Updates from May, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:19 am on May 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Events: Bruce Perens and Richard Stallman in Rome 

    The Innovation Festival, that will be held in Rome from the 6th till the 10th of June, will guest people from all around the world to talk about traditional and also unconventional routes to innovation. Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens will attend.

    Bruce Perens Bruce Perens by GeorgeNemeth

    Over the four days meeting, organized by LAit (Lazio Technological Innovation) I would recommend free software and open source enthusiasts to save the following two dates:

    8th of June, 8 pm: Free Software between Ethics and Business, open issues and success stories – Auditorium Ara Pacis, moderated by Arturo Di Corinto.

    9th of June, 10 am: Commercial Open Source Software (Panel) – Auditorium Ara Pacis, moderated by Roberto Galoppini. Bruce Perens, SourceLabs Vice President and Author of the Open Source Definition, will introduce the debate. Among panel participants Carlo Daffara (CIRS), Gabriele Ruffatti (Engineering), Pier Paolo Boccadamo (Microsoft), and Franco Roman (Sun).

    A Q&A session with the audience will follow, everyone is invited.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Perens, Rome, Stallman

     

    • Carlo Daffara 9:13 am on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      Many thanks to Roberto for spreading the news on the event. I will be probably present some results from the OpenTTT matching model for open source software, and eventually to talk about business models; I would be happy if anyone would suggest additional topics of interest.

    • Roberto Galoppini 10:39 am on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Carlo,

      I enjoyed your idea to talk about OpenTTT, is a pragmatic approach to open source.

      About business models – that I believe is a pretty interesting subject – to not be theoretical I will ask panelists to talk just about their actual business models.

    • Paolo Corti 7:01 pm on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Roberto
      I have definitely decided to be there the 9th, hopefully I will not have too much work that days…

    • Roberto Galoppini 7:11 pm on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      Paolo I really hope not, it is on Saturday! 😉

    • Luca Sartoni 9:26 am on June 1, 2007 Permalink

      I will be glad to take part at the event.

    • Paolo Corti 3:31 pm on June 1, 2007 Permalink

      Oopss, I didn’t realize it is on Saturday. I definitely will be there 😉

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:24 am on May 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Italian Open Source developers: Michele Sciabarrà 

    Michele Sciabarrà is an Italian Technical Writer and Consultant, he wrote two books and many articles and tutorials. He specialized in Java, Linux and Symbian Technology and he is running his own firm. I asked Michele to answer few questions because sharing his story he might help other programmers might develop their attitude toward open source.

    How did you get involved with Free Software?

    I really started loving floss very early. My first experience with the concept was at the university, in 1991 or 1992 I believe. At the time I was a Computer Science student, very frustrated with the lack of hackable machines.
    There was an Unix machine (an Ultrix Vax to be precise) I was using for an AI exam where I found a lot of GNU software installed on.
    I poked around, used the software, read the licenses, and understood the philosophy. In the academic environment it really made sense. Later when I enjoyed the business side of the thing, the collaboration was not the first step, but the last one, when everything else failed.
    At the time I had at home a PC IBM (8086) but I did know that there was no way (at the time) to run the GNU software. But eventually I got Minix, installed it, run it, read all the Tanenbaum book (the same book that read Linus Torvalds), including the source code, and dreamed to have at home all that godsend running in the Ultrix machine.
    That dream became true a few years later, when finally I got the money to buy a 486 PC where I installed an ancient (now extinct) Linux distro (SLS).
    Then I never stopped using free software. After graduating I made almost all the jobs using Linux.

    What does it mean to you being an Italian Open Source Entrepreneur?

    I would to make clear that I never intended to became an Open Source entrepreneur, my focus was the net as the new medium, with the endless opportunity and problems that poses.
    But in the end, I have to say that the business activity I did was the same that many others “open source companies” does: installing and customizing open source systems.
    When you offer to your clients a super-powered website, that they call, depending on their mood, CMS, portal, e-commerce, but in the end is always a some form of a web application, you are involved in providing them all the pieces, not only the software but also the machine, the operating system, the database and so on.

