Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

IDC Italy, responsible for organizing the local Linux World OpenSolutions Summit, suffering from lack of sponsors decided to cancel the Italian event.

As invited speaker I was supposed to give a speech in the plenary session, entitled “Open Source Business models: entrepreneurial islands and archipelagos“, about how open source firms cope with communities. Now that the conference has been canceled, the question raising up could be how open source firms cope with the market, and why they don’t invest money to sponsor events like this.

Game Over by si3illa

Talking with Seth Grimes, invited speaker at the Reading the New York OpenSolutions Summit program (PDF), I learn that the American conference in February addressed vertical industries (Financial Services, Health Care, etc), and specific tracks (Linux on the Desktop, Virtualization, etc). The Italian event - originally designed as a two day event - was conceived as a “general purpose open source conference”, I guess to reach a broader audience.

While many people registered to join the event, and many companies were interested in giving a speech, there were no enough sponsors to make it happen: the one-size-fit-all approach didn’t pay.

The internet, along with its Group Forming Networks, has changed the way companies reach customers, and the way customers look for advices, for good. I see workshops, unconferences and barcamps - I missed the RedMonk’s one at CommunityOne - taking over the open source world.

Magic (Open Source) quadrant game is pretty over by now, people have the power!

Technorati Tags: OpenSolutions, Open Source Conference, Commercial Open Source, Grimes