Commercial Open Source Software

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  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 …)

   

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  Roberto Galoppini 9:00 pm on May 26, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Open Source Franchising: From artisanship to industrial 

  Years ago I happened to cut my hair by a Jean Louis David salon, and once understood how simple was to choose my hairstyle from a brochure, I never tried another barbershop. Jean Louis David could inspire any wannabe open source Franchisor.

  Barbershop by Joel Aron

  Jean Louis David in the 60s changed the world of the hairdressing, inventing modern cutting techniques using clippers, eventually starting an international salon brand, now famous all over Europe. It was a revolutionary idea, since barbershops and hairdressers were artisans delivering personal services, at some extent unreplaceable.

  Speaking with a managing director of a franchisee, I learned about the training they receive, preparing them to achieve any kind of cut using clippers, but also about opening manual razor’s packaging in front of customers (in order to show them that are new).

  When we need a haircut we do know what we want, we also know how long it should take, and we can easily judge if the shop meets our cleaning standards. In a word, we are educated clients.

  Nicole France, formerly Gartner’s analyst, wrote:

  IT has been and largely still is an artisanal craft, part skill and part black magic. Most organisations of any size have had to create their own IT departments, not so much out of desire, as of necessity.

  So while IT Providers must still raise the bar on delivering reliable IT services, ensuring also legal compliance, IT Customers should better understand the benefits and tradeoffs involved in focusing on (predictable) results. In this respect there is a tremendous need for marketing actions.

  An Open Source Franchisor could be aimed at delivering to the market IT basic services using OSS, with a fixed-time fixed-price formula, training its franchisees to meet predefined performance criteria.

  Open Source franchising for customers could eventually become a shortcut to get reliable solutions, and as seen with Geeksoncall there is plenty of space for growing in computer services franchise arena.

  The International Franchise Association, an organization devoted to enhancing and safeguarding the business environment for franchisors and franchisees worldwide, recommends the following when considering franchising:

  • Demand: Is there a demand for the franchisor’s product or services in your community? Is it seasonal or does it generate repeat business? Will there be continuing demand for the product or services in the future, is it temporary or a fad?
    .
  • Competition: What is the level of competition, nationally and in your community? How many company-owned outlets does the franchisor have in your area? How many competing companies sell the same or similar products and services?
    .
  • Location: Is it located in the inner city? What are the demographics? Is this particular type of business needed in your community?
    .
  • Name Recognition: Is the company’s name widely recognized? How long has the franchisor been in operation? Does the company have a good reputation?
    .
  • Training & Support: What backgrounds do