Perface


Electronic Communications of the EASST
Volume 48 (2011)

Proceedings of the
Fifth International Workshop on
Foundations and Techniques for

Open source Software Certification
(OpernCert 2011)

Preface

2 pages

Guest Editors: Luis Soares Barbosa, Dimitrios Settas
Managing Editors: Tiziana Margaria, Julia Padberg, Gabriele Taentzer
ECEASST Home Page: http://www.easst.org/eceasst/ ISSN 1863-2122

http://www.easst.org/eceasst/


ECEASST

Preface

Over the past decade, the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) phenomenon has had
a global impact on the way software systems and software-based services are developed, dis-
tributed and deployed. Widely acknowledged benefits of FLOSS include reliability, low deve-
lopment and maintenance costs, as well as rapid code turnover. Linux distributions, Apache and
MySQL server, among many other examples, can be mentioned as a testimony to its success and
resilience.

Such a success has brought with it an increasing interest to use FLOSS for complex and
industrial-strength applications. 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 techni-
cal/methodological and the managerial points of view.

In such a context, the aim of the OpenCert series of workshops is to bring together researchers
from the academia and the industry interested in the quality assessment of FLOSS, and ultimately
provide a platform for the establishment of a coherent certification process for FLOSS.

The 1st International Workshop on Foundations and Techniques for Open Source Software
Certification (OpenCert 2007) was held on 31 March 2007 in Braga, Portugal, as a satellite
event of ETAPS 2007. From then on OpenCert run regularly every year. In 2008, jointly with
the International Workshop on Foundations and Techniques bringing together Free/Libre Open
Source Software and Formal Methods (FLOSS-FM 2008), was held as a satellite event of OSS
2008, in Mlian, Italy. In 2009 it was organised again as a satellite event of ETAPS, in York,
United Kingdom. Finally, in 2010, the 4th OpenCert workshop took place in Pisa, Italy, as a
satellite event of SEFM. The post-proceedings were published in volume 33 of the Electronic
Communications of the EASST. A special issue collecting the most significative papers of pre-
vious workshops is currently under preparation to appear in Science of Computer Programming.

This volume contains the post-proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Foundations
and Techniques for Open Source Software Certification (OpenCert 2011) held on 15 November
2011, in Montevideo, Uruguay, as a satellite event of SEFM’2011, the 9th International Con-
ference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods. It includes a total of four regular papers
and two short contributions, which were selected among ten submissions, each of them reviewed
by at least two Program Committee members. It also includes the full text of two invited talks,
one by Antonio Cerone, from UNU-IIST, and another by Ezequiel Bazan Eixarch, Gustavo Be-
tarte and Carlos Luna, from Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, and Universidad de la
República, Uruguay, respectively.

The editors would like to express their gratitude to all members of the Program Committee
for their hard work and support. The result in your hands would not have been possible without
their effort and commitment.

1 / 2 Volume 48 (2011)



Preface

Thanks extend, of course, to all members of the SEFM’2011 Organising Committee, in par-
ticular to Alberto Pardo, SEFM Conference Chair, who was most helpful in all occasions, and
the staff at the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, for their logistical, administrative and
technical support.

Luı́s Soares Barbosa (INESC TEC, Universidade do Minho)
Dimitrios Settas (UNU-IIST, United Nations University)

Proc. OpenCert 2011 2 / 2