Webinars: Open Source Governance, by OpenLogic and Olliance Group
OpenLogic on the 17th of June will run a webinar to cover the most important elements essential to manage an enterprise open source governance program.
Updates from Roberto Galoppini Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Roberto Galoppini
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Roberto Galoppini
Italian Startups: Capture Creativity Last Webchat
Capture creativity -Â the video webchat series organized by the American Embassy in Rome to learn from success stories of first generation entrepreneurs – today at 3 PM will be presenting the last webchat, featuring Marco Marinucci (Google, “Mind the Bridge” founder).
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Roberto Galoppini
Open Source Business Strategy: OpenERP and Long Term Sustainability
Matt Asay says that creating an open-source software able to attract significant outside development contributions is difficult, yet important. Quid pro quo paradigms, as Stephane Croisier calls them, can foster more sustainable open source communities. Both Jahia and OpenERP found their way to foster external participations.
Roberto Galoppini
European Elections: Italians do it, but just in Italy
Assoli today announced that under the free software pact initiative 232 Italian candidates signed the “caro candidato” pact. Candidates signing it state that they favor the development and use of free software, and will protect it from threatening EU legislation.
Only 27 MEP candidates subscribed until now, I hope more will pop up before the elections, Europe needs MEPs informed on free software issues.
Roberto Galoppini
Europe, Gartner and Open Source
Few days ago the Italian MEP Marco Cappato made public a EC report
analyzing the feasibility of a migration to open source software on desktop workplaces.
The study was conducted in 2005, and contains two deck of slides from Gartner’s analysts Michael Silver and Nikos Drakos. Both presentations are worth reading, even if some guesses are not supported by facts.
Roberto Galoppini, and 
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Andrea Di Maio
Thanks for pointing to my blog post. For your information Gartner presented open source as a disruptive innovation back in 2003-2004. And we’ve paid attention to open source for a long time. Jst, we’ve tried to keep a balanced view amidst strong opposition and religious fervor.
Roberto Galoppini
Hi Andrea,
I am glad you are joining the conversation. I pointed to your blog post because I think that the “easiness” of open source procurement is too often under considered.
About disruptive innovation what I said that Silver’s presentation missed to look at OOo from that perspective, it wasn’t a general assumption about Gartner’s vision on disruptive innovation.
Roberto Galoppini
OpenOffice.org links: 8 Extensions, Import Spreadsheet into a OOo Database, OOo Migrations
8 Essential OpenOffice Extensions – Enjoy the Writer’s tool extension, the Sun Presentation Minimizer and other six popular extensions.
How to Import Data From Spreadsheet into OpenOffice.org Database – a simple tutorial to import data in six steps.
Roberto Galoppini
European Open Source Procurement Guidelines: How Do you Like Them?
Talking about Alfresco’s business strategy I happened to mention that the European open source observatory released guidelines for open source procurement.
The OSOR guideline draws on the extensive analysis conducted by the Dutch government’s OSOSS in 2005, followed by a guide published later by the successor organization to the OSOSS program (Netherlands Open in Verbinding).
Roberto Galoppini
Open Source ECM: Alfresco Business Strategy
Alfresco meetup for community and customers took place here in Rome two weeks ago, featuring both John Newton and John Powell, respectively Alfresco CTO and CEO.
I asked few questions to John Powell, learning more about Alfresco licensing story, and about differences between Alfresco Enterprise Edition and Alfresco Labs.
Matt Asay
Roberto, I never advocated a move to the Apache license. I simply raised a question. I’m surprised by the amount of misunderstanding that arises from it. Are people so stuck in their own way of thinking that they can’t allow others to ask questions and probe new ways of doing business?
You call our licensing history “hectic.” I call it progressive. We’ve consistently matched the right license for the right phase of the company’s development. I won’t pretend that we always knew exactly why we did X or Z, but then, who does?
You suggest our strategy makes it hard for us to work with governments, and yet government remains one of our top-three verticals. We’re making millions upon millions of dollars with government customers. I am bewildered by your suggestion there.
And as for Funambol, we have the same model (or very similar) as it does. The only difference is that Funambol has given up on trying to sell to enterprise customers, and this is our main type of customer. Other than that, there really is no difference.
So…I’m confused by your post a bit.
Roberto Galoppini
Hi Matt,
glad to hear back from you.
I said you start advocating a different license – Apache, not the BSD as I mistakenly wrote initially – because you wrote that Apache licensing could well be even better than GPL. I added I don’t think you will change the license, though. So said, changing three times in a row the license in a couple of years sounds a bit hectic to me. I totally agree we can name it also progressive. I made my personal guess (just a guess) towards GPLv3 in force of the fact that a company can change (for the better) its decisions.
Europe is now looking into open source procurement, did you read it the OSS procurement guideline draft? I would recommend at least the “Acquiring open source software without tenders” and “Tenders specifying open source software or open standards” paragraphs.
How do think proprietary vendors will face this issue?
The difference between Funambol’s and Alfresco’s approach is not merely the customer target, but in the way they distinguish customers from users.
The [Funambol] core value proposition it is about making carriers life easy to provision users’ phones, manage devices (creation, modification, etc) as well as send OTA commands. As a matter of fact enterprises do not need all these features and richness of configurations, and Funambol doesn’t need to upsell its community.
Similar differentiations happen elsewhere, think of how Sangoma funds open source projects delivering appliances that need to be certified (i.e. conformance testing). This is not a critic, but a fact: the client segment is an important building block of any so called (open source) business model.
I like Alfresco, and I linked three different Alfresco PRs giving a picture of how Alfresco’s business strategy is effective. Still I think it is interesting to express opinions on Alfresco’s strategy, maybe giving feedback in a constructive manner (like for the European public procurement thing).
Roberto Galoppini
Skill Importance and accredited Qualifications Providers: the INGOTs
The EC in March 2009 decided to invest in physical infrastructures, in line with the conclusions of the last 2008 European Council stating the importance of developing broadband internet.
The ECDL Foundation responded with a position paper outlining why ICT investments should be complemented by investments in skills development, and I asked an opinion to Ian Lynch, education lead for the OpenOffice.org community and the man behind a family of qualifications called The INGOTs.
Roberto Galoppini
Software Patents are Back!
The European Commission brings back software patents, this time through a via a centralized patent court, the European and Community Patents Court (draft agreement).
This court – if the draft will get approved at the next competitiveness meeting of May 28-29 – will have exclusive jurisdiction in respect of patent infringements.
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