Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

“Mind the Bridge“, an interesting opportunity for Italian entrepreneurs to present their ideas to a core group of experienced executives and potential investors in the Silicon Valley, today is running its first workshop.

The event is organized by 1GN, Partnership4Growth and  BAIA Italia and is an invitation only event exclusively for 2007 business plan competition’s participants.

Technorati Tags:   Italian startups, Mind the bridge, 1Gn, Partnership4growth, baia italia

IDC prepared a document for the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency (NITA) describing a methodology to evaluate Standard Setting Organizations (SSO) with regard to the degree of openness of the organization and thereby the degree of openness in their deliverables, i.e. standards.

IDC starting from the ten rights that enable open standards mentioned before, evaluated ten organizations -  CEN, Ecma, ETSI, IETF, ISO, ITU, NIST, OASIS, OMG, and W3C - and all organizations had the opportunity to review and comment on the evaluation of their organization. NITA specified 9 of Krechmer’s criteria, where the exclusion of “Open World” stems from the re-purposing of “Open Interface”, extended to covering both and accordingly renamed “Open Interoperability”.

IDC in conclusion states that there are differences between standard setting organizations in terms of “openness” and is implemented, concluding that it is difficult to make a distinction of which form of “openness” is the most appropriate. (Read on …)

Microsoft and Sourcesense recently announced that are partnering to jointly contribute to the development t of a new version of Apache POI, an Apache top level project.

Apache POI support for Open XML is now in development, to get here took about one year and the first release is expected to be available during the second quarter of 2008.Being personally involved in the process from the very beginning, I want to tell you about how building bridges and find ways to make Microsoft and Open Source firms work together is coming true.

A useful bridge by petetaylor

Last year I have been consulting to Microsoft Italy to help them to better understand the free software principles and the business model and to validate their thoughts on how to find ways to cooperate with the FOSS world on interoperability, licensing schemas and possibly joint initiatives.

Andrea Valboni, Microsoft Italy CTO, at that stage was involved in the OOXML process, and one of the point of discussion about that format was: how people can use IT, how developers can take advantage from it. The issue of a reference implementation was coming out in the debate of that time. Here the full story, in Andrea’s words:

I was discussing this over the phone with Roberto Galoppini (we have been not always on the same page,but our interaction have been always very respectful and intellectually honest), he was not very much convinced that a reference implementation could help developers, although a good idea. His point of view was more in favor of a set of libraries that can avoid developers to enter into the format’s details and concentrate on the application functionalities. I then asked whether he knew someone that can be interested in doing this.

Having been the founder of the Italian open source consortium (CIRS) I do know many Italian open source companies, and I knew I had the perfect match with Sourcesense, an italian-rooted Open Source systems integrator with a strong international outreach and a great track record in participation to Open Source communities: I knew Gianugo Rabellino, Sourcesense’s CEO and a well know member of the Apache Software Foundation, was and is the right man for the job, and I was in touch with Marco Bruni, founder of Pro-netics group, an Italian IT group with solid Open Source roots and the company behind Sourcesense. I added two and two, and I made introductions.

Getting back to Andrea’s tale, here how it goes on:

So a beautiful sunny morning some days after that talk, I was sitting in a bar in Rome, having a coffee with Roberto and Marco Bruni, discussing about formats and listening to opinions of an open source company’s manager. Also the dialog I had with Marco was very open and frank, we both explained our reciprocal points of view and ideas, then he talked about Java libraries they are using to access Office binary formats. As I asked for more info, he talked me about the Jakarta/POI project [Java API To Access Microsoft Format Files] of the Apache Foundation.

Sometime after that meeting, Gianugo was sitting in our office at Segrate, explaining to me and few legals the Apache License and more in general the open source licensing and how the Apache Foundation is working and the communities rules working under this umbrella: he was pretty clear, that’s are the rules, if we would like to create a cooperation.

And it happened, the agreement took form day after day.

I am glad I have been helping to make it happen playing the open source hub role, I really wish this partnership to be the first of many other involving open source firms, possibly European and Italian ones!

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, microsoft, sourcesense, marcobruni, pro-netics, sourcesense, apache, POI, OpenXML

While at the Open Source Think Tank Raven Zachary came up with the idea of creating the Pulse of Open Source, a new web application tailored to highlight open source activity on Twitter.

Just as Raven I was also initially skeptical of this service, a sort of micro-blogging (140 characters or less) to share tiny URLs and no much more. But I was proven wrong, as Stormy Peters pointed out twitter could well be your cup of coffee, maybe also Matt Asay will change his mind at some time.

