Updates from October, 2007 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 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 6:59 pm on September 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    European Community vs Microsoft: Interoperability wins? 

    The Court of First Instance found Microsoft guilty of preventing rivals in server software and products such as media players. In the next two months Microsoft could appeal at the European Court of Justice.

    PreventPrevent..by jasoneppink

    Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy, said:

    So what does this judgement mean for the future?

    First, and most importantly, it sends a clear signal that super-dominant companies cannot abuse their position to hurt consumers and dampen innovation by excluding competitors in related markets.

    I asked also my friend Simo Sorce, Samba developer and the Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer his opinion, and he told me:

    This sentence is extremely important, it finally establish as a fact the abuses of Microsoft in the market. I think that this is a remarkable result, and I hope that now Microsoft will provide documentation so that interoperability can be achieved in a more timely and open manner, without blocking development of Free/Open Source Software solutions.

    Carlo Piana, FSFE’s legal counsel, in the same vein:

    FSFE and the Samba Team welcome the decision of the court. This is a milestone for competition. It puts an end to the notion that deliberate obfuscation of standards and designed lock-in is an acceptable business model and forces Microsoft back into competing on the grounds of software technology.

    So apparently it is a great day for Open Source advocates, but I believe FFII is pretty right saying Microsoft might trump EU competition with (European) software patents, as results from Pieter Hintjens statement:

    The decision seems positive but it is five years out of date. During that time, Microsoft has lobbied for software patents in Europe and bought patents on many trivial concepts. It has claimed patent violations against Linux, put patent timebombs into its formats and interfaces, and turned fear of patents into a core part of its business strategy. It will now open its formats, because that lets it extend its software patent franchise even further.

    I would suggest Italian and European IT firms, especially medium to big ones, to invest some money to help natural born lobbyists, or accept software patents will affect their business, either open or proprietary.

    Technorati Tags: Microsoft, FSFE, EU, software patents, FFII, SimoSorce, CarloPiana, NeelieKroes, PieterHintjens

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:18 pm on September 7, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OSI Approval: Open Source Initiatives approves GPLv3! 

    Today the GPL v3 and LGPL v3 were unanimously approved by the OSI board, as reported by Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative.

    Tiemann blessed the GPLv3 few months ago, and the OSI board this time was really fast to close the GPLv3 approval process, showing a very different attitude compared with an other recent approval.

    I really wish to congratulate with you all!

    tiemannMichael Tiemann by pdcawley

    Tiemann commenting on the OSI blog said he liked to personally acknowledge few people, among them all of us:

    The broader communities of both the free software camp and the open source camps, who both challenged and supported the license drafting process. These communities made the drafts stronger as a result.

    Now it is great time to take into consideration more difficult tasks, and I hope you are definitely not going to follow Eric Raymond line of thinking.

    Despite my previous determination, I find I’m almost ready to recommend that OSI tell Microsoft to ram its licenses up one of its own orifices, even if they are technically OSD compliant. Because what good is it to conform to the letter of OSD if you’re raping its spirit?

    A license is a license, it is definitely not matter of spirit!

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv3, OSI, FSF, MichaelTiemann, EricRaymond, Microsoft

     

    • Martin Peacock 11:58 am on September 8, 2007 Permalink

      You’re right, Roberto, a license is a license. But the objective behind the license is not only to prevent abuse of the spirit, but to defend itself from abuse. If the community at large feels that the OSD is being abused, then it can only be the OSD that is at fault.

    • Roberto Galoppini 5:34 pm on September 8, 2007 Permalink

      Martin,

      I’ll tell you why Eric Raymond opinion is dangerous to the open source ecosystem at large: there are thousands Microsoft’s partners out there, if OSI will allow them to produce (also) open source software is an opportunity, may be even a huge one. If not?

      Besides that, judging licenses’ spirit is a stallmanian attitude, stated by the FSF website, and I really hope to not see things like that happening by the OSI headquarter as well.. Again, licenses are really just licenses, therefore an opportunity not a thread, a medium toward a goal: distributing open source software. If the idea is to keep Microsoft out of the “open source thing”, that is likely what Eric wants, I don’t see the deal.

      Do you?

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:53 pm on September 10, 2007 Permalink

      Stefano,

      a license “technically free” is a free license, and as a matter of fact Microsoft’s channel is the biggest in the IT world. What if only a tiny fraction of them is going to deliver software distributed under a microsoft-approved-free-license?

