Updates from October, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:31 am on October 9, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commercial Open Source: What’s missing? 

    Richard Stallman recently wrote a long article entitled “Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software“, explaining why free software enthusiasts have to say “free software” rather than “open source“.

    Every Free Software activist knows very well this issue, and I did abide by the importance to stand for freedom for years when I was supporting the FSFE Italian chapter’s activities. Recognizing the importance of freedom and stand for it, doesn’t imply the need to not talk about open source, though. Here comes the reason of this post, let’s start with Richard’s words:

    These freedoms [the four ones] are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users’ sake, but because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation.

    I think it is really important to stress the ultimate goal of free software, just as he clearly pointed out here: sharing and cooperation. Richard dislikes Lakhani and Wolf’s findings on the motivation of free software developers, because apparently only a fraction of them are motivated by the view that software should be free. In his opinion it happens because they surveyed the developers on a site that does not stress the importance of freedom. While I don’t know if he is right or not saying it, I think a better understanding of why firms cooperate on open source projects is important.
    An Italian research based upon 146 firms analyzed the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source activities. Here the conclusions:

    We find significant differences between the set of motivations of individuals and those of firms. In particular, firms emphasize economic and technological reasons for entering and contributing to Open Source and do not subscribe to many social motivations that are, by contrast, typical of individual programmers. While one might expect these differences, it is interesting to observe that the more pragmatic motivational profiles of firms are accepted in the Free Software community, provided firms comply with the rules of the community.

    So individual developers’ and firms’ motivations are inherently different in nature. Reading the variety of the answers comes out that the highest–ranking incentive for using Open Source software seems to be promoting innovation and emancipation from the price and licence policies of large software companies.

    Sequential Innovation is the reason to share and cooperate, as seen also in a study conducted on the linux-embedded vertical market, showing that averagely 53% of code is revealed. Participation to a technological club has beneficial effects on firms’ business, because they share risks and costs.

    Collaboration is an emerging pattern, and firms approaching software production in terms of sharing and cooperation are Free Software’s good friend. Commercial Open Source, as far as based on participation and fostering communities, is aimed at promoting just the same idea of freedom, no less.

    Happy hacking, share and share-alike!

    Technorati Tags: Free Software, RichardStallman, Commercial Open Source, Freedom

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:36 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Cocoon getTogether 2007 

    Today had been held in Rome the sixth edition of the Cocoon getTogether 2007, an event exclusively dedicated to Apache Cocoon.

    The GetTogether included the all-collaborative hackathon two days long, as well as nice social activities around Rome and surroundings.

    I enjoyed just the very beginning of the programme. I had the chance to listen to the introduction given by my friend Gianugo and Arje Cahn, but also practical case histories thank to Francesco Chicchiriccò.

    My best compliments to Semeru for the organization, and to Gianugo that actually was a great host, over night as well! 😉

    Technorati Tags: Cocoon, Cocoon GetTogether, GianugoRabellino

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:53 am on October 3, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Business Barcamp: Venture Camp in Rome 06-10-2007 

    Next saturday in Rome will be held the VentureCamp is a BarCamp dedicated to Venture Capital.

    People from around the world will share experiences and needs, either from VCs or entrepreneurs perspectives. If you want to know more about Venture Capitals and Start-ups, or if you wish to tell your story join us at the John Cabot University, in Via della Lungara 233 in the very center of Rome.

    Richard C. Boly from the U.S. Embassy in Rome – Programme Manager of Partnership for growth – and Jaqueline Maggi from the John Cabot University are among organizers, as Fabio Scriptavolant Masetti who originally asked me to join months ago.

    Among Venture Capitalists, Arturo Artom from Your Truman Show, Luigi Amati from META Group, Giacomo Marini from Noventi.

    Among high tech enterprises, besides the candidates to become “gazelles”, I am happy to see that Fabrizio Capobianco from Funambol will join the event, and also old friends like Marco Rossi from Movenda on behalf of the First Generation Network.

