Commercial Open Source Software

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’

Open source software procurement processes in the field of Italian public administrations will be at the center of the upcoming open source conference “Public tenders and open source“, next Thursday 17 June in Rome at the IBM eGov solution center (disclosureaimer: IBM Italy is a client and is the sponsor of the event). Continue reading ‘About Tenders Requesting Open Source’

Black Duck today released the results of a survey asking 20 developer executives from 14 global enterprises about the top technology trends and about barriers to greater use of open source software in development projects. The 2010 edition of the “future of open source” published a survey reporting feedback from 551 respondents (48% vendors, 52% non vendors), giving feedback about what makes open source attractive and top 3 barriers to open source adoption.

Within the collaboration with IBM Italy to organize a series of meeting for Italian public administrations we asked to 16 IT public decision makers using open source - mostly innovators and early adopters - about open source critical success factors, barriers and open source governance.

Continue reading ‘What Do Open Source Surveys reveal?’

Wubi, the famous Windows Ubuntu installer, is probably one of the reasons why Ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop distro, at least among Windows users. Agostino Russo - original author and ‘inventor’ of Wubi - told me more about how everything was started from a blueprint. Continue reading ‘Wubi Installer and the Ubiquitous Ubuntu’