Author: Ralf Meyer, Synomic

SAP and the entire SAP community have been successfully using more and more open source for many years. The use of hundreds or thousands of different components by SAP customers will be the rule, not the exception, in 2022.

The Berlin Regional Court has ruled in favor of the screenwriter of "Keinohrhasen," Anika Decker, in her copyright lawsuit against Til Schweiger's production company. The ruling could have a signal effect, also for the SAP community.

Open source software (OSS) is becoming increasingly important in the SAP ecosystem. Even at companies that think they do not use OSS themselves, dozens or hundreds of OSS components are often found during audits or scans.

Often, when I ask SAP ecosystem CEOs or executives to what extent open source is used in their company, I get the answer, "WE don't use any!"

The SAP community is different from other software ecosystems and has been used to automatically receiving up-to-date and reliable information from Walldorf as "SAPnotes" on problems and risks in SAP systems for decades.

Open source software is playing an increasingly important role in the SAP ecosystem. This is also demonstrated by the use of a large number of open source components at SAP itself, such as Android, Git, Java, Linux, Maven, MaxDB, OpenStack, Spring and hundreds of other components and projects.

Under the motto "Where Science meets Business," international researchers and practitioners met at Partner Port Walldorf in November 2016. A central topic was the sale of partner solutions in the SAP ecosystem.