    Media coverage seems also pretty good, Alessio Jacona for Blogs4biz, Amanda Lorenzani for blognation Italy, Livia Iacolare for Intruders TV and Leo Sorge for Più Blog just to name some of them.

    Last but not least, I see also many friends are coming over, among them Andrea Gumina, Nexttlab CEO (Andrea, take a moment to correct your URI), Nicola Mattina, Tara Kelly, Luca Sartoni, Antonio Pavolini, and Roldano De Persio.

    Technorati Tags: Startup, Venture Capital, Barcamp, AmandaLorenzani, NicolaMattina, FabioMasetti, MarcoRossi, FabrizioCapobianco, Movenda, Funambol

     

  • Davide Dozza 7:24 am on October 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Conference 2007: some thoughts 

    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;
      .
    • Zaheda Bhorat, managing Open Source Programs at Google (formerly working at Sun),
      .
    • John McCreesh volunteer and OOo marketing Project leader;
      .
    • a representative of IBM (sorry, I don’t remember the name);
      .
    • Michael Bemmer, StarOffice manager at Sun Microsystems;
      .
    • Simon Phipps – Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems;
      .
    • Michael Meeks from Novell;
      .
    • 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

     

    • Simon Phipps 11:31 am on October 2, 2007 Permalink

      I didn’t think much of that panel either, David, but I think you need to reflect more deeply. A key question to ask is how many of the people at the Drupal event were actually developers working on the core code, and how many were end users?

      OOoCon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org – the annual OOoCon provides them with a place to meet. OO.o is well sponsored, yes, which some people regard as a strength. Thus most of the individual developers who work on its code are employees of a sponsor company. End users of OpenOffice.org don’t really have to have special skills to use it so aren’t that motivated to attend. There are many end-user mini-conferences around the world during the year, arranged by the excellent OOo marketing community.

      By contrast, Drupal users will be mainly programmers and/or SysAdmins. They will be interested in hints and tips on usage, on meeting each other for learning and support. Drupal is also relatively new and there are plenty of people encountering it for the first time. I’d expect a Drupal event to be larger and to have a larger number of users attending.

      While I think the discussion of community building is a good think (indeed there was a session on that topic at OOoCon), I think your comparison is misplaced. Any technology whose main users are developers will produce the effect you describe when compared against OOo, regardless of the health of either community.

    • Michael Meeks 11:24 am on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      Unfortunately, attracting and retaining corporate developers to work on OO.o is really rather a difficult problem, though easier than attracting volunteers 🙂 Persuading Sun to change their community and ownership structures to improve things is also an almost impossible task.
      Some day, I hope we’ll see a meritocratically elected board of core contributors rounding up an OO.o conference packed with developers 🙂

    • Simon Phipps 5:09 pm on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      Has it been easier for Ximian Evolution, Michael?

    • JJS 6:47 pm on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      A community is what it is. Those who are interested in the project will join and participate based on their level of interest. Those who do not participate can offer opinions. But if the opinion simply amounts to, “I don’t like your community,” then the project members are likewise free to offer constructive criticism on that opinion.

      Later . . . Jim

    • Tor Lillqvist 11:02 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Aren’t you linking to the wrong Red Flag company? The one that joined the OOo community is called something like “Red Flag CH2000” http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Beijing_Redflag_Chinese_2000_Software_Co.,_Ltd.(, while you link to Red Flag Linux, another entity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

    • Davide Dozza 11:22 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Simon, I definitively agree with you about developers and end-users. But this is exactly the question a I’m reflecting on.
      Why OOocon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org and they come almost from Sun, IBM, etc and not from small and medium firms?
      I think OOo could be a great horizontal framework for services and software delivery on which firms could develop their business and contribute back. And moreover OOo could also be a place where volunteers contribute or a gym for people who want to get trained in a large and challenging project.
      But OOo doesn’t look like this. It seems that the major discussion topics are relating to keep satisfied the SUN requirements which are JCA, license, etc. instead to encourage external contributions and participation.
      It’s maybe time to transform StarDivision people from great developers to project managers oriented to the Community and to open the project?