One of the things I have found useful about Twitter besides following close friends is following people in my profession. The more I looked, the more interesting participants in the open source community I found on Twitter.

Raven, I couldn’t say it better myself, I totally agree. Raven told me about his initiative -  based on a conversation he had with Ross Turk, Mark Hinkle, Reuven Cohen, and Aaron Fulkerson- at breakfast the very last day at Napa, and I am glad to be part of the ‘kernel’.

As of launch today, the site is following 87 people and I expect that number to grow substantially over time. Take a look at who we follow. If you are an active participant in the open source community and would like to be included in this stream of consciousness, instructions are on the site about how to participate. I’m hoping that my colleagues Jay and Matt will take the hint and join Twitter, too. 451 colleagues Nick Patience, Vishy Venugopalan, and Rachel Chalmers are on Twitter. You can also track our analyst releases using the service.

I wish the Pulse of Open Source all the best, but get to twitter now..

Technorati Tags: twitter, RavenZachary, the451group, StormyPeters, MattAsay,  

My friend Giacomo Poderi, Free Software Foundation Europe Italian representative, today forwarded me a document introducing Document Freedom Day, a global day for document liberation scheduled for 26 of March.

It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general. The DFD is supported by a large group of organisations and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS, Esoma, Free Software Foundations Europe and Latin America, IBM, NLnet, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Inc., The Open Learning Centre, Opentia, Estandares Abiertos.

The initiative clearly promotes ODF, the website reports the ODF logo and, just to name another open standard, the Portable Document Format (PDF) is not even mentioned. Why you didn’t call it Open Document Format Day then?

The ODF logo, courtesy of RedHat

My friends, Freedom it is about choice..

Technorati Tags: Open Document Format, ODF, Portable Document Format, PDF, Open Standards, FSFE

Stefano Maffulli’s post “managing a non-profit organization is real business” let me wonder about the importance of transparency within free software organizations here in Europe.

Shouldn’t I pose such questions? by brighterworlds

Recently I happened to ask twice Georg Greve, Free Software Foundation Europe President, about why FSFE is partnering with Open Forum, supporting “Certified Open” (tm).

The Open Forum Europe is definitely not a story of a success. The EC-funded projects, started in September 2005 ended at the beginning of this year, and we didn’t see any of the following promises realized:

The aim of The OpenForum Europe (TOF-e) project is to put certainty and commercial clarity into the whole Open Source process. It will assist SMEs, Enterprises and the Public Sector in the pragmatic adoption and support of OSS by intermediating between business users and the OSS developers, integrators and support community across Europe.
TOF-e represents the specific market validation phase of this eTEN project to rollout TOF-e across Europe and consists of 3 local portals in Denmark, Ireland and the UK.

So said, why is FSFE supporting one of TOF-e’s creatures?

Googling around I noticed that Shane McCoughan, FTF coordinator at FSFE had some remarks about Certified Open, talking of misapplications of language and concepts. Shane a couple of weeks later joined Certified Open Ltd, and actually is one of FSFE’s representatives on the Certified Open board.

The question is still open.

Technorati Tags: oss, open business, FSFE, Certified Open, ShaneMcCoughan, GeorgGreve, StefanoMaffulli

Nuxeo, an open source firm pioneering in the Open Source ECM revolution from 2001, announced that Nuxeo has been choosen by the Press Association. Being the second time that Nuxeo addresses the market of press agencies, I asked Stefan Fermigier, Nuxeo CEO, to tell us more about it.

Taylored by metrò

From the press release results that the national news agency of the UK and Ireland (Press Association) has chosen to improve its digital news production process using Nuxeo:

Rapidly changing requirements and demands for digital multimedia news distribution drove the need for PA to develop a much more robust and efficient ECM platform. Nuxeo has developed an ECM prototype for PA, which PA has approved. Both parties are currently working together on the final release.

Stefan, is prototyping a valuable business development tool?

Definitively yes! Prototyping a project with, for instance, the 20% of the functionalities that clearly showcase 80% of the business value, is a great way to startup a business relationship with a new customer.

