Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Android at FOM, Open Source and Economic Uncertainty, SourceForge open positions: links 31-10-2008

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 31, 2008
in Commercial OSS, Mobile and OS open positions
. 0 Comments

The Future of Mobile 2008 - The future of Mobile will take place in London next 17th & 18th November. Last year Android was just a promise, now that it has arrived in the real world I am looking forward to hear Rich Miner’s - Android’s founder and Google VP for mobile technlology - keynote

Navigating the Economic Downturn - OpenLogic’s CIO Executive Board Survey run in September 2008 shows that 59% of respondents are trying to save money by renegotiating contracts with their vendors and/or by putting all non essential projects on hold. About half of them are reducing the amount of budget they spend on consultants and travels, while “only” a quarter of them are freezing IT hiring. Maybe internal open source development is still hot? Look at the deck of slides to know attendees’ plans on open source usage

Sourceforge has 2 + 1 open positions - SourceForge’s open positions related to SourceForge.net’s Operations teams.

Technology Tuesdays are back!

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 29, 2008
in Italians do it and My Meetings
. 0 Comments

The Free Hardware Foundation -  in collaboration with PopoloBue.tv, PandoraTv, NetLeft and the Telematics Freedom Foundation, invite everyone to join the new series of “Technology Tuesday”,  4th November at 9 PM by the Love&Dissent gallery, via Leonina 85, Rome (Underground line B, Cavour station).If you have a genuine interest in technology, politics and media consider  to participate. You just need to bring a salami, or a bottle of wine, or some cheese, cookies, etc.  Write on the blackboard your name, profession, interests and email account and start to share your thoughts and experiences. 

Sardinia Open Source Camp, EU Procurement Practice for IT, Global Network Initiative Launched: links 28-10-2008

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 28, 2008
in Commercial OSS
. 0 Comments

FLOSS Hands on Camp - An event for local public administrations and enterprises, aimed at spread the word about open source and the most used open source packages (OpenOffice.org, Ubuntu, Samba, Alfresco, e-Prot, Hylafax, Postfix, Asterisk and others. Save the date: 13th and 14th of November

EU: OFE calls on EU to crack down on Public Procurement practice for IT software - Open Forum Europe has monitored public procurement notices for computer software published on Tenders Electronic Daily. 25 % percent of tenders contain company brand names, preventing competition from alternative products.

Global Network Initiative Launched - Today a diverse coalition of leading Internet companies, major human rights and free press organizations, investors and academics launched the Global Network Initiative to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in information and communications technologies.

Open Source Hardware, OpenOffice.org 3.0 Getting Starter Guide, Kernel Summit Videos: links 27-10-2008

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 27, 2008
in Commercial OSS
. 1 Comment

Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work? - A must read about open source hardware. Chris Anderson is a great fun of Arduino, the Italian firm that makes this circuit board, now known among DIY builders.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Getting Starter Guide - links to published chapters of the Getting Started guide for OpenOffice.org 3.0.

Kernel Summit 2008 Video- The Linux Foundation today posted a variety of short videos from this year’s Kernel Summit. The videos, including a short discussion with Linus Torvalds about everything from release schedules to Git, can be viewed here

Open Source Government: Naples goes Open Source

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 26, 2008
in Europe eGov and Italians do it
. 4 Comments

Naples and Open Source - Naples municipality intend to adopt open source.Re-use of code seems a key motivator factor, as reported in the press release.

Technorati Tags: open source government, naples

 

Open Source Events: Linux Day is today!

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 25, 2008
in Italians do it and Open Source Recommendations
. 1 Comment

Linux Day 2008 -  ILS,  the Italian Linux Association today runs its eighth annual Linux Day all over Italy, in 119 cities. Enjoy!

Software Patents Clubs: Open Innovation Networks is back on stage

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 24, 2008
in My Meetings and Software Patent
. 2 Comments

Open Innovation Network, an intellectual property company formed years ago by IBM, Novell, Philipps, Red Hat, Sony, and NEC to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment is back again.

Keith Bergelt, OIN CEO , few weeks ago was travelling around Europe to meet up with academic, entrepeneurs and influencers, and I got a chance to pose him few questions about OIN’s directions. OIN wants to foster open collaboration and sees patents as an impediment to such collaboration, possibly slowing down the innovation pace.