    • Davide Dozza 11:36 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Jim, first we have to define what kind of community we are talking about. Is it a free software community? Is it a software user community? Is it a community of software vendors? I think is very important because people can get puzzled about, as I’m becoming.
      In this way people will consciously join and participate to the project.

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:08 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      You’re definitely right Tor, thank you!

    • Simon Phipps 10:50 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      I just wrote a huge long answer and WP threw it away. Too upset to write it again, maybe next week.

  • Roberto Galoppini 4:05 pm on September 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source VoIP: VON Europe conference 

    VON Europe Autumn – a European event where people from all over the world talked about where IP communications is going in Europe – today guested the “Open Source VoIP” conference.

    The conference “Open Source VoIP, sustainability of OS project in the business sector” was aimed at discovering how open source VoIP applications are doing in the ICT market.
    Jon ‘Maddog’ Hall, President of the Linux International association, opened the conference talking about “Telephone, Free Software and Emerging Economies“, introducing the audience to the Free Software and raising some important questions about emerging economies.

    Jon Hall MaddogJon Hall Maddog by Pizel y Dixel

    Alfonso Fuggetta spoke about Open Source business models. He raised interesting issues related to false myths, like the software commoditization. He eventually ended saying that proprietary and open source firms are offering basically the same services, despite Jon and I were giving him evidence of the opposite.

    Greg Vance – Digium Sales Manager – brought the discussion on a practical ground talking about “Asterisk: an OS project that has become mainstream. What’s new“, telling us about the product and the company, included the new CEO and other open positions. I asked him about Digium’s revenue and I learned that 85% of their incomes gets from hardware, than training, services and double-licensing do the rest.

    The co-founder of the OpenSer project Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, who magicly appeared from nowhere when was his turn, talked about “The OpenSer: from Universities to industrial applications”. It amazed me to know how spread is the usage of the OpenSer, especially by universities but not limited to them.

    Diego Gosmar gave a speech entitled “Beyond the Asterisk World..what’s around“, giving a good picture of the Asterisk ecosystem, made by many local small firms delivering basic services (installation, configuration, etc). We agreed that there is a need for a better organized ecosystem, going beyond the Asterisk partnership program, may be through marketplaces or productizing services.

    A Questions&Answers session was held at the very end of the conference, resulting in questions about GPL licensing. As a matter of fact, the public is getting more and more conscious about open source applications and pose practical questions.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Open Source SIP, Open Source PBX, Asterisk, OpenSer , JonHallMaddog, AlfonsoFuggetta, Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, RobertoGaloppini

     

    • Randy Claines 6:07 pm on July 19, 2008 Permalink

      I use VMukti for my vopi open source needs and has been nominated for the CCA 2008.

      Haven’t used VMukti yet? Well I bet you have a need for it already. VMukti is a Free, innovative, multi-point total communications, collaboration and conferencing engine with built-in support for access to platform features through Personal Customizable Web Interface, Widgets for 3rd party websites, Desktops, and PSTN/ Mobile/ IP Phones. VMukti has been nominated for CCA 2008.

      Help VMukti get the support they need from the user community to continue developing such a great project. You can show your support by recognizing this software in the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards. This recognition will help ensure that their software gets the attention it needs to continue to provide a great set of features to the software community.

      You can vote for the software on SourceForge.net by going here:

      http://www.vmukti.com/latest-news/vmukti-calls-on-community-to-win-prestigious-award.html

      Winning this award would mean big things for all the users at VMukti.

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:28 am on September 25, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source myths: Carlo Daffara asks your input on Groklaw 

    Carlo Daffara wrote an article, that is part of the project FLOSSMETRICS, answering the Tim O’Reilly‘s “Ten Myths about Open Source Software“, a keynote speech given in 1999 to an audience of Fortune 500 executives.
    Since those myths are still perceived as true at some extent, Carlo tried to provide some pragmatic answers and asks for your opinions on Groklaw, so far 318 comments are already listed!