      About the patent issue, as far as I understand, either if OSI will eventually approve their licenses or not, we have to cope with it anyway.

      Show me the deal we’ll get, if any, if those licenses won’t be approved _because_ submitted by Microsoft.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:27 pm on July 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Conference: Gartner Open Source Conference 

    Few months ago IDC Italy, responsible for organizing the local Linux World OpenSolutions Summit, canceled the Italian event, and I commented it with Seth Grimes, who in turn wrote me about Gartner Open Source Summit.

    Before reading Seth’s post, I had a look at their agenda, and I found it quite different from the Italian event. Like the North-American IDC conference held in February (program , PDF), also Gartner decided to address vertical issues, but they didn’t choose to address industries neither specific technical tracks like “Linux on the Desktop” or “Virtualization”.

    The brochure (PDF) reports two different track: track A sounds designed for enterprises who are working on implementing an Open Source Strategy, while track B looks more to the future.

    Despite I am definitely not a Gartner’s fan, and considering that people like Bruce Perens would have been much better than Gartner researchers, I guess that there is a Gartner’s audience, and they will probably go to listen to the Open Source Vendor Scorecard for 2007, may be even the next year, and the next next one.

    Game (almost) Over Game (almost) Over by si3illa

    The one-size-fit-all approach is not here to stay, the internet is heavily changing the way companies reach customers, and the way customers look for advices. Seth wrote:

    True to form, all summit presenters are Gartner analysts. Outside participation is limited to a couple of keynotes. Gartner is sticking with their usual all-knowing, ex cathedra approach. Absent is the community spirit that lends open source its power and vibrancy.

    Does Gartner get open source? While I’m sure that individual Gartner analysts do, I wonder that an open-source event without meaningful practitioner and community participation can adequately suggest real-world implementation strategies.

    I am looking forward to see RedMonk’s unconferences, Lugradio, replacing quadrant games, a pretty annoying and biased game played by pretending to be open source analysts.

    Technorati Tags: Gartner, Open Source Conference, RedMonk, Grimes

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 4:45 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink

      Hey Roberto,

      There is a need for the Gartner’s of the world, as there is for the RedMonk’s.

      I would say that a large majority of IT customers and decision makers don’t have the time to keep up with the rate & pace of software innovation. This is likely even more true for IT managers! The Gartner magic quadrants & reports help these decision makers get caught up to speed on relevant criteria before making a purchase decision.

      We can’t expect folks to learn about & play with technology all day long – someone’s got to do real work! 🙂

    • Nicholas Butler 6:49 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink

      Thanks for the link and because of It I have discovered your article. I should point out though that I am in no way affiliated with Lugradio, its podcast or the “core lugradio community” . I attended because it was a community event and because of my own involvement with Ubuntu UK. If you would not mind disassociating the link I would be very much happier.

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:16 pm on July 14, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Savio,

      you are definitely right, the Gartner magic quadrants & reports help decision makers, I am concerned because of the way Gartner decides who is in and who is out of the quadrant.

      I expect IT managers and CIOs getting more and more get acquainted with Internet and the blogosphere, may be using ad hoc tools like Kipcast.

      Anyway, I believe that for years the Gartners will still be playing their role, though. CIOs basing their decisions on Gartners’ scorecards won’t take full advantage of the huge amount of OSS available.

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:22 am on July 8, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Government: SoftwareTech news 

    David Wheeler kindly suggested me to read the last number of the DoD Software Tech news – a periodic published by the Data & Analysis Center for Software – entitled “Open Source – The future is Open” (registration required), and it really worths reading.

    David WheelerDavid Wheeler by swhisher

    Before talking about why FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, demands agencies to look at open source software when procuring software, I wish to report Gen. Charles Croom priority list for how DISA – the Defense Information Systems Agency – will acquire technologies and capabilities in the future. Defined by the acronym “ABC”, as explained below:

    The “A” on that list stands for adopt. The general maintains that his agency will do what it can to take advantage of past investments by adopting both what is in the marketplace and what is in the U.S. Defense Department inventory. This approach is at the heart of providing network connectivity to the warfighter.

    The “B” is for buy. If the agency cannot adopt something already on the shelf, then it will go to the marketplace and buy what is needed. While this lacks the economic savings of using what is at hand, it nonetheless takes advantage of the efficiency in commercial developments.

    If neither A nor B can help DISA carry out its mission, then the agency will employ its “C”—create. Only if all other avenues fail to produce the needed goods or services will the agency generate its own customized solution.

