Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

After a quite successful meeting in Rome, (where Roberto was so kind to join and help me) the OpenTTT project will be hosting a matching event within the CeBIT FutureMatch.

Meeting Point by Varf

From the CeBIT website: “The EU project Open TTT is supporting enterprises in finding, applying and developing the right Open Source Software to fulfill their specific needs. By collaborating with Open TTT the IRC Future Match 2008 has expanded its breadth to include the Open Source Software sector and thus offers a mediation platform for innovative Open Source Software offers and requests.”

In the past event, FutureMatch organized more than 1200 one-to-one meetings between companies, and it is my hope that a significant number of those in the next edition will be for open source services between OSS providers and end-users. I would like to invite any interested company willing to be there to register at the FutureMatch site; please choose “Open TTT” as “Assisting Organisation” during your registration to receive free entrance tickets for the CeBIT 2008.

The OpenTTT project is evaluating a novel approach to help in the OSS adoption process, by “industrializing” the matching process between the demand for software with the necessary functionalities and the offer (the whole set of suitable OSS packages). The mediation process is designed to find the best selection of tools and projects that can best match the expressed needs, and then we try to create one-to-one (or many-to-one, when more than one company is interested in paying for modifications or updates) business exchanges between the potential customers and the OSS-based companies that provide support or services on the selected packages. This approach has been tested in several workshops, held in France, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria and will be refined with the results of the FutureMatch event; we plan to leverage our experience to create a standardized approach to OSS mediation, eventually creating a “blueprint” for competency centers based on the OpenTTT model. Maybe this may be the basis for improving existing marketplaces?

Tomorrow at the University of Rome, located in Via Salaria 113, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman - famous for their invention of public key cryptography in cooperation with Ralph Merkle - will give a speech entitled “What’s ahead in Security”.

The conference is organized by Sun Microsystems, Diffie is Chief Security Officer at Sun.

Technorati Tags: Diffie Whitfield, Martin Hellman, public key cryptography, Sun

OCR is one of the few markets that are not fully internationalized yet. An OCR that can decently process Cyrillic texts for now can only come from Russia. And there are no more than two at the moment: ABBYY FineReader and Cognitive Cuneiform.

Both trace their origins to the late Soviet-era government research projects that were commercialized in the nineties. However, Cuneiform started to lose its position in the consumer market by the end of the decade, then the application saw very little progress since 2000, and now it is generally unknown among end-users. Cognitive, who has by now shifted to systems integration market, has finally decided to open up Cuneiform, make it available as freeware immediately on a dedicated website and publish under an open source license in March, 2008.

What makes it interesting is that Cuneiform will be the second OCR system to be published as Open Source after years of development inactivity along with Tessaract published by HP in 2005. Thus, the market of Open Source OCR will quite unexpectedly become competitive.

The most probable idea behind the decisions of both Cognitive and HP is to put to work the unemployed resources so that they start producing at least minimal benefit. It looks like a simple ‘let’s see’ action, and no clear business model seems to be lying behind it.

But with the recent increase of interest of the Russian authorities in Free Software usage at middle schools, the demand for the liberated Cuneiform could become considerable. However, until the government’s plan to shift all schools to Free Software by 2009 is fulfilled at least partially, it is very difficult to say what this state-supported middle-school FOSS market will look like and what its rules will be. But if it comes to reality, Cognitive has all chances to be a player there by simply having used the available resources in a smart way at the right moment.

Technorati Tags: oss, ocr, Cognitive, ABBYY, Tessaract, Cuneiform, Russia, schools

Open Source Software (OSS) and the DoD, a Webinar sponsored by DACS will be held by David Wheeler on the 2 of November at 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST.

David Wheeler by swhisher

Open source software (OSS) has become widespread, but there are many misconceptions about it - resulting in numerous missed opportunities.
This presentation will clarify what OSS is (and isn’t), rebut common misunderstandings about OSS, discuss the relationship of OSS and security, discuss how to find and evaluate OSS, and explain OSS licensing (including how to combine products and select a license).
It will show why nearly all extant OSS is COTS software, and thus why it’s illegal (as well as foolish) to ignore OSS options.

Title:Open Source Software (OSS) and the DoD
Date: Monday, February 11, 2008
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer

.. and what about Linux-based attendees?

