Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Open Source Webinars: BlackDuck + CollabNet on Application Development

CollabNet - that will soon host a free live virtual conference about agile application development - and Black Duck Software - that just announced a brilliant 1st quarter - will deliver on the 21 of April a joint webinar around leveraging new techniques in software development.

Tim Yeaton, CEO of Black Duck Software (interview), and Bill Portelli, CEO of Collabnet (interview), will answer the question of how to improve development by leveraging: Continue reading ‘Open Source Webinars: BlackDuck + CollabNet on Application Development’

Software Patents: OIN Licensing Program Grows Recognition

Open Invention Network, the intellectual property company aimed at protecting an ecosystem around Linux, announced an increase in licensing program in 2010 first quarter. Among new licensees, also the French open source vendor Ulteo, one of the five winners of the OWF Open Innovation Awards.

Gaël Duval, Ulteo co-founder, commenting the decision to become a licensee said: Continue reading ‘Software Patents: OIN Licensing Program Grows Recognition’

Open Source Communities: “The Art of Community”

The Art of Community” is a book written by Jono Bacon , founder of the Community Leadership summit and brave Ubuntu community manager, to let people know the difference between creating a technological platform and managing a living community-driven ethos.

The book, a must read for everyone interested in understanding communities, has been released also under a Creative Commons license, and is backed also by an online community.  The list of praises for the book is impressive, and includes (among others): Matt Asay, Ian Murdock, Mark Hinkle and Danese Cooper.

Continue reading ‘Open Source Communities: “The Art of Community”’

Open Source Government Policies

The Italian Constitutional Court recently ruled that the preference for open source software is legal, while taking out two articles from the original regional Piedmont law, actually found to interfere with the Italian copyright law and the Italian constitution.

Italian free software activists welcomed the court’s decision, others put a different interpretation. I am not a lawyer nor a constitutionalist,  and I didn’t make my mind yet on this, but I took the chance to have a look at what happens around the world.

Continue reading ‘Open Source Government Policies’

Open Source Cloud: Usharesoft

Open source cloud is getting hype, and looking at the different slices of the “burger cloud” among SaaS cloud providers I happened to step into UShareSoft, a French company based in Grenoble providing an appliance factory to design, build and deploy software appliances in virtual and cloud environments.

James Weir, UShareSoft CTO, answered few questions about their offer and open source strategy.

Continue reading ‘Open Source Cloud: Usharesoft’

IBM: Open Source’s Friend or Foe?

Florian Mueller - the EU campaigner involved in the software patents war - a couple of months ago talking about the Sun-MySQL merger called IBM a “false friend of open source”, but when I asked for more details he told me to wait.

Today he pointed me to his new foss patents blog entry reporting IBM has concerns about unauthorized use of proprietary IBM information by TurboHercules contributors.

Roger Bowler - CEO of TurboHercules, the company behind the mainframe emulator distributed under the Q Public license - asked IBM to consider adding such intellectual property to the IBM “non-assertion” pledge to the open source community.

Is there any chance that IBM would consider that?

Read more at The Register and at Dana Blankenhorn’s blog.



About the Editor

Roberto Galoppini on Open Source Software
Roberto has over 20 years experience in the computer industry, and has spent the last 10 years working in the intersection of open source software and business development. Roberto has taken an active interest in different open source projects and organizations, he also served on some advisory boards, and helped large IT vendors, open source vendors and customers to design and deploy their open source strategies. He works at SourceForge, and opinions expressed here don't necessarily represent employer's positions, strategies, or opinion.