    In terms of the “A,” DOD is a large-scale adopter of Open Source as results from what observed Brigadier General Nick Justice, the Deputy Program Officer for the Army’s Program Executive Office, Command, Control and Communications Tactical:

    Open source software is part of the integrated network fabric which connects and enables our command and control system to work effectively, as people’s lives depend on it. When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source.

    With respect to the “B,” Chuck Reichers, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition and Management, said:

    We want to pay for unique intellectual property when it’s best of breed, but not succumb to code and vendor-specific lock-in situations. Acquisition of proprietary solutions needs to be a conscience choice, not an assumption.

    Last but not least the “C,” with the living example of the Navy’s SHARE (Software, Hardware Asset Reuse Enterprise) repository. James Shannon, program manager for future combat systems open architecture, observed:

    But the fact that today we are putting systems that were solely owned or thought to be solely owned by other companies and the fact we have shared them with other companies, I will tell you OA (open architecture) has arrived. We are definitely working to change our Navy business model and we are seeing industry change their business models as a result.

    I am among them thinking that Open Source software shouldn’t be mandatory, but at the same extent I firmly believe that Open Source has to have an official seat at every Public Administration table.

    Getting back to the FAR issue, considering that the FAR requires government agencies to conduct market research to determine if commercial items or non-developmental items are available, Wheeler wrote that:

    An agency that fails to consider OSS options is in direct violation of the FAR, because it would be failing to consider commercial items.
    Another reason that most extant OSS is commercial is because U.S. law says so. U.S. Code Title 17, section 101 defines “financial gain” as including “receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.” Most OSS projects are specifically established to encourage others to contribute improvements (which are copyrighted works), a form of financial gain and thus commercial.

    I keep citing David’s work because it is really important that people get acquainted with the idea that “Commercial is not the opposite of Free-Libre / Open Source Software“, hence the name of my blog: Commercial Open Source.

    The Software Tech News is published quarterly by the Data & Analysis Center for Software (DACS). The DACS is a DoD sponsored Information Analysis Center (IAC), administratively managed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The DACS is technically managed by Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, NY and operated by ITT, Advanced Engineering and Sciences Division.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, Wheeler, SoftwareTech news, Commercial Open Source

     

    • Jim S 7:48 pm on July 11, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Roberto,

      I agree that the issue of software tech news you point to has some good material in it; and David is doing a great job getting people to understand in government that FOSS is a form of COTS that they can leverage under the FARS.

      I’m a bit disappointed though that in DoD circles the question continues to be “can I consume COTS FOSS projects?” and most of our discussion is still around that concept. It is taking a long time, but it is basically inevitable that this battle will be won.

      To me, the much more interesting thing is how we will do “C” with open source-like methods; either spanning the DoD boundary into commercial community, or inside a very large walled garden when necessary.

      SHARE is a great example but still hampered by the facts that 1) it relies on (to me) nearly worthless government purpose license rights as an IP model and 2) is gated way too narrowly (because it relies on GPLR, I believe the repository is only accessable if you are currently under contract).

      At the fringes, in projects like OpenEaagles (http://openeaagles.org/) and Delta3D (http://www.delta3d.org/), evidence is mounting that real value comes from spanning commercial and DoD communities with truly open systems to satisfy “C” projects more cheaply and with better quality.

      For those that can’t span into commercial communites (for security reasons or whatever) I imagine a world where Government General License (GGL – a not-yet-real license, closely modeled on GPLv2) is the standard contract clause rather than GPRS and that anyone with a CAC card can access most repositories and contribute to community.

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:24 pm on July 11, 2007 Permalink

      Thank you very much Jim,

      you really add some salt to the discussion. Did you read that a joint U.S. and Canadian organization that certifies encryption tools for use by federal government agencies has suspended its validation of OpenSSL cryptographic technology? A lot of work is still needed, and now that FOSS is progressively perceived as viable, proprietary vendors are lobbying hard against it. We are in the Middle Earth, nowadays.

      I don’t know much about SHARE, and despite the acronym sounds a lot about sharing, if I got it right it is pretty ‘closed’. I saw similar initiatives here asking contributors odd things, and I think that with patience it is possible to get things done properly, eventually.

      On the other hand, Public officers need a change of mentality, and that is far from obvious (hence the need for goodwill).

      Last but not leasr, while I am not welcoming initiatives like the European Union’s license, I believe you are right saying that a standardization in this respect might be helpful.