    Due to my background, I was never able to provide them a “windows-based” solutions and feeling myself comfortable (and also I never liked windows as a server solution, although I appreciate it as a client platform). I always provided open source and free software based systems. But I did it for technical, not philosophical reasons. So I became familiar with all the licensing and legal questions related. But what I always liked, was the benefit of being able to change the software if it was needed.

    Two real-world examples: in a project I developed, I had to make a special processing of a file uploaded by ftp. If I was not able to change the code of an open source ftp server, I had to rewrite the FTP server software. In another case, I had to generate a DBF files that was to be compatible with a particular buggy software. The format required was not standard, and I fixed things patching the open source library used to generate those DBFs. These are real advantages, you can only dream of them if you are using proprietary software.

    Monitoring the activities of many Italian “open source” companies, I never found they where really open source. Providing services based on open source software is not different from providing services around proprietary software. The main advantage is that clients buy your services because you do not charge licenses. The drawback is that the client does not get this, you are only “the cheaper one”, and being the cheaper one is NOT advantage that you can sustain in the long run.
    In fact, a lot of similar companies popped up recently, and the price war made the service model of open source absolutely unsuitable. Nowadays the open source companies in Italy are “the php kids”, that provide at very low fee “absurd” web sites full of functions that really no one needs but the clients wants, just because they think it is cool (and cheap) to have; so they want everything in their site, in order to look better than their competitors. I saw recently a lot of request for web sites with lots of functionalities (forum, cms, shop and many other things) that are sold for rate so low that you can only install the software, and you cannot even afford to have the time to check if everything works, not to mention any sort of customization.

    Also the sad part of many “open source” companies is that, when they develop something (often something very simple), they tend to DO NOT release it to the public, even when they should do it to comply to the license of the original work they modified. Nevertheless I know some companies that have a real open source model and they understand what this mean. But they usually do not work for Italian customers. The average italian customer is not even able to understand that the modification you made for it HAVE to be redistribuited, so often you simply do not say nothing.

    I am not used to deliver web applications for SMBs, and I am willing to report others’ experiences. About respecting open source license I believe that we should educate customers and users, as OpenOffice.org volunteer I often reply to questions raised by users and firms about licensing issues. It is a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it! 😉 (More …)

     

  • Carlo Daffara 5:11 pm on May 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Adoption: OpenTTT, testing the IRC approach on open source 

    Choosing the best open source products is considered one of the biggest challenges in open source adoption. Software selection costs are so high that specialized consulting companies are doing it as their main job, see Optaros and Spikesource just to name two of. Why is it so difficult?

    Juggler Choose by Dovaneh

    There are many reasons:

    • there is no single place to search for OSS (sourceforge hosts a significant percentage of projects, but some merely started there and then moved elsewhere; there are many other forge-like sites and many software listing sites like freshmeat).
      .
    • there is no consistency in the software evaluation; even models like OSMM and BRR have many components that are based on human evaluation, and some more recent approaches even change the evaluation model and forms depending on the software area or market.
      .
    • there are many excellent projects that are not widely known; a great example is the large and sophisticated packages in the scientific software area, virtually unknown outside of a small community).

    This means that only a few projects get any visibility, and that many useful tools are not employed even when they could be the perfect match for a company. On this consideration, the EU funded a small project called OpenTTT, that tries to apply a “matching model” to help in the adoption process.

    It works like this:

    • A group of companies and public administrations are audited, and a set of needs in terms of software and IT functionalities are collected in structured forms (using a modification of the original IRC forms, called TR or technology requests);
      .
    • in parallel, OSS companies and developers are invited to fill a complementary form indicating on what projects they are offering services;
      .
    • requests are grouped, whenever possible, to find a single match for multiple companies;
      .
    • a manual matched process is performed to find potential matches between requests and offers matchmaking is perfected in one-to-one personal meetings at special “matchmaking” events;
      .
    • one has been recently performed at CeBIT and another at the CONFSL conference.