    May I request your input? This article is part of our research in the EU project FLOSSMETRICS, where we are preparing a guide for helping small and medium-sized enterprises on the adoption of free/libre/open source software (FLOSS). As the first version of the guide will be ready soon, I would ask my fellow Groklawers for suggestions on what additional aspects you would like to see in the guide, as the results will be freely published under a CC-attribution-share-alike, allowing also for commercial use. We already have planned chapters on software selection, adoption methodologies (especially for the smaller companies), guidelines for contributing code to FLOSS projects, interaction with public administrations, and an initial selection of 50-60 interesting packages for SMEs. I welcome suggestions on additional topics, and of course criticisms and corrections.

    Technorati Tags: groklaw, open source myths, carlodaffara, flossmetrics

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:24 pm on September 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Sun tech days: next week Italian events will take place 

    The tenth edition Sun Tech Days will take place next week in Rome and in Milan. A glimpse of the technological innovations of the Java world, and not only.

    Within the twelve edition of the Java Conference the Sun Tech Days will offer an opportunity to know all about OpenSolaris ,NetBeans and GlassFish.

    Jeff Jackson – Senior Vice President, Solaris Engineering Group – is the Italian key-note speaker. He is involved with the open source program surrounding OpenSolaris, and he is also a “veteran” on open source projects at Sun. I am really looking forward to hear some news.

    It is an open event, everyone is invited.
    About The Sun Tech Days.
    The Sun Tech Days program is a 15-city world tour designed to educate developers in local markets on various technologies. The events are typically a two-day format and range from hands on education, university training, community programs and technical sessions.

    Technorati Tags: Sun Tech Days, Java Conference, Rome, Milan, Glassfish, OpenSolaris, Netbeans

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:49 pm on September 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Intelligence: Actuate preview, by Seth Grimes 

    Actuate next monday is going to launch a new community site named BIRT Exchange, and Seth Grimes got the opportunity to have a preview, below some excerpts of his article.

    BIRT is a set of Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, simultaneously an Actuate commercial product and “an Eclipse-based open source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE.” Eclipse participation has paid off for Actuate. According to Vijay Ramakrishnan, Actuate director of marketing for Java reporting, “Eclipse is such a diverse ecosystem of projects, and reporting is a pretty horizontal technology. There will be lots of cases where developers come to BIRT through other technologies.”

    Note that open-source BI rivals including Pentaho and JasperSoft and non-OS powerhouses such as Business Objects offer Eclipse plug-ins that are similar to Actuate’s and allow comparable interoperability with non-BI Eclipse projects. Their technologies do not, however, share BIRT’s status as a top-level Eclipse project. [..]
    By contrast, other commercial open source BI providers welcome community project participation. Pentaho and JasperSoft, for instance, welcome outside developers. JasperSoft CTO Barry Klawans says that his company tends to get “a constant trickle of small contributions and 2-4 major ones a year.” And Pentaho Marketing VP Lance Walter estimates that while 80-85% of contributors work for Pentaho, a spectrum of outside developers submit code with no single company contributing more than 2%.

    Personally, I think that a broader base of user-contributors is a healthy thing, a lesson I learned from Eric Raymond.

    Cooperation is a nice to have, but so far the application arena didn’t proof to be as interesting as the infrastructural one for open source firms and individual developers, though.

    The site blurs the boundaries between what is free, open source and what is closed and not free. You can exchange code, tips, and tutorials in the DevX section, and you can as easily jump to downloads of trial versions of Actuate commercial products. The site is an “almost no cost sales and marketing” opportunity, quoting Actuate briefing materials.[..]

