Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

Besides the need for open source lobbyists, the biggest issue with Open Source awareness might be the clique phenomenon, resulting in open source advocates, analysts, customers, developers and users bound to each other. In other words there is also a need for connectors.

Googling around I found a pretty long list of ribbon campaigns - among them the ASCII Ribbon Campaign and the EFF’s Blue Ribbon Campaign - but there is no Free Software or Open Source awareness campaign.

Running an Open Source Awareness Campaign might help us to get in touch to individuals outside our network, since many weak ties bring more social connections.

Matt Asay, Fabrizio Capobianco, Stefano Maffulli, James McGovern, Savio Rodrigues which colour would you like for our Ribbon Campaign? Keep the ball rolling…

Links to this post:

• Links for 2007-05-01 by James Mc Govern
• Open Source Awareness Campaign? by Savio Rodrigues
• Open source awareness is a must by Alex Fletcher
• A ribbon for open source by Fabrizio Capobianco
• Connector for the Free Software community by FSFE Fellowship
• Connector for the Free Software community by Stefano Maffulli
  Promuovere l’open source (italian) by Nicola Mattina
• Open Source Ribbon! (italian) by Open Source Blog

Technorati Tags: Open Source advocacy, Open Source Marketing

The server guesting my blog went down from yesterday afternoon, around 5 PM (GMT+1) up to this morning, about 1 PM. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Open Source Government: Ecuador and Free Software

FSF: Eben Moglen Steps Down From Free Software Foundation

Business Development: Indian Outsourcers and Open Source

Business Development: Is Microsoft about to open source Silverlight?

One Laptop Per Child: Free Software still rules

Technorati Tags: Ecuador, Indian outsourcers, Silverlight, OLPC

The European Training Centre for Social Affairs and Public Health in collaboration with Free Software Foundation Europe is organizing in Milan on 21-22 June 2007 an International Conference entitled “Free/Libre Open Source Software: A Valuable Opportunity for Public Administrations“.

FSFE Fellowship initiative by Stefano Mainardi

Project leader of the conference is Giampaolo Amadori, formerly European Manager of Large Accounts and Application Server Providers at IBM.

The Conference is designed for Civil servants, Senior Civil Servants (Directors & Unit Heads), lawyers and politicians in EU Member States and countries surrounding the EU who are involved in the procurement of IT solutions and in strategic decisions about innovation and eGovernment, and who provide legal advice on copyright and patents. Also the IT responsibles/Specialists providing strategic and technical advice to the Public Administrations could be extremely keen of attending.

The participation fee is 490 €. The number of participants is limited. You can also register online.

Technorati Tags: Free Software Foundation Europe, Public Administration

Adobe Systems yesterday announced that is going to release the Flex SDK under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). The beta version of the next Flex release is scheduled for June, while the full release of open-source Flex will be available at the end of 2007.

Go, go, go! by S.Affandi

This announcement expands on Adobe’s commitment to open technology initiatives, including the contribution of source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation under the Tamarin project, the use of the open source WebKit engine in the “Apollo” project, and the release of the full PDF 1.7 specification for ISO standardization.

James Governor sounds enthusiast, as reported by Linux insider:

The fact that it has open sourced its future rather than its past is very key.

Lately Governor made it even more clear in his post talking about his customer’s vision:

[..] I think the Flex SDK OSS decision says something interesting about the status of the industry in 2007. Why do we open source? To save money? No- to attract developers.

We already saw Google doing similar things, and Adobe might really end up allowing external committers, exploring the hybrid production model at its best.

Let’s see how people at RedMonk will drive them open!(and a memo for myself: add Mark Anders’s blog to your blog-roll)

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Flex, RedMonk, Governor

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the Patent Reform Act of 2007 and despite the contention the Congress eventually pushed the legislation through. I collected some opinions and comments from people interested in the matter.

Changes.. by zephir_350d

Rashmi Rangnath at the Public Knowledge, wrote in her blog:

The Patent Reform Bill of 2007 would change the way damages due to a patent owner are calculated and require that they bear some relation to the value of the patent infringed. Under current law courts do not distinguish between the value of the patented technology and the larger goods containing it.

She also a Christopher Rugaber’s article giving a clear example of, citing Alcatel-Lucent SA vs Microsoft case ($1.52 billion paid by Microsoft to Alcatel-Lucent SA for including infringing MP3 technology in its software).

Last but not least she wrote a very good summary of the new Patent Reform Act of 2007.

Anthony Peterman, patent counsel for Dell Inc. said:

Plaintiffs are exploiting litigation rules and seeking artificially high damages, it’s litigation as a business. This patent reform legislation is needed, and needed now, to help sustain America’s growth and vitality. The problem hurts American competitiveness and the U.S. economy.

Dennis Crouch at PatentlyO wrote an insightful post, that I suggest you to read (there is also a part 1 of it).

