Commercial Open Source Software

On the 1st of January 2011 has been celebrated the Public Domain Day, an initiative aimed at celebrating the wealth of knowledge, information and beauty that becomes freely available to humankind this day.

Rome and other Italian cities will host events next Saturday.

Take a moment to read the Public Domain Manifesto and sign it if you wish, Creative Commons and other organizations are already supporting it.

The Europen edition of the Open Database Camp 2011 will take place in Sardinia, hosted by the Sardinia Technology Park, a local scientific and business institution with international links.

Mark your calendars: the Open Database Camp will be held in Sardinia on May 6-7-8, 2011.

Continue reading ‘Open Database Camp 2011 in Sardinia: Combining duty and pleasure’

The legacy of OpenOffice.org and office migrations will be at the center of the next Open Source Focus Group meeting, to be held in Rome in January 2011.

In the meantime you might want to have a look at previous events - ranging from open source licensing to tenders and marketplaces - and presentations, all available on the new Focus Group Open Source blog hosted on WordPress.com.

All presentations of the event held on the 17th of November to talk about electronic purchase of open source services,  are available at the host’s website (Consip, in the news section).

The event, organized in collaboration with the Open Source Focus Group for Public Administrations, focused on how to use the award-winning Italian Public Administration Electronic Marketplace to ease open source procurement processes.

The Italian chamber of deputies on the 22th of September 2010 approved unanimously a motion to move on with the adoption of open standards in order to make office suite migrations a reality.

The original motion, made by Carlo Emanuele Trappolino who actually pointed out that a migration process was started back in 2007, was calling for a fast adoption, but the final text doesn’t specify any timing constraint.

Consip - the Italian public stock company owned by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and responsible for the rationalization of Public Purchases - is hosting an event about electronic purchase of open source services.

The event, that is part of the Open Source Focus Group for Public Administrations series, will be focuses on how the award-winning Italian Public Administration Electronic Marketplace (MEPA) can ease open source procurement processes.

I look forward to moderate the final round-table to stimulate a discussion about ongoing actions and perspectives.

AISL, the Italian Association of Free Software companies, recently debuted at the SMAU exhibit, the Italian leading ICT to discuss items related to digital technologies for business.

As results clearly from the FAQ, AISL is born to bring under the same roof Italian IT companies promoting, creating and selling free software-related services. AISL will participate also to the very next event of the “Open Source Focus Group” series, dedicated to electronic purchase of open source services via the Public Administration Electronic Marketplace.

CDTI - the Association of IT Professionals based in Rome - and the Italian biweekly newspaper “Corriere delle Comunicazioni” are organizing a one day event around cloud computing on Wednsday 13 October, at the National Central Library. Continue reading ‘Cloud Computing Conference: Rome, 13 October 2010′

Open source licensing compliance will be at the center of the next conference of the “Focus Group Open Source” series, an initiative  sponsored by IBM Italy to promote open source among Italian public administrations. (disclosure: IBM Italy is a client).

Marco Ciurcina, lawyer and Vice-President of the Italian association devoted to the promotion of free software (Assoli), will introduce the legal aspects of free software and open source licensing. Sebastiano Lomuscio, Consip, will give a speech around open source licenses and public administrations, while Carlo Vaccari will close the round-table talking about how ISTAT found its way to the EUPL.

A question and answer session and a public discussion will follow the round table.

“The future of Cloud services and integration” conference held today in Rome was another opportunity to share ideas about opportunities and threats emerging from cloud computing. Security vendors (Trend Micro), academic researchers, postal police officers and representatives from IT and IT security associations discussed the topic in depth.

Continue reading ‘Open Source Cloud Computing: Notes from a Conference’