Space is limited, Reserve your Webinar seat now!

Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, DavidWheeler, dacs, webinar, open source procurement, open source governance

(Read on …)

The HP’s announcement of the availability of FOSSology, an open source tool to track and monitor the use of FOSS within an organization, and FOSSBazaar, a community platform to discuss best practices related to the governance of FOSS, is getting public attention.

Martin Michlmayr, recently hired by HP to play the FOSSBazaar Community Manager, introduced me to Phil Robb - Engineering Section Manager in the Open Source and Linux Organization at HP - and I asked him more about the idea behind HP’s initiative.

HP see’s a lot of fear uncertainty and doubt about FOSS from too many of the customers we work with - said him during a gorgeous dinner here in Rome - the FUD is not in the developers, it’s in the other folks in these companies who are responsible for the governance of the corporate software assets.

The managers, legal team, procurement folks ,etc in HP have been working with FOSS a long time, and we are confident and comfortable with our use of FOSS and our support and participation in the community. We know there are other organizations like ours out there as well.

It is obvious to us that if we help to build a “general consensus” across the corporate world as to how to manage FOSS, then many more organizations will also be confident and comfortable with their use of FOSS and therefore it’s adoption and usage will grow (along with the FOSS community in general). We think this is a good thing for both FOSS and the corporate community.

If HP is recognized as a driving force behind this improved understanding of FOSS, then both the community and these corporate customers will look more favorably on HP, and our capabilities regarding FOSS than they have in the past. HP’s current reputation isn’t bad or negative, but it’s also not that well known. We want to improve that.

Is HP going to kill Black Duck and or Palamida businesses? Both Black Duck and Palamida are welcoming the initiative, and I believe that HP is in the position to add momentum to the use of open source software without affect their business.

HP Open Source Health Check is a set of services HP is offering to its customers. Some of them are using the fixed-time fixed price formula, moving from the classical artisanship approach to an industrial way to deliver open source value. Others, like the Open Source Governance Assessment Service and the TCO Analysis Service, require a deep understanding of both closed and open source platforms in a variety of sectors, and sound pretty difficult to sell worldwide as a “productized service“.

Matt Asay stressed the fact that HP is not creating a proprietary product, but going open source is probably the only way to get people’s attention in short time, and partnering with many important firms - like Google, Novell and SourceForge just to name a few -for co-authoring FLOSSBazar’s content it is definitely a smart move.

Talking about FLOSSology, I am looking forward to see if now that Ohloh went open source it will eventually be included at same point. In the meantime I warmly suggest to insert either FLOSSology and FLOSSBazar on Savannah, considering that searching for Open Source Selection on google returns the Savannah’s entry for QSOS project as the very first result.

Last but not least helping medium to large customers to understand if, within commercial Linux distributions in use by their systems, there are components and modules not supported by the vendor could be a plus.

Am I right Phil?

Technorati Tags: HP, FOSSology, FOSSBazar, Ohloh, open source selection, QSOS, Savannah, PhilRobb

About Phil Robb.
Phil Robb is Chairman, and General Manager of FOSSBazaar.org; a website and community dedicated to improving the governance and adoption of free and open source software within enterprises, institutions, and governments. Phil is also a section manager at Hewlett Packard leading their Open Source Programs Office. In that role Phil manages several product development teams focused on open source solutions and governance including the FOSSology project. Phil is also responsible for HP’s Open Source Review Board which is the governing body within HP for all open source software usage and deployment. Prior to joining HP in 2001, Phil held senior management and technical positions at Critical Path, Fisher Scientific, Motorola, and Honeywell-Bull. Phil received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Bowling Green State University, and attended Colorado State University toward a Masters degree in Computer Science.

HP just announced the availability of FOSSology, an open source tool that can be used to track and monitor the use of Open Source software within an organization. The main functionality made available at the moment is license detection, more features will be added in the next future.

At the Linux Meets Business conference held yesterday in Germany Christine Martino - Vice President Open Source and Linux Organization at HP - introduced also FOSSBazaar, a community platform to discuss best practices related to the governance of FOSS.