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:24 pm on July 5, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Government: good-will needed 

    Every Government is supposed to function for the benefit of its citizens, delivering services that help economic growth and enable social activities. Since IT is just a cost center, and considering the possible multiplying effects, many see Open Source as the natural choice.

    Good willGood will by mricon

    Looking at the North-American experiences, or European ones, I am wondering what did they miss, and how possibly the new ones could eventually be really successful.

    Matt calls for leadership, I think that first we need politicians with good-will, willing to put their intellectual potential to work for the overall desires of the general public.

    What do you think?

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Government

     

  • Carlo Daffara 3:38 pm on May 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Firms: What is an OS company, anyway? 

    A recurring theme of discussion is exactly what defines an “OS company”. Many potential customers are finding more and more difficult to distinguish between “real” open source, viewable code licenses, quasi-open and more; companies are trying to leverage the opportunity of the OS market to push an offering, even if it is not OSS at all.

    Recursion Recursion by gadl

    Of course, a company like Alfresco can proudly claim that – being its main offering a pure GPL software – they are OS, libre, and whatever. But what exactly makes a company an open one?
    It is not difficult to find previous traces of the same argument before; starting from Mark Shuttleworth’s comments, Aitken’s ones or by Savio Rodrigues. Within the FLOSSMETRICS project we are facing the same problem, that is how to assess the “openness” of a company, and we observed a few things:

    • an OSS project is not only about code; in fact, in many projects the amount of non-code assets (like documentation, translations, ancillary digital material) is substantial. Considering companies as open only by measuring code patches is reductive;
      .
    • a company may sponsor a project in many ways. For example, granting hired programmers time to work on OSS projects (during work hours) is an indirect monetary sponsoring activity; hiring main developers and giving them flexibility to continue develop OSS code is a direct sponsoring.

    There are relatively few examples of the first kind; among them, companies that localize and create country-specific versions (like the italian accounting scheme for the Adempiere ERP created by Anthas to allow for a simpler commercialization.

    The second model is quite common: IBM sponsors development of the Apache web server, as a basis of its Websphere product, Google employees are asked to work for an OSS projects one day per week on company time (and sponsoring the summer of code, by the way), EnterpriseDB pays many PostgreSQL developers.

    Given this, we ended up classifying OS firms as those that:

    • sponsor, support, facilitate an open source project, that is a project that has a license compatible with the OSD definition, in a direct or indirect way.
      .
    • the sponsoring/support must be continuous, that is it should not be a single, one time contribution.

    This allows to include only those companies that leverage OSS in an organic and structural way, or they would not be able to justify the investment over an extensive period of time.

    This excludes one-time donations, for example; and it also excludes those companies that just take OSS and resell it packaged without added value, or “dump” a worthless software code under an OSS license hoping that someone willtake it up from there.

    Technorati Tags: adempiere, alfresco, anthas, Commercial Open Source, Open Source Firm

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 6:22 am on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      I agree Roberto, defining an OSS company is difficult and going to get increasingly so as more companies add OSS into their software strategy.

      Something that I’ve been thinking about since OSBC, which relates to your post…

      We’ve all heard about how open source Google uses to run their business. We also know that Google pays (some of their) employees to work on OSS projects as part of their day jobs. But what of all the OSS changes that Google makes and does not contribute back to the community? Does that make Google a ‘bad’ OSS company? How can they be ‘bad’ when they’re using OSS in a way that the OSS license allows??? But really, we all know that Google can’t be bad/evil, right 🙂

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:53 am on May 31, 2007 Permalink

      @Stefano Maffulli: Stefano I couldn’t manage to comment your post (may be is it great time to become a FSFE Fellow in order to? ;-), so I am writing you here for the time being. Mission and CSR might help, but my guess is that it is more effective to judge firms by their actions, even if requires some effort.

      @Open Source Solutions: I guested Carlo’s post even if I previously took a completely different position on the matter, and now I am seriously wondering about it all.

      @Savio: you are raising the same point I early discussed with Carlo, amazing! 😉 We all know Google is taking advantage of the GPL loophole, but it is also true that is contributing to many projects, and we can’t also forget the Google Summer of code.

      I think we should start creating categories reflecting the corporate-community relationship, and also the “old” Externally funded”/ “Internally funded” models. But all these (complex) distinctions might bring more confusion than clarity, I am afraid.

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:10 pm on May 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commercial Open Source is a Juggling act 

    Juggling, or more technically speaking toss juggling, is about throw objects into the air and catch them: easy to say, difficult to do. Gravity is very selective, despite anyone can learn to juggle, few people take time to discover what it really involves.