    An interesting twist of OpenTTT, that we hope to start soon, is the “club” concept. After all matches are performed, we expect that some needs will go unfulfilled; in this case we will try to find a “near match”, and try to group users with the same need into user clubs, and forward the information that an unfulfilled need has been identified to the groups of developers. After this, users and developers or companies are free to negotiate a commercial agreement, for example for implementing the missing pieces.

    See a chart depicting the process.

     I hope that this model can be a basis for a more structured and “grassroot” model for interaction between users and developers, not only because it gives an explicit recognition of the fact that OSS is not about price (at least not only about that) but also about flexibility and matching the user needs in a better way.

    Technorati Tags: OpenTTT, confsl, best practice, IRC

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:44 pm on May 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 19-05-2007 

    Business as Usual – Bill Hilf on Port25: It’s not us versus the free world.

    Three Minutes with Microsoft’s Open-Source Manager – Bill Hilf explains Microsoft strategy: to license and not litigate. Am I the only one thinking to the Cold war at this stage?

    235 more reasons to love open source – Fabrizio Capobianco designed a funny and provoking t-shirt, and I guess he is going to bring along an XXL one for Bill Hilf next Monday!

    Steve? Darl? All of the Above? – Billy Marshall asserts that Microsoft won’tl like the nature of the collateral damage caused by the 235 move.

    (added on the 20th) Microsoft’s Patent Impasse – A lucid commentary by Cote’, really enlightening.
    Organizing an Open Source Workshop!!! – A workshop entitled “Open Source, Open Ideas” will be held on Tuesday May 29th at the Politecnico di Bari campus sponsored jointly by Politecnico di Bari, OrgLab (University of Cassino), Syracuse University and IESEG School of Management.

    Dell announces the models for Ubuntu – Jeremy discloses Dell’s Ubuntu models.

    I’m Joining Adobe – Ryan Stewart joined Adobe as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist.

     

  • Carlo Daffara 6:40 am on May 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Blueprints: replicable experiments in open source adoption 

    Is there a better way for helping companies and public administrations in the OSS adoption process? Most adoptions are based on a few different paths, for example by grassroots adoption, from consultancy intervention, by trying to replicate a known success story. In this sense, the concept of “best practice” can be considered as a way to tell others of something that worked well, but in the past it has not been successful in replicating the experience.

    Best Practices Best Practices by andai

    So, considering that most public administrations are pushing for initiatives to help the adoption process (even if it mainly means creating another forge – like the Italian one just launched – I would like to propose the concept of the “implementation blueprint” as an
    extension of the best practice model. The idea came out of our experience in the
    Open TTT project, that is trying to leverage the technology transfer process used in the IRC network to facilitate the match between technology demand and offer in OSS.

    A blueprint is a replicable and complete description of a set of tools and processes that satisfied a specific need. In this sense, a complete blueprint must contain the following items:

    • a complete description of the needs; this should include a complete textual
      .
    • description of what was requested, including mandatory and secondary requests
      .
    • a description of the context of the needs, for example within a public
      .
    • administration, with specific legal requirements, an SME, etc
      .
    • the set of technologies used
      .
    • the process implemented
      .
    • criticalities or additional constraints appeared during the implementation process
      .
    • an estimate of the human effort invested in the migration process.

    Why so much detail? Because replicability requires a significant amount on information not only on the technological means, but also on how those tools were used to create a complete solution.

    As these mapping efforts are already under way – for example the Italian Open Source Observatory has a listing section, called “vetrina” that provides short summaries of public administrations’ experience with open source – it may be interesting to propose a collaborative writing process, maybe wikipedia-based, to turn nice-to-know stories into replicable experiences.