I had the chance to learn more about HP open source plans just last week, when Martin Mychlmayr invited me to talk with him, Phil Robb - Engineering Section Manager in the Open Source and Linux Organization at HP - and Bernard Marclay, FOSS Marketing Manager at HP.

HP wants to demonstrate its experience with FOSS Governance obtained in over 7 years for internal purposes, and it will be offering services related to FOSS Governance at large (e.g. defining open source policies, supporting the adoption process with its consulting division, etc).

As a matter of fact they are partnering with many actors. Doug Levin - Black Duck software CEO - made some public statements welcoming FOSSology’s introduction. Steven Grandchamp - OpenLogic CEO - asked to comment the announcement told me:

As a Strategic Sponsor of FOSSBazaar, OpenLogic is working with others to provide information and tools that help enterprises understand the issues around open source governance.  Sharing our open source expertise, along with tools like OpenLogic’s OSS Discovery (which produces an inventory of open source being used) and HP’s FOSSology (which uncovers licenses in open source), will help enterprises leverage the significant financial benefits of open source software.

Also Stormy Peters is blogging on the matter, and others will come. While having dinner with HP people honestly I couldn’t come out with a firm’s name that they didn’t contact yet. We also spoke about the business side of the initiative, I will soon write on the matter.

The man behind the FOSSBazar community. 

Martin, a known Debian developer and fellow researcher, is the man behind the FOSSBazar community. He is the FOSSBazaar Community Manager, and he will be working with partners to define content, help members to conduct valuable and interesting discussions and debates, and he will be joining conferences all over the world to promote the FOSSBazaar community.

I wish him all the best of luck!

About Martin Michlmayr. 
Martin Michlmayr has been involved in various free and open source software projects for well over 10 years. He acted as the leader of the Debian project for two years. In this role, he performed important organizational and coordination tasks within Debian. Martin works for HP as an Open Source Community Expert and acts as the community manager of FOSSBazaar. Martin holds Master degrees in Philosophy, Psychology and Software Engineering, and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

While Sun Microsystems was buying MySQL for $1 billion, Rome was guesting the international conference “Boosting innovation and growth by fostering Open Source Software trust and quality”, organized by the EC funded project QualiPSo.

Having the conference among its key themes defining business models to facilitate the use of OSS in the industry, the “Business models and strategies” session - run on the 17th of January, one day after the acquisition - was definitely the right place to ask forum speakers about the deal.

I asked the panelists an opinion about the largest open source software deal ever, and Björn Lundell, chairman of the Open Source Sweden, an industrial Swedish Open Source Association, congratulated with Mårten Mickos, expressing a positive opinion on the deal for the open source market. Basically the first round of impressions was spent to congratulate with the hero of the day. At that point I posed a specific question about the distribution channel, asking them how the merge operation could affect it.

Cédric Thomas, CEO of the OW2 Consortium, said that every small firm, open or not, at a certain point has to find its way to the market, and probably it was great time for MySQL to get sales and financial backing to better deploy its value. On the same line of thought was also Jean-Noel de Galzain, CEO of Wallix.

I was quite disappointed by the fact that none was mentioning how the Sun’s distribution channel is organized by now, and I asked the Forrester’s analyst to tell something about how Sun’s open source business model could change.

Diego Lo Giudice, Principal Consultant at Forrester, said that he couldn’t anticipate Sun’s press releases on the subject, but talking about business models he stated that it’s all about making money, and a check of 1 billion it’s a lot of money!

Talking about open source business models many people and also analysts mention only specific aspects, like licensing, paying little attention on how pieces of the business fit (or not) together. The result is that the company’s strategy, or how a specific firm differentiates itself and deals with the competition, is not effectively described, neither understood.

Last week during the Sun Partner Advantage Executive Summit, organized to share with top partners Sun’s vision for growth, Jonathan Schwartz early morning on the 16th of January sent a physical letter to all partners:

Good morning! It is my extreme pleasure to start your day with some truly exciting news.

Earlier this morning, Sun made a strategic mode designed to provide myriad opportunities for partners and the market at large. We announced our intention to acquire MySQL AB, one of the world’s fastest-growing and most popular databases. [..]

Sun and its partners soon will enjoy unprecedented access to a massive new set of customers. In short, the MySQL database is deployed across every major operating system, hardware platform, geography, industry and application type, and we are committed to working with you to help it gain even greater relevance in the marketplace.

