Open Source Books: “Finalmente LIBERO!” is Out!

I am proud and happy to announce that the book I coauthored “Finalmente LIBERO Software libero e standard aperti per le pubbliche amministrazioni” (Finally FREE: free software and open standards for public administrations) is out.

The book is aimed at public authority leaders, providing them with information to make informed decisions on open source acquisition and usage. The book starts off by describing open source and free software characteristics, and then goes on reporting Public Administrations’ experiences with open source adoption, generally recognized mature solutions and also addressing interoperability issues.

I wrote the Open Source Business Model chapter, starting off by making clear commercial is definitely not an antonym of FLOSS, and then highlighting the most important differences among proprietary, corporate open source and community open source paradigms (plus some experiences, like what is going on at Codeplex). Idealtypes  are not the ultimate answer, but they can help to understand open source vendors’ approaches and eventually choose the most appropriate to accomplish our ICT needs.

About open source business models I extensively wrote about opportunities and threads regarding appropriating returns from commons, and how important is for open source firms to symbioticly foster their own communities. I reported also many different open source business model taxonomies, along with some business development considerations.

Want to know more? Buy the book! 😉

The book has been published by Mc Graw Hill, and it is in Italian.

Technorati Tags: Open Source book, oss, open business, open source strategy, business models, mc graw hill, finalmente libero