    Michael Moschen, one of greatest living jugglers, was interviewed by Anna Muoio, a Fast Company‘s journalist who wrote an inspirational article entitled “Life is a Juggling act“. I grabbed some idea from the original article – that I would recommend if interested in the subject – to talk about Commercial Open Source and Juggling.

    Juggling is mostly about breaking down patterns into simpler tasks. There are only two ingredients, tosses and catches. Even the most complex pattern can be broken apart into simpler steps. Once learn how simple are the individual atomic actions, you can recombine them, and eventually show your latest trick.

    Juggler Life is a Juggling act by f.vp

    In juggling there are three basic steps:

    First, make a good throw. Are you rolling the ball off your fingers — as you should — or are you using your palm? Do you throw the ball so it always falls away from you — as it should — or does it fly over your shoulder because you don’t want to let go of it?

    Throw the ball, open source your software. Whether you do it smoothly or not, you have to manage the fear to loose your business opportunities, your brand, or both. Throwing is the very first step, and you need to mind it carefully.

    Second, trust your throw. Look straight forward. Don’t focus on the ball. Realize that once you let go, you have no more control.

    Once you let it go choose if you want to keep coding on your own or not, assess the level of “promiscuity” that you want with your partners, ranging from “totalizing” to none, or “ecosystemic“. Whatever you choose, remember others can take advantage of it, and you might hardly find a way to prevent it. Gravity always wins.

    Third, put your hands under the ball. Let the ball fall into them. If you reach up for it, you cut the amount of time you have to adjust to catching it.

    After a good throw aim for a good catch, if you opted for a medium-long term strategy just wait for the business to come to you, think about Mozilla. You do know if it was a good or a bad throw.

    Juggling is not about Magic: you get just what you do.

    Technorati Tags: commercial open source, juggling, moschen

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:03 am on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketing: what about launching an Open Source Awareness campaign? 

    Besides the need for open source lobbyists, the biggest issue with Open Source awareness might be the clique phenomenon, resulting in open source advocates, analysts, customers, developers and users bound to each other. In other words there is also a need for connectors.

    White Ribbon Campaign - International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

    Googling around I found a pretty long list of ribbon campaigns – among them the ASCII Ribbon Campaign and the EFF‘s Blue Ribbon Campaign – but there is no Free Software or Open Source awareness campaign.

    Running an Open Source Awareness Campaign might help us to get in touch to individuals outside our network, since many weak ties bring more social connections.

    Matt Asay, Fabrizio Capobianco, Stefano Maffulli, James McGovern, Savio Rodrigues which colour would you like for our Ribbon Campaign? Keep the ball rolling… 😉

    Links to this post:

    Technorati Tags: Open Source advocacy, Open Source Marketing

     

    • Flavia 12:57 pm on April 30, 2007 Permalink

      It is a very good idea… let us define a nice colour for the ribbon!

    • Joseph A. di Paolantonio 3:30 am on May 1, 2007 Permalink

      Hmm… dare I vote for green, white and red? Or maybe a different shade of blue, say RGB 106 | 152 | 212

      Regardless the colour, the idea of building open source solutions communities that span projects is very good. We’ve been trying to act, in our own small way, as analysts for the open source business intelligence projects and companies. Our linkblog currently lists 46 OSBI-related projects, 14 supporting companies, 6 additional communities, and 69 bloggers that talk frequently about F/L-OSS.

    • Roberto Galoppini 3:29 pm on May 5, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Joseph,

      I read you are also interested in Open Source Business Intelligence, stay tuned I am going to write about it quite soon. About the Ribbon campaign I am willing to exploit it further and make it dance, but one (or more) major sponsor is needed. I am working on it.. 😉

    • Joseph A. di Paolantonio 1:17 am on May 7, 2007 Permalink

      Roberto, since 1999, we’ve been looking for Open Source projects related to Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, data management, and all forms of data analytics. We started to find some projects in 2001. We’ve started an article on our wiki two years ago, that you might find interesting.

      We’ll keep an eye towards your RSS feed for your posting on OSBI.

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:38 am on April 22, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Advocacy: from hecklers to lobbyists 

    Dana Blankenhorn says “open source need lobbyists” (actually he didn’t mention free software hecklers). He observes that we need money to hire them because otherwise the law will always be in favor of the proprietary folks.

