New Zelanders have been given the chance to write their own laws in 2007, now it is Italian time: the Italian Democratic Party just launched a wiki to publicly discuss the bill ‘Network neutrality, free software and society‘.
OpenOffice.org Opens up for Business – Andrew Ziem – author, trainer, tester, and OpenOffice.org blogger – wrote a OpenOffice.org quick-start guide for beginners containing also tips about recommended extensions.
IBM, Sun and OpenOffice.org – Oddly enough the article still talks about IBM’s hypothetical acquisition of Sun, but all points about why a foundation is needed make still sense.
The Big Brother Award – a prize awarded to private companies and individuals who have “excelled” in the violation of our privacy – has got at its eleventh edition this year. Last year it was held in 9 different countries, while the 2009 edition seems to take place only in 5 countries, Italy included (thanks to the Winston Smith Project).
The OSOR Case Studies section this month covers Grosseto’s OpenPortalGuard eID system. The case study tells the story about an Italian case of excellence, started in 2003 when the Italian government decided to introduce eID cards. Grosseto, to acquire an eID-based access control system for its ICT infrastructure, applied a rigorous open source strategy, aiming to cut implementation and operational costs.
Is it a sustainable choice for small public administrations?
One-click macros – Learn how to add macro icons to a toolbar in Openoffice Calc.
Dmaths – People who regularly use the formula editor of OpenOffice should consider to use it, now available for OpenOffice.org 3.0.
1205 giorni con OpenOffice (1205 days with OpenOffice) – The latest version of OpenOffice 3 Soluzioni a raccolta – an Italian OpenOffice.org FAQ built with the help of the community – is available for download.
CeRSI, the Research Center in Information Systems of the Luiss University, launched a survey on how Italian IT firms profit from open source.
The survey – divided in 15 sections, requiring about 15-20 minutes per section – is part of the SFIDA-PMI research, aiming at understanding how IT firms deliver IT services.
All findings will be available to participants after data analysis will be complete.
The Italian Conference on Free Software, now at its third edition, will be held in Bologna on the 12-13 of June.
ConfSL 2009 – now a regular get-together for free software researchers, developers, and open source advocates – Â will cover economics, legal and technical issues, along with ethical, social and philosophical implications. Four different tracks will cover it all.
I am a member of the scientific committee, and I am really looking forward to the event.
See you there!
The new Ferrari website went live today at 8 am (CET), just in time for the start of the 2009 F1 season.
Kudos to my friend Giuseppe Cunetta, head of new media at Ferrari, for the great job, apparently a showcase of SharePoint 2007, not much open source-ish. If you are a Ferrari fan, take a chance to personalize a model of your choice and take it for a test drive around the Mugello Circuit.
Have a look at the preview to get a gist.
Hey Roberto,
I love the new Ferrari website! Do you know if Giuseppe’s team designed and built the site themselves, or if they used an external company? I’d love to know who the company was if they did… I may have some good projects for them!!
Thanks in advance.
From one Tifoso to another….
Richard.
Seeing how Scuderia Ferrari are already quite open (the most open F1 team in fact) about releasing telemetry data to fans, an http://api.ferrari.com would be quite a cool thing to see.
Savio Rodrigues cleaned up an old blog post retitling it after a tweet from Bob Sutor, to tell people interested in open source to not consider just Red Hat and alike, but think also go work at IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Tibco, etc.
Many IT jobs call for open source skills, and also Matt Asay called for the shortage of open source talent. What about average salary of open source jobs?
Hi Roberto, yes, my point has always been in the battle of oss vs. commercial, the winners will be ones who replace the “vs.” with “and”.
“Open Source Offering in Italy: an Analysis of an evolving Sector†conference follow-up are addressed by Stefano Micelli on first draft blog. Stefano brings me in because of something I said at the conference, commenting a research finding saying that small firms tend not to partner with other firms.
Affirmative action is needed to enable “lucrative coopetition“, in order to reduce R&D costs and foster innovation?
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