    The site is an almost no cost sales and marketing opportunity… for Actuate. It is not an open marketplace like SugarExchange, where third-party providers can sell their SugarCRM-related wares, or Red Hat Exchange, a similar marketplace for applications validated to run on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Actuate will insist that non-Actuate BIRT developers — and BIRT trainers and consultants — look elsewhere than the BIRT Exchange to sell their tools and services, regardless of the boost an open marketplace could bring to BIRT users and Actuate itself.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source BI, Business Intelligence, SethGrimes

     

    • Joe M. 9:53 pm on April 16, 2008 Permalink

      I haven’t used Actuate before, primarily use JasperSoft for my business intelligence needs, but that is an interesting method of combining open source and premium services. I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t just go one way or the other, although this surely allows them to make some money while still being affordable to the end user.

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:17 pm on September 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Hires: Xwiki looking for a VP Marketing Manager 

    XWiki, a French company aimed to bring open source wiki to the enterprise who recently won a prize for its XWiki Watch, is looking for a VP Marketing Manager.

    now hiring now hiring, by Zach Klein

    XWiki has an open position for a VP Marketing Manager based in Paris, France. Company’s objective is to complete their team with a experienced Software/Web marketing specialist, with an understanding of the Open Source industry.

    XWiki looks for you, a person able to:

    • challenge them from the user standpoint,
    • leverage your usage experience of collaborative and web 2.0 tools,
    • bring your experience with international markets,
    • grow with the company, with entrepreneurial spirit.

    Ludovic Dubost, XWiki CEO, said:

    We aim to extend our reach beyond of France where we have build our customer base towards Europe and the USA where we have already clients (Curriki in the US) and many open source users. Our objective is to build parternships and offer our services in these markets.

    Want to apply?

    About XWiki.

    XWiki is an open source Company building XWiki, the open source second generation Wiki providing a collaborative web application developement platform on top of the Wiki concept. XWiki sells support services, trainings, consulting as well as packaged products built on top of the platform (XE, XEM, XWiki Watch, Chronopolys, Nearbee, etc). XWiki innovates with research projects like XWiki Concerto and Nepomuk.

    Technorati Tags: XWiki, Xwiki Watch, Open Source Hires, Business models

     

    • Ludovic Dubost (XWiki) 5:32 pm on September 13, 2007 Permalink

      Hi !

      Thanks for the note.. BTW, we are not closed to candidates not based in Paris. We aim to be a global company and would be happy to consider people in other locations.

      We are building tools for global organizations ! So we should be able to handle that.

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:44 am on September 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source ECM: Nuxeo expands commercial staff 

    A Few days ago Nuxeo, a UK-based provider of Open Source Enterprise Content Management solutions based in Paris, announced the appointment of Steve Raby as their UK Country Manager.

    Nuxeo, is a European Open Source firm basically selling subscriptions and services to aid customers and partners to operate their projects on top of the Nuxeo platform.

    Nuxeo, that might be named a “pure player” – if such characterization still makes some sense – don’t reserve advanced features to proprietary versions – what we call Split OSS/Commercial product – providing also support on the “community” version.

    Stefane Fermigier, Nuxeo’s CEO, told me:

    We don’t make this kind of distinction between “community” and “professional” versions, there is only one Nuxeo version, which has all the features we can put into at a given time, and for which customers can buy support if they need.

    Steve Raby Steve Raby

    Nuxeo hiring Steve Raby – bringing his 25 years of sales experience, 17 years of which at Sun selling high-end solutions to Enterprise customers and dealing with partners, and 3 years at JBoss building up the UK/Northern Europe sales organization from scratch – made a step typical of “traditional” IT vendors. Stefane commented:

    Steve is the right guy for us at this stage of our development. For instance, during our first conversation with him, we was convinced after less that 15 minutes that he had a deep understanding of the open source business, that he could articulate very clearly the benefits for this approach for the customers.

    Open Source or not, it is still the business that pays!

    Technorati Tags: Open Source ECM, Open Source Strategy, ECM, StefaneFermigier, SteveRaby

     

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