More generally, our most successful projects (on the occasions where Nuxeo, and not a system integrator, is asked by the customers to do the developments) have been done in an iterative fashion that goes roughly like this:

1. start with a proof of concept or prototype;
   .
2. sign a framework contract with the customer and define the initial scope for the project;
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3. develop the application iteratively, collecting feedback from the future users by making frequent (for instance, monthly) releases, and fine-tuning the specifications if necessary;
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4. deploy the application to a small group of actual users;
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5. support those users and collect their feedback from real use;
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6. start a new phase for the project, with enhancements requested by the users, and roll out to a larger user base;
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7. iterate last part until roll out is complete.

And later do more projects with the same customer using the same technology, as they are now confident that the technology can be used for real.

Open sources firm implementing solutions based on open source products often follow a similar path. Tailoring open source software to specific needs requires a deep knowledge of both the product and the specific process. Here customers can see a risk of having no support down the road.
Did it help you to get it having previous experiences in the field?

In this particular case, yes. We have already done a successful project with Agence France Presse, and which, according to the agency’s IT directors, led the AFP to raise the production of the journalists using the application by 40%.

Even though they are competitors (on certain markets), AFP helped us convince PA that we have a great technology and a strong understanding of the needs of a news agency.

With these projects, as well as several other ongoing projects with AFP, we believe that we are now well positioned to address the worldwide market of press agencies and other news producing bodies.

Nuxeo in this case is addressing a vertical market in the long tail, betting on the possibility to exploit business process execution within a specific market segment. We will see more and more Enterprise Content Management solutions targeted at particular verticals, and identifying the right ones is really important.

Is the improvement of PA’s digital news production process of any interest to other potential customers?

As stated in the press release, PA is in a fiercely competitive market and wants to leverage the application to gain competitive advantage. Hence there are parts of the project that are proprietary and won’t be shared with others. But we can still work with other news agencies on their own particular needs and help them develop news production systems on top of our platform tailored to their needs.

And there are many enhancements that we’re doing to the platforms we’re using to do the project, Nuxeo EP and Nuxeo RCP, that will come from the project’s requirements, and will be available in the next releases of Nuxeo EP as well as in the first packaged release of Nuxeo RCP, both scheduled for early 2008.

Unlike some “open source” companies that develop the new versions of their product behind closed doors, the source code for these enhancements is already visible in our source code repository. (While of course all customer-specific code is in a private, secure repository.)

Open source is often about customization, and moving from artisanship to industrial requires a pyramidal structure. Large System integrators would act as “mediators” towards specialized firms. Maybe partners like Atos Origin, Capgemini or LogicaCMG will play a role to deliver solutions targeted at other verticals.
“The 80-20 rule” unfortunately applies the other way around: a general purpose infrastructure fits the 80% of cases and 20% of resources are needed to fulfill them, but to cover the remaining 20% of cases you need 80% of the resources.

No “free” lunch for open source firms today, and congratulations to Nuxeo!

Technorati Tags: Open Source Strategy, ECM, Nuxeo, Stefan Fermigier, Press Association

Microsoft withdrawn two remaining appeals before the European Union’s Court of First Instance against European Commission antitrust decisions.

As reported by Slashdot an article in Australia’s IT News mentions that under its antitrust agreement with the European Union:

Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects.

Of course you can, if you stay in the green area! by Lateefa

While I understand that Erich Andersen, European General Counsel for Microsoft, said that:

We believe it’s important at this stage to focus all of our energies on complying with our legal obligations and strengthening our constructive relationship with the European Commission.

I don’t understand why Neelie Kroes, EU’s Competition Commissioner, said that:

I have always said that open source software developers must be able to take advantage of this remedy: now they can.

Despite Georg Greeve (FSFE President) seems happy about the news, and Dana Blankenhorn believes that open source developers found a greater protection in Europe, I am concerned.

Answering a Dana’s post, I stressed the importance of the real meaning of the expression RAND, Reasonable And Not Discriminatory.

As a matter of fact even if you have to ask a single dime for each copy of a software, that it simply can’t be free software. In this respect perspective any (open) standard and protocol has to be royalty-free, unless you want to keep out open source. I totally agree with John McCreesh, the EU has worked for three years to produce a mouse, and no one is really taking advantage of if it. Did interoperability win? I am afraid not.

I see FFII, Stefano Maffulli sharing my concerns, and I really hope that the Samba Team will soon take a position on this matter. Benjamin Henrion, FFII representative said:

Kroes has ensured that EPO software patents - which the EU rejected in 2005 - will now strengthen the monopolist’s grip for years to come.