    In Europe we faced (and we keep facing) very talented lobbyists working hard on a controversial political issue regarding software patents. As you might know patentability of computer-implemented inventions is not legal here yet, the reason for this is simple resumed by Florian Mueller in his “no lobbyist as such” (a must read):

    After spending million of dollars,euros and pounds, company like IBM, Microsoft, Siemens and Nokia did not get their way. They were beaten over at their own game – a game called lobbying – by our group of mostly young people, sparsely funded, and formally untrained “freedom fighters” who staged a spirited resistance. Many of us seemed utterly unlike traditional lobbyists and yet we proved effective in the political arena.

    Florian MuellerFlorian Mueller by duncandavidson

    James McGovern answered back saying that Dana, and not only him, is part of the problem:

    Maybe what he is asking for is to get some other body to spend lots of advertising dollars while not acknowledging that open source doesn’t really need traditional media to be successful.

    Throughout his column he always talks about open source but never seems to segment thoughts on commercial open source such as Alfresco, Intalio, MySQL, etc from non-commercial open source such as Apache. Why not ask the question of media and its ability to simply be charitable in terms of advertising space?

    I am not sure we need any charity, not even for open source projects that are not driven by a corporate actor or are under a big enough “umbrella”. Appropriating returns from Commons is critical indeed, that’s why we see many good open source projects with no advertising coverage, but people like Matt Asay, Matthew Aslett, Alex Fletcher, James Governor, Savio Rodrigues, Raven Zachary and of course James McGovern himself are already making the difference.

    What about federating? Here I am dreaming about a sort of Gawker for Open Source..

    Technorati Tags: Open Source, Commercial Open Source, software patent, gawker

     

    • Simon Phipps 4:04 am on April 23, 2007 Permalink

      Something this overlooks – and that was present in the CII Directive debate – is that as more and more companies depend on open source as the bedrock of their business, they will direct their lobbyists to act on behalf of the open source communities.

      I spent a great deal of time in support of lobbyists (as did my colleague Mark Webbink from Red Hat) patiently explaining to politicians and their staffs the problems with software patents as envisaged by Microsoft and the other pro-lobby members. In fact, I might even want to claim that our little informal alliance – Sun, Red Hat, Oracle, IBM and one other that prefers to remain anonymous – actually swung the interoperability argument that killed the Directive.

      This is not to say we don’t need lobbyists acting on behalf of FOSS projects directly. But don’t forget that corporations that grok FOSS lend can their weight to the cause.

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:58 am on April 24, 2007 Permalink

      Dear Simon, thanks for your comment, I wrote a post about it, asking Florian his opinion too. Have a look and keep joining the conversation, you are always welcome.

    • burun 2:56 pm on January 24, 2008 Permalink

      The questions Roberto poses to lobbyist Florian Mueller gave me to think about the current file format war and the role of medium/large European companies. It impresses me how many of them still have no idea of what mess the specification of OOXML are, how bad it will be for them on the market to have it approved by ISO. I also think that a stable lobbying group can be more effective at preventing damaging legislations.

    • Roberto Galoppini 12:13 pm on January 25, 2008 Permalink

      In my opinion what I call the file format war it is a very complicated issue. I would recommend Europe to adopt formal procedures to adopt IT products pretending to be compliant with this or that standard. Would you believe me that there is no product fully compliant with those specifications?

      Everyone talks about standards, but compliance it is a different thing!

    • ameliyat 10:59 am on February 1, 2008 Permalink

      Microsoft will be involved in the patent pool for HD DVD as will every other company who has technology in it. The same is true of Sun Microsystems which developed Java for Blu-ray. Since patent pools have non-discriminatory provisions, no tie-in can exist with any operating system or who is licensing the technology. Every claim in the above paragraph is simply wrong.HDi is based on open web standards (XML) which makes it very easy for web developers to become familiar with it. This is the reason that there are hundreds of HD DVD discs (nearly every title) with HDi interactivity whereas there are less than 30 Blu-ray discs released that are using BD-J. BD-J requires a greater degree of programming experience, which is why the even the Blu-ray technical committee investigating HDi recommended it in place of BD-J, which had previously been selected.

    • Roberto Galoppini 5:48 pm on February 1, 2008 Permalink

      How is that related to the original topic?

    • Ramir.Info 8:09 pm on February 1, 2008 Permalink

      Hello Everyone,

      I just learned that Microsoft Offer to Buy Yahoo for $44 Billion Dollars and Yahoo turn it down. Does anyone knows why Yahoo turn this kind of offer?

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