Steven Landsburg explains why in his opinion the Kremer proposal does something to alleviate some problems of the patent system. Mark Webbink, general counsel for open source software vendor Red Hat, is told to have expressed hope that the effort would prove effective in changing patent rules, while Richard Fontana, counsel with the Software Freedom Law Center told vnunet.com that:

We are sceptical about whether this [reform] represents any substantial change. To our clients, the open source developers, this reform does not really go to the root of the problem. It is still too easy to get a patent on software out of the US Patent Office that is too broad.

Technorati Tags: software patent, dell, red hat

William New at the Intellectual Property Watch wrote an article entitled “Open Source, Standards Get a boost In China” reporting that China, among others, says that sometimes companies owning (hidden) patents when their standards get momentum they start charging high prices for licenses. The issue was discussed, as mentioned earlier, at a 17-18 April event in Beijing, below some excerpts of the original post.

The name of the conference was said by organisers to change overnight to “WTO: IPRs Issues in Standardization,” similar to the title of a 2005 paper China submitted at the WTO to push for changes to the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.[..]

Speaking at the event, Hu Caiyong, CEO of Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Technology, an open-source software company, said international standards have not been fair to China and should be ignored, at least for now. “There’s no level playground,” he said. Countries present in international organisations like the World Trade Organization are there “to profit their own interests.”

“To establish an intellectual property protection system conforming to Chinese characteristics, protecting independent innovation: Avoid resorting to international usual practice blindly,” one of his slides read. He said Microsoft uses a less-precise western-based system.

Hu’s company’s Linux-based open source software, RedOffice, has been adopted by more than 200 local governments in China. “We are now in a position to compete with Microsoft,” he said, adding that his company has received regular legal threats from foreign technology and telecommunications firms. But he said he has support from the Chinese government as open-source software is essential for China’s development of competing and independent tools. (Read on …)

Hugh MacLeod wrote a post entitled “how well does open source currently meet the needs of shareholders and ceo’s” wondering why there are no open source billionaires around, considering how good is open source.

Many others joined the conversation, I would reccomend reading Seth Godin, JP Rangaswami and Rick Segal.

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, seth godin, gapinvoid, rangaswami, billionaries

Talking about open source having a need for lobbyists I mentioned the David vs Patent Goliath fight, a ground where previously unknown lobbyists - people coming from the Economic Majority of European SMEs against software patents or no profit organizations like FFII - made their name.

Truth or Consequences by kxlly

Simon Phipps joined the conversation, saying:

Something this overlooks - and that was present in the CII Directive debate - is that as more and more companies depend on open source as the bedrock of their business, they will direct their lobbyists to act on behalf of the open source communities.

I spent a great deal of time in support of lobbyists (as did my colleague Mark Webbink from Red Hat) patiently explaining to politicians and their staffs the problems with software patents as envisaged by Microsoft and the other pro-lobby members. In fact, I might even want to claim that our little informal alliance - Sun, Red Hat, Oracle, IBM and one other that prefers to remain anonymous - actually swung the interoperability argument that killed the Directive.

This is not to say we don’t need lobbyists acting on behalf of FOSS projects directly. But don’t forget that corporations that grok FOSS lend can their weight to the cause.

I took the chance to privately ask Florian Mueller - “No lobbyists as such” author and founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign - his opinion, that I fully quote.

Anyway, interoperability was a secondary theater of war for us. The simplest way to explain it is that if you have no software patents, you don’t need an interoperability privilege. There was an email exchange in the week before the final vote between a lawyer working for some or all of the companies Simon refers to, the FFII’s then-president Hartmut Pilch, and myself. Both Hartmut and I pointed out that we looked at interoperability as a minor bargaining chip, far from a priority subject.

It is true, however, that some interoperability proposals that were proposed back then as amendments caused a certain degree of discord within the pro-swpat camp, especially between IBM and Microsoft.

I have previously explained and documented in my blog certain facts about Red Hat’s role.

In a situation of political instability (back in those days, the Parliament was a “zoo” with dozens of lobbyists from both camps running around, numerous citizens emailing, faxing and phoning MEPs, etc.), anything can contribute to people’s nervousness, including some discord over a secondary issue like interoperability. But the important thing was to have that zoo, that overall instability, a large part of which was due to the political situation that had arisen from the FFII’s and my fight against the Council’s common position, including the restart initiative in the EP.
The important second-reading amendments were the 21 amendments filed by various political groups and lists of MEPs at the FFII’s initiative, and certainly not the one proposed by the companies Simon refers to and which proposal was in fact not liked by the FFII and myself at all. Claiming that a small-scale interoperability initiative made all the difference for getting the proposed directive killed is like eating a peanut after a five-course meal and believing that it was that peanut which took your hunger away because after eating the peanut you no longer felt hungry.

I never claimed all of the credit for myself and shared it with the FFII in a variety of public declarations. However, I would prefer for companies with an obvious, vested interest in currying favor with the community to take reasonable positions as well.

