Commercial Open Source Software

Having been interviewed recently, among other topics, about my take on how FSF and OSI might rethinking their roles in the next future, I want to share some thoughts around how OSI could move in the years to come.

Changing OSI is now possible, and I am personally taking the chance by joining the OSI Governance working group, chaired by Simon Phipps. While the  future governance of the OSI is still under discussion, here I’d like to throw some ideas around on what OSI could do about things like raising funds, software patents and “Open Core”.

Continue reading ‘OSI: The Open Source Road Ahead’

Building your first MongoDB application - In this webinar you’ll walk you through building a simple application using MongoDB.
April 05, 2011, 1:00 pm EST Continue reading ‘Upcoming Open Source Webinars: MongoDB, Nuxeo, Scilab’

Unless you are looking for popular popular open source software - such as the ones available in the SourceForge top downloads or the few ones backed by vendors like Apache, Linux, MySQL, PHP, eMule, GIMP, OpenOffice or VLC, Google search might not be your best solution to find specific open source software to suit your needs.

For example, if you search for an open source web editor on Google, you won’t find BlueGriffon, a web editor based on the Firefox rendering engine Gecko (a tool I recommend to try either if you are an experienced or a beginner web author).

Looking at Facebook,  Twitter and LinkedIn lists of favorite open-source tools, it is clear that these OSS tools are definitely not something the average person has ever heard of.

The key point here is that to find the right open source tool may not be a trivial task, but anyone can learn how to do it on his own.

In this MasterNewMedia guide, open source software expert Roberto Galoppini, author of SOS Open Source, a pragmatic methodology to find and evaluate open source software, provides you with the basic pointers, resources and evaluation criteria to start looking on your own.

Read the full article at MasterNewMedia.

The agenda of the Virtualization & Cloud panel has been updated. On the 30th of March I’ll be giving a speech about Cloud Procurement risks, terms and conditions, below the full list of panelists:

Continue reading ‘Talk about Cloud Procurement’

Stamp Out Costly Security Defects in Software Development - Webinar to learn about real-world best practices for addressing security in development, with Robert Seacord of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and Michael White, Professional Services Engineer at Coverity
Wednesday, March 30th 2011, 2011 at 2:00 pm GMT Continue reading ‘Upcoming Open Source Webinars: Coverity, GroundWork, Tungsten’

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, has just thrown a survey to ask to to ask people which standards are most important to them.

If you’re a business or community organisation, helping us choose the right standards will make it easier for you to do business with Government.  It will also help us open up data, better informing your decisions, and hopefully prompting innovation.

We’ve placed free text fields in the survey, so you can tell us what we have missed or which alternative standards you believe may be better.

Apparently the results will be reviewed by the Chief Technology Officers Council and then conclusions will be published on the Cabinet Office website next Autumn.

Couldn’t Italy do the same?

Cloud Computing and Open Source: What You Need to Know - The premise of the webinar is that as enterprises begin to evaluate, experiment with and adopt cloud computing, open source technologies will play a significant role.
March 29 2011, 12:00 pm MT

Continue reading ‘Upcoming Open Source Webinars: MongoDB, OpenLogic, Xwiki’

The final agenda of the Virtualization & Cloud panel is out. See you at EXPO COMM Italia 2011 on the 30 March 2011.

Red Hat recently disclosed publicly a change in the way they distribute kernel patches, explaining that such decision came out in reaction to third parties (competitively) supporting RHEL.

Red Hat’s decision might be ‘debatable’ for some, while others are ok with that. The whole point to me seems to be a completely different question, though. Tactic decisions to prevent others from appropriating returns from the (Red Hat) commons are not a substitute to a (long-term) strategy focused on renewal rates, an area where Red Hat is using effective business strategies.

Continue reading ‘Open Source Revenue Models: Red Hat’s Tactics and Strategies’

AsiaBSDCon2011 - 17-20 March, 2011.

MEAOSSFORUM - Middle East and Africa Open Source Software Forum 22-23 March 2011.

POSSCON - Palmetto Open Source Conference, 23-25 March 2011.

Update: eclipseCON 2011, 21-24 March 2011 (thanks Ian for heads up!).

Update: UKUUG Spring 2011 Conference, 22-24 March 2011 (thanks Kris for heads up!)

Update: NASA Open Source Summit 2011, 29-30 March 2011 (via Linkedin groups)