Keith says that in OIN’s vision there are “good” patents and “bad” patents, and they won’t take part in the European software patents debate. All in all OIN cares just about Linux, and middleware or application levels are not in OIN’s agenda for the time being. Google is proud to participate in OIN’s mission, as Di Bona made clear through the official google blog, and that is probably good for all (big) Linux end-users.

Will ever OIN go up in the open source software stack?

Technorati Tags: OIN, Open Innovation Network, KeithBergelt

OpenOffice.org: The Italian Linux Day foster the creation of “MS Office Angels”!

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 24, 2008
in Italians do it, Migration and OpenOffice.org
. 1 Comment

In occasion of the Linux Day 2008, that will take place on Saturday in 119 Italian cities, the Italian Linux Society and the Italian OpenOffice.org Association are launching a campaign for a special endangered specie. The campaign is aimed at helping the Microsoft Office users specie, a specie at risk by OpenOffice.org diffusion.

Microsoft Office DinosaursMicrosoft Office Dinosaurs by JamesB

ILS and PLIO members are engaged to save a Microsoft Office’s user helping her to progressively migrate to OpenOffice.org 3.0. In a early stage users would be allowed to use both suites, with a wider and wider use of OOo 3.0, to end by using just OOo.

“Microsoft itself admitted Microsoft Office’s users were destined for extinction, comparing them to dinosaurs”, says Michele From della Silvestra, ILS’s president. “That ads actually didn’t bring all of them to stop using Microsoft Office, so we decided along with PLIO to launch an initiative to foster the creation of “MS Office Angels”. MSOffice Angels are groups of volunteers aimed at helping Microsoft Office users to stop using it, and move to OpenOffice.org”.

Read the whole press release (Italian), and have fun with OpenOffice.org!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, openoffice, OpenOffice Migration, ILS, Linux Day, Michele Della Silvestra, Microsoft Marketing

Open Source Conference: notes from OpenMind

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 23, 2008
in Commercial OSS
. 0 Comments

The 5th Openmind conference organized by COSS -  the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions - provided some interesting discussions about how companies, governments and individuals across Northern-Europe are using open source.

Speaking in the first session I had the chance to follow the whole event, and make my mind of how open source has become pervasive in those countries. Nina Helander and Mikko Rönkkö, presenting some findings of the annual Finnish software industry survey, reported an amazing estimation of the degree of use of open source within the IT industry.The survey mailed 3.639 firms, 660 respondents, 75% of them are using internally open source software, about half of them have some open source components in the offering. It is worth to notice that there is no statistically significant difference between different size classes, neither in usage nor in the offering. In a word, open source is mainstream in Finland, as much as predicted by Gartner for 2011.

Martin Michlmayr introduced the audience to FOSSBazaar and FOSSology, through which HP is demonstrating its experience with open source governance. FOSSBazaar is aimed at helping both experienced and unexperienced FOSS users, through blog entries, white-papers and other resources (including a self-assessment survey and OSS Discovery).

Ismael Olea spoke about OSOR, the recently launched European Open Source Observatory and Repository.

ElmarGeese, Tarent’s CEO, gave a great speech on mobile platforms, a look at enablers and disablers.

Ulf Michael (Monty) Widenius, MySQL CTO and IT investor,  was also attending the event, posing questions and giving (great) answers, I will soon transcript parts of my interview.

Finland seems to have build a solid entrepeneurial ecosystems, where start-ups can access to financial support by local VCs, and experienced entrepreneurs like Monty can and do advice them. Local universities introduce students to open source usage, as results from the survey’s findings, and provide students also with business training courses, as far as I got from friends.

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, openmind, Monty, TeemuArina, Widenius

MySQL Backup & Recovery Webinar, JanRain’s OpenID Hosted Service, Android Goes Open Source, Browser : links 23-10-2008

Published
by
Roberto Galoppini
on October 23, 2008
in Commercial OSS and Vertical Markets
. 0 Comments

The Essentials of MySQL Backup & Recovery - Find out how to manage backup and recovery processes for MySQL using Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL. The webinar will take place on Thursday, November 6th 2008.

Launch of RPX - JanRain goes SaaS, launching the first hosted OpenID solution allowing websites to accept OpenID users.

Android is now available as open source - Android goes open for real, Wind River commercially support it worldwide. About Android’s license (Apache 2.0) I am not the only one thinking it might be critical.

CDT Report: Browser Developers Compete on Privacy Controls - CDT Report on Browsers’ privacy tools.