    [tags] Open Source Observatory, OpenTTT, best practice [tags]

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:21 pm on May 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Italian Open Source Advocate: Carlo Piana 

    Carlo Piana is an Information Technology lawyer and a Free Software advocate, as Counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe he advocates the adoption of free/open source software and interoperable systems by European Public Administrations.
    I asked Carlo, who I personally met about three years ago when we were both involved with the FSFE Italian chapter, to tell us more about his interest for free software and licensing issues.

    How did you get involved with Free Software?

    Well, that’s a long story. Here’s the short version. During late 90s I was using OS/2 as operating system of choice, but I did see no future for it, so I decided to switch to GNU/Linux as early as year 2000. It wasn’t easy, and some help was found in the local LUG. There I met Stefano Maffulli, Vice President of Free Software Foundation Europe.

    Then the Commission decided that Microsoft was abusing the market, and I was wondering whether the FSFE was somewhat involved. Stefano said something like:

    We are already an interested third party, now we need a lawyer with enough expertise to prepare our application with the Court. But time is really, really short.

    I thought it was just a couple of hours’ work, just to file the application, then I was supposed to hand over the matter to another lawyer, so I said:

    Well, I can help you with this initial step, then you will decide.

    It turned out to be slightly underestimated, as now we are turning the third year of litigation, and still do not see the end of the tunnel. So far I have invested thousands of hours in the case, and am still counting.

    In order to be effective in the case, I had to learn quick, and I became very interested also all aspects and implications of Free Software. I started helping people around with legal issues, and almost without realizing it, I was an active advocate. The media exposure of the Microsoft case was incredible, and perhaps this is the reason why people, including you, think I am important: because they know my name.

    Let’s talk about the Case now.

    Being involved in the Case somewhat changed my professional life, because I have never been in a litigation of that magnitude and importance. Even from a side seat, the pressure is enormous and ramifications are endless, the paperwork simply unmanageable. We now have gone through one interim case, and one merit case (we are awaiting the final decision), while one further appeal is on its way and we have applied also to that. The merit case was huge: thirteen judges, the hearing lasted five consecutive days, the “grand salle” was half packed just of lawyers and experts, the floor was barely enough for the two main parties, the rest was journalists, and it was not even enough. I said “side seat”, but don’t be mislead.

    Our role has been central in many occasions, thanks to the incredible work that those who back me have done. People of FSFE, but especially the members of the SambaTeam, have been incredible, these guys really rock! Jeremy Allison at the interim and Andrew Tridgell (Trdige) at the main case were outstanding and really, really credible, but also who worked behind the scene, like Volker Lendecke or another Italian, Simo Sorce, were incredibly helpful.

    But the case is way more than just that in court. The Commission is trying to firce Microsoft into compliance, after the first decision has not been suspended. But for the first time in history, there have been not just one, but two procedures for non compliance with the first decision: we are right now discussing the second one. The first ended by adding some hundred millions on the top of the at-the-time largest antitrust fine, somewhere short of half a million euro.

    Meanwhile, the Commission is cooking another case with a broader scope.
    While the first was on interoperability and lack of disclosure, as well as on the tying practice of bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the second is about five different abuses in the server, client and application sector. In fact, interoperability is not just with network protocols, but also with the application layer protocols and formats.

    And the market has not been idle either: the ineffectiveness so far of the remedies has allowed the monopolist to double its share in the server operating system market, now well above 70%, the share in the client OS market has not lowered and many more fields have the windows logo on it.

    We are silently involved in that second investigation too. It not difficult to discover with whom because it is public on the Internet, but nobody still realized.

    What do you think is going to happen in the next future?

    The future is threefold. Free Software is gaining momentum by the day, over are the days when some people used to say that it was a toddler’s game. Most of the industry, from IBM to Google, from Sun to Oracle has various levels of engagement, and the mobile is the next frontier.

    Software as a service is probably the next step, which could shift the paradigm, but we are still far from maturity. In the middle lies the world of proprietary software and media companies, which will be eventually made irrelevant by the first two, but now they are fighting back with market power, DRM, software patents and the most dangerous weapon: people not realizing how much freedom they are losing any day.

