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Towards a more sustainable and secure software tooling in free/libre open source software environments
Date
2025
Abstract
Inspired by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, this thesis explores the topic of sustainability within the context of software ecosystems. With recent legal lequirements on one hand and continuously expanding software ecosystems on the other, simpler software designs and architectures are becoming increasingly valuable. In this thesis, three research questions are identified and addressed as follows:
Beginning with two studies, standard documents containing extensive and vaguely written technical specifications were analyzed for their impact
on subsequent implementations. Using the ASN.1 interface description language and the QUIC protocol as examples, these studies uncovered that
established standardization conventions negatively affect cybersecurity. A specially developed testbed detected an anomaly in the wolfSSL library
and highlighted inconsistencies in mainstream X.509 certificate parsing libraries.
Subsequently, the stability of the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) ecosystem as a whole was examined. Using indicators of centrality, a
methodology was developed to identify problematic areas in software ecosystems and was applied to the nixpkgs repository. This research
demonstrated that suitable and unified interfaces for large-scale and cross-programming language dependency analyses are lacking.
Finally, higher-level design goals for meeting recent legal requirements in the context of two published FLOSS projects are evaluated and discussed. To address these requirements, this thesis emphasizes that the educational system faces a significant challenge for future generations of engineers. From a research perspective, this thesis provides initial insights into how these upcoming challenges might be addressed.
Supervisor
Newe, Thomas
Plaga, Sven
Plaga, Sven
Description
Publisher
University of Limerick
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Funding Information
Sustainable Development Goals
Type
Thesis
Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/