exploitation plan lasting for the com
plete lifecycle of the project. The pillars are:
the analysis on economic forces acting on each actor of the
business scenario, aimed at highlighting potential strengths
and weaknesses in the relationship between them, identify
ing collaboration spaces and new research development to
be taken up by the OSS community;
individual exploitation strategies on how to capitalise on the
projects achievements, customised according to the field of
interest of each partner;
a strong input to community building activities along the life
of the project, aimed at creating a sustainable community
of developers for maintaining and further developing the
MARKOS system after the end of the project. This includes
the registration of the project on one of more OSS reposito
ries, such as SourceForge.net or BerliOS.

This fit-for-purpose evaluation is going to be conducted in dif

ferent workshops by selected groups of MARKOS users, upon
real life situations for the development of OSS products.
Other European projects creating or using Open Source
software are welcome to publish their results utilizing the
MARKOS repository or to retrieve adequate software compo
nents utilizing the MARKOS service front-end and Linked Data
API. MARKOS will additionally develop and provide an ontol
ogy describing the functional, structural and licenses aspects
of software components. This ontology can be used by other
European projects for the description of their components and
improves with respect to their experience.
A wide Dissemination strategy
MARKOS project results are addressed to different target
groups, such as the scientific community/academia, industrial
companies in the sector, public administrations, policy makers
and general media. A wide dissemination strategy is planned
accordingly, including:
the MARKOS project website with updated information on
the project progress and the main achieved results;
monthly updates on SourceForge.net and Slashdot.org with
43 Million unique visitors per month;
publication of scientific papers on high impact international
journals and conference proceedings, as well as participa
tion in international conferences;
articles in technical online media and OSS online services
and newsletters;

PARTNERS

MARKOS is a Collaborative Project (STREP), financed by the

European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for
Research and Technological Development, Area ICT, Activity
1.2 "Cloud Computing, Internet of Services and Advanced Soft
ware Engineering.

Contact
Silke Cuno M. A.
Project Coordinator
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS
silke.cuno@fokus.fraunhofer.de
Dr. KlausPeter Eckert
Project Coordinator
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS
klaus-peter.eckert@fokus.fraunhofer.de
Dr. Francesco Torelli
Technical Manager
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa
francesco.torelli@eng.it

www.markosproject.eu

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