What’s more, we think our operational, sales and financial backing, along with our global services strength, will enhance MySQL’s value proposition to customers by giving them peace of mind to deploy it at scale enterprise — on whichever platforms they so choose.

Anil Gadre later discussed the news with partners, and I would have liked to attend to. While it is pretty clear that Sun is consolidating its position as the largest open source contributor, it is still unclear how Sun’s partners will eventually take advantage of a new set of customers in the database arena. Looking at how MySQL is doing business now, and who and how add value to the ‘M’ in LAMP all over the world, I see many unanswered questions on the table.

Open Source Franchising or not, Sun has to work a lot with its channel to make this move worth well more than the price paid.

IDABC - a Community programme managed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics - among open source news cited our open letter to the Italian Minister for Reform and Innovation.

IT: Ministry asked to clarify spending on Open Source

Italian Open Source developers are asking the Ministry for Reform and Innovation to clarify how it spent 10 million euro earmarked for Open Source projects last year.

A public letter was sent last week, requesting the ministry to list on which projects the money was spent.

Read the full article.

I am looking forward to see reactions from the ministry, even if over these hours open source can not to be a priority for the Italian government.

IDABC, what it does.

IDABC issues recommendations, develops solutions and provides services that enable national and European administrations to communicate electronically while offering modern public services to businesses and citizens in Europe.
The programme also provides financing to projects addressing European policy requirements, thus improving cooperation between administrations across Europe.

My friend and supporter of free software movement and movements against software patents Fiorello Cortiana forwarded me a link to the “I wouldn’t steal campaign“.

Whenever you rent a movie, the multinational media industry forces you to watch their propaganda. They claim that [downloading movies is the same as snatching bags, stealing cars or shoplifting]. That’s simply not true - making a copy is fundamentally different from stealing.

The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area - lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals. They argue that their laws are necessary to [support artists], but in reality all they’re protecting is their own profits.

The Greens in Europe and worldwide has been opposing these laws. We believe that consumers are willing to pay if offered good quality at a fair price. We also believe that sharing is expanding culture - not killing it.

To protest against the faulty propaganda from the industry, we made our own film. The difference is - you can choose whether you want to watch this one.

Please help to spread the word.

Funambol - the Mobile Open Source company - few months ago started looking for a community manager, as I learned from Fabrizio Capobianco while he was in Rome to join the VentureCamp.

A couple of days later I got a phone call from my friend and fellow blogger Stefano Maffulli, asking me for Fabrizio’s email. Below the full story.

Roberto’s blog has been a kind of a Monster: a good daily read but also a way to extend the reach of a social network. When I pitched my CV to Fabrizio (Funambol’s CEO) I learned that the selection process had been going on for a while already and other candidates were being evaluated. Nonetheless I was invited to speak with Hal Steger, Funambol’s VP Marketing: I liked his attitude and he liked my multidisciplinary background (architecture, technology and the upcoming MBA). Funambol has a balanced mix of the good hacker’s culture I love and the necessary strength on financial and marketing management, something that I want to learn (and have been missing in my past work experiences).

It wasn’t a long shot after all. It will be fun to work with Funambol’s growing community and the company.

Architect Stefano Maffulli at work by Stefano Maffulli

I am glad that the time I spent sometimes collecting open positions within open source firms and jobs was of some help. Few months ago I also started to display a widget on each job posted by considerati, that I happened to get in touch with via openbusiness, but unfortunately such distributed job site had a limited success.

Stefano, are you already thinking of how to get off the best from programs like Code Sniper and Phone Sniper?

We have some ideas on what has to be improved to help Funambol’s community but we are also open to suggestions. For example, our software is in many places and it’s not easy for newcomers to find what they are looking for. I’m interested in hearing experiences of Funambol’s users with the software, the mailing lists, the repository and the company: they can come to me and I’ll help if at all possible.

Funambol’s architecture of participation welcomes small contributions, allowing individuals to more easily participate, I am looking forward to ask Stefano how is he doing in six months from now.

For the time being I wish him and Funambol all the best!

Read Stefano Maffulli’s full profile on Linkedin.