I totally agree with Benjamin, a patent covenant for non commercial open source developers is a small blanket. At the end of the day “free software” might cost a lot to end customers and open source firms, from now on.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Non Commercial Open Source, FFII, StefanoMaffulli, DanaBlankenhorn, HenrionBenjamin, NeelieKroes, JohnMcCreesh, RAND, Europe, FSFE, GeorgGreeve

Alfresco has announced that Proforma Global has selected Alfresco’s document management solution, while Nuxeo has just announced the availability of Nuxeo Enterprise Platform 5.1.

Proforma Global is a division of Proforma, a $300 million company with 650 offices worldwide. It provides some 30,000 clients with fully integrated solutions for both print and electronic communications, designed to serve its clients’ industry-specific graphic communications, commercial printing, promotional and multimedia needs

Proforma Global, a division of Proforma, use Alfresco to help one of its customers to collaborate on and update the look and content of product data sheets among personnel throughout the world.

Matt Asay, Alfresco’s VP Marketing of Business Development, said:

The great thing about Proforma’s adoption of Alfresco is that it was on its terms, not ours. Proforma evaluated the software for months before contacting Alfresco to purchase our support and other services. With Alfresco’s open source and open standards Enterprise Content Management solution, Proforma has complete control of its own content, as it should.

This is the true value of open source: it returns control to the customer, letting them how or if to engage a vendor. For Alfresco, this has meant that we can’t rest on our laurels (i.e., our software). The software may get the customer interested, but it’s the value we provide around the software that closes the deal.

I am happy to see that UK’s position as the open source laggard of Europe is changing in Alfresco’s opinion, and it’s not the first signal in this direction.

Talking about Nuxeo, the updated platform provides an infrastructure designed to meet the needs of large scale enterprises SOA oriented, with first implementations in the media, energy and defense sectors.

Stefan Fermigier, Nuxeo CEO, asked about the UK market commented:

We’re going to announce next week our biggest deal in the UK and the UK market already represents approximately 20% of our global business.

UK seems to start looking with more interest to commercial open source solutions today.

If you are evaluating Open Source Enterprise Content Management solutions, have a look at Alfresco and Nuxeo QSOS sheets before, it might help you. Ohloh comparation is also available.

Technorati Tags: Alfresco, Nuxeo, ECM, Commercial Open Source, StefanFermigier, MattAsay

The OpenOffice.org Conference 2007 was held in Barcelona, from the 19th to the 21th of September. People from all the world, employees and volunteers, attended the conference to learn about OpenOffice.org future.

I returned myself a couple of days ago, and I wish to share here some thoughts about the final round table, actually one of the most important sessions.

Round table participants were:

• Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community manager, who recently joined Sun Microsystems;
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• Zaheda Bhorat, managing Open Source Programs at Google (formerly working at Sun),
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• John McCreesh volunteer and OOo marketing Project leader;
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• a representative of IBM (sorry, I don’t remember the name);
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• Michael Bemmer, StarOffice manager at Sun Microsystems;
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• Simon Phipps - Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems;
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• Michael Meeks from Novell;
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• Cai Yung Hu from RedFlag.

While I was expecting to hear some news about the future of the project, the panel was basically a self celebrating presentation focused on download results and on the new project entries, namely IBM and RedFlag RedFlag.
Now, unless we redefine a community just as a technological club open to firms, I wouldn’t call this group a community. After IBM and RedFlag joined the project, it is getting more and more difficult to call OOo an Open Source project managed by the community. it is becoming an Open Source project managed by big companies, “build contributed in collaboration with the community“.

Barcelona guested also the Drupal Conference over those days, and it is worth to mention. Drupal is a CMS (Content Management System) released with GPL license and managed by a community. More than 400 people attended this conference, they paid 50 Euro, they mainly represented themselves or small firms and there were more than 40 sponsors.

On the other hand, about 300 people attended the OOoConf without paying any fee, and only few people came from small firms or just for personal interest. Many were from Sun and Novell and sponsors were less than 15.

Drupal and OOo are not comparable in term of code and users. There are different orders of magnitude between them. Nevertheless Drupal has more participation than OOo. Frankly I’d expect much more community participation from the biggest Open Source project in the world. Inside OOo I would like to view more hybridization among stake holders and the community . This would allow a better participation of single volunteers and small firms that are at the moment quite scarse. Louis said the next 12 months will be the most important of the entire project history. I definitively agree. And I hope they will be spent to make it really open because without a community the future is at risk.

What is your opinion?

Technorati Tags: OpenOffice, Open Source Community, LouisSuarezPotts, RedFlag, IBM, SimonPhipps, Novell, Sun