I guess my most recent success in a policy area unrelated to patents (i.e., football broadcasting rights) gives me more credibility than I could gain from further debates on who made what contribution to the rejection of the swpat directive.

Technorati Tags: software patent, simon phipps, FFII, florian mueller

MapGuide, a web-based platform aimed at deploying web mapping applications and geospatial web services, now is a fully endorsed project within the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, as reported by PRNewswire. MapGuide, originally developed by Autodesk, has been released to the open source community about one year ago, and is already considered a leading project within the GIS arena, as results from the “The State of the Open Source GIS” (PDF).

Save the forest by photokitten

As a more recent project, MapGuide has a more modern architecture than the original MapServer. It also includes some default web interface components as well, so it is possible to create an out-of-the-box web mapping site with MapGuide more easily than with Mapserver. Mapserver has its own advantages, in terms of simplicity and number of supported formats, so examining both carefully before making a decision is a good idea. Because the originating organization is Autodesk, some users might be concerned that MapGuide OS is not “real” open source. However, it certainly is “real”, judging from a number of facts.

First, the license used is not some customized corporate license, but the familiar LGPL, used by many other open source projects.

Second [..] the code base includes dependencies on other open source library projects, such as Proj4 and GEOS – enlightened re-use is a sign of a good open source methodology.

Finally, Autodesk has opened up the development process, using a public source code repository for active development, having a public mailing list for users and developers to directly interact, and transferring all intellectual property rights for the code to a neutral organization (the Open Source Geospatial Foundation)

About the MapGuide’s “open source nature” I noticed that the definition of the Project Steering Committee, the governing body of the project, has been derived from the guidelines of other committees with the Open Source GIS arena - like the MapServer Technical Steering Committee, the GeoServer PSC, and the MapBuilder PSC.

Participation to the MapGuide’s project is extraordinary, as reported by Ohloh that considers MapGuide one of the largest open-source teams in the world, reporting that over the last year 26 developers contributed new code.

The San Francisco Urban Forest Mapping System was developed using MapGuide Open Source as the central element, read the related press release.

About MapGuide.

MapGuide Open Source is a web-based platform that enables users to quickly develop and deploy web mapping applications and geospatial web services.

MapGuide features an interactive viewer that includes support for feature selection, property inspection, map tips, and operations such as buffer, select within, and measure.

MapGuide includes an XML database for managing content, and supports most popular geospatial file formats, databases, and standards.

MapGuide can be deployed on Linux or Windows, supports Apache and IIS web servers, and offers extensive PHP, .NET, Java, and JavaScript APIs for application development. MapGuide Open Source is licensed under the LGPL.

About MapGuide Open Source.

Despite sharing a name with the previous closed source MapGuide product from Autodesk, MapGuide Open Source (OS) is in fact a completely new product, with a new code base and a new licensing philosophy. Autodesk will sell the new MapGuide as commercial product, with some bonus features (extra format support, formal product support, better backward compatibility) but the main development of the MapGuide OS product is now done as open source.

Technorati Tags: Open Source GIS, Commercial Open Source, MapGuide, Ohloh

Dana Blankenhorn says “open source need lobbyists” (actually he didn’t mention free software hecklers). He observes that we need money to hire them because otherwise the law will always be in favor of the proprietary folks.

In Europe we faced (and we keep facing) very talented lobbyists working hard on a controversial political issue regarding software patents. As you might know patentability of computer-implemented inventions is not legal here yet, the reason for this is simple resumed by Florian Mueller in his “no lobbyist as such” (a must read):

After spending million of dollars,euros and pounds, company like IBM, Microsoft, Siemens and Nokia did not get their way. They were beaten over at their own game - a game called lobbying - by our group of mostly young people, sparsely funded, and formally untrained “freedom fighters” who staged a spirited resistance. Many of us seemed utterly unlike traditional lobbyists and yet we proved effective in the political arena.

Florian Mueller by duncandavidson

James McGovern answered back saying that Dana, and not only him, is part of the problem:

Maybe what he is asking for is to get some other body to spend lots of advertising dollars while not acknowledging that open source doesn’t really need traditional media to be successful.

Throughout his column he always talks about open source but never seems to segment thoughts on commercial open source such as Alfresco, Intalio, MySQL, etc from non-commercial open source such as Apache. Why not ask the question of media and its ability to simply be charitable in terms of advertising space?

I am not sure we need any charity, not even for open source projects that are not driven by a corporate actor or are under a big enough “umbrella”. Appropriating returns from Commons is critical indeed, that’s why we see many good open source projects with no advertising coverage, but people like Matt Asay, Matthew Aslett, Alex Fletcher, James Governor, Savio Rodrigues, Raven Zachary and of course James McGovern himself are already making the difference.

What about federating? Here I am dreaming about a sort of Gawker for Open Source..

Technorati Tags: Open Source, Commercial Open Source, software patent, gawker