    Antitrust is a good weapon to reestablish equanimity, but antitrust is also a political issue: just consider the number of monopolization cases in the USA in the last six years: 0. So we are at a turning point: public opinion must react now, and the first step is to convey more and more balanced information on these topic.

    Thank you Carlo, and please keep us updated!

    Technorati Tags: Free Software Foundation, Piana, Software Patent

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:33 pm on May 16, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Government: Italy launches its Forge 

    The Minister of Reform and Innovations in Public Administration, Luigi Nicolais, and the President of the Center for the application of Italian Ministry of Innovation and Technology Politics (CNIPA), Livio Zoffoli, today announced the latest initiative of the Italian Open Source Observatory.

    The Collaborative Development Environment (ASC, Ambiente di Sviluppo Cooperativo) offers Italian Public Administrations a medium to co-develop open source applications with other public administrations, market players and research institutes.

    Public Administrations need software aimed at addressing specific needs, and the collaboration platform has been designed to help them to involve partners in developing software public goods.

    Luigi Nicolais commented:

    Public Administrations will benefit of the advantages of open source software now, beyond software customizing they will learn how to share it easier, eventually opening a market for software services and reducing time-to-market and costs of acquisition.

    He also added that:

    Among e-Government’s strategic lines it is necessary to study and define a model to use open source software assuring economic sustainability, within a market where Public Administrations and software firms play their respective roles.

    About ASC

    ASC is a collaborative development environment based on GForge, to help public administrations to collaborate, using message forums , mailing lists and tools to create and control access to Source Code Management repositories.

    Related post:

    Italian Government: funds to sustain open source innovation

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, Italy, CNIPA

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:25 pm on May 10, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Conference: IDC OpenSolutions Summit canceled, lateral thoughts 

    IDC Italy, responsible for organizing the local Linux World OpenSolutions Summit, suffering from lack of sponsors decided to cancel the Italian event.

    As invited speaker I was supposed to give a speech in the plenary session, entitled “Open Source Business models: entrepreneurial islands and archipelagos“, about how open source firms cope with communities. Now that the conference has been canceled, the question raising up could be how open source firms cope with the market, and why they don’t invest money to sponsor events like this.

    Shift Game Over by si3illa

    Talking with Seth Grimes, invited speaker at the Reading the New York OpenSolutions Summit program (PDF), I learn that the American conference in February addressed vertical industries (Financial Services, Health Care, etc), and specific tracks (Linux on the Desktop, Virtualization, etc). The Italian event – originally designed as a two day event – was conceived as a “general purpose open source conference”, I guess to reach a broader audience.

    While many people registered to join the event, and many companies were interested in giving a speech, there were no enough sponsors to make it happen: the one-size-fit-all approach didn’t pay.

    The internet, along with its Group Forming Networks, has changed the way companies reach customers, and the way customers look for advices, for good. I see workshops, unconferences and barcamps – I missed the RedMonk’s one at CommunityOne – taking over the open source world.

    Magic (Open Source) quadrant game is pretty over by now, people have the power!

    Technorati Tags: OpenSolutions, Open Source Conference, Commercial Open Source, Grimes

     

    • gabriele 11:11 am on May 17, 2007 Permalink

      It’s a long story in Italian OS conferences … starting form Linux World. General purpose tracks, too much speeches, spreading FUD and, asking more money for sponsoring than abroad. First you must achieve reputation, than you can start to make money.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:37 pm on May 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Italian Open Source Evangelists: Rufo Guerreschi 

    Rufo Guerreschi is a political activist, an open source a free software evangelist and entrepreneur, who recently established am association – the Telematics Freedom Foundation – for the enforcement and extension of democratic and communication constitutional rights.

    I asked Rufo, who I personally met about four years ago when he was looking for advices on free software licenses, to join the conversation to tell us more about his new activities and licensing proposals.

    How did everything start?

    I discovered free software as I started drafting grant proposals at the World Citizen Foundation in New York in early 2001. It’s goals were to develop democratic organizing software that would enable citizen-controlled global constituent processes, eventually leading to a world democratic order. It became quickly obvious that the use of proprietary software and software patents to support such processes would have in many ways limited the democratic effectiveness of those processes. During several conferences about e-democracy in the following year, I met Richard Stallman. We met many times after that, and I believe we have built a solid discourse on political phylosophy based on shared ethical goals. More recently I have become involved with proposals, through the Telematics Freedom Foundation, on how the free software movement can concretely extend copyleft freedoms in the era of shared remote software applications.

    How did you get involved with free software from a business point of view?

    The reason that brought me to found Partecs had the objective to create a sustainable community of client political organizations which, within total freedom, would contract us to extend and modify an initial platform for their unique needs. Originally, it wanted to be a non-profit organization, but we thought it would not have appeared as a credible provider of technology to large mainstream political organizations. Also, it would have been undemocratic for such software to be sustained by donations, as donors would have had an indirect control on the features of those tools. Members of democratic political organizations should get used to paying for democratic tools, otherwise others will on their behalf, acquiring in many ways and indirect but powerful influence on those organizations (i.e. GoogleGroups).

    The “personal itch” this time was a political one, not a developer’s one like for others.

    What does it mean to you being an Italian Open Source Entrepreneur?

    Italy places huge obstacles to any innovative work in IT in general. This dramatic situation extends to so many areas for such long time, that it has generated a large amount of cynicism even in young people. Such decline is so engrained and in the interest of so many people in power positions, that I foresee that Italians will end up mostly “making cappuccinos for the Chinese people”; which is not such a bad destiny on the medium term.
    Italian and European governments should decide to actively defend both their economic interests and ethical principles by directly countering software patenting and proprietary software practices. That, I think, would be its best hope to revive a software industry, which consists of mostly of little more than foreign proprietary software reselling and low-skilled integration services. Such revival would bring with it all other market sectors, whose innovation increasingly relies on software.

    Rufo you are preparing a political agenda here, don’t you? 😉 On a more serious line I agree with you, we need governments better prepared on “technological issues” that can affect dramatically IT business.

    Tell us something about your recent initiative about Telematics

    We have a feeling we may be on to something very innovative and important. After a preliminary analysis, we may have found a way for the users of any given telematic service, built using FLOSS, to deploy an effective, verifiable and democratic control over their relevant shared hardware and software systems. Concurrently, it may also create a way in which a viable “copyleft” economic model to sustain the joint creation This may as well as creating a sustainable econo-system for the expansion of those tools.

    Thank you Rufo, and please keep us updated!

    Technorati Tags: Free Software, Telematics, Partecs, Sammondano, Guerreschi

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:03 am on April 28, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Free Software Foundation Europe advocacy: International conference for Public Administrations 

    The European Training Centre for Social Affairs and Public Health in collaboration with Free Software Foundation Europe is organizing in Milan on 21-22 June 2007 an International Conference entitled “Free/Libre Open Source Software: A Valuable Opportunity for Public Administrations“.

    FSFE fellowshipFSFE Fellowship initiative by Stefano Mainardi

    Project leader of the conference is Giampaolo Amadori, formerly European Manager of Large Accounts and Application Server Providers at IBM.

    The Conference is designed for Civil servants, Senior Civil Servants (Directors & Unit Heads), lawyers and politicians in EU Member States and countries surrounding the EU who are involved in the procurement of IT solutions and in strategic decisions about innovation and eGovernment, and who provide legal advice on copyright and patents. Also the IT responsibles/Specialists providing strategic and technical advice to the Public Administrations could be extremely keen of attending.

    The participation fee is 490 €. The number of participants is limited. You can also register online.

    Technorati Tags: Free Software Foundation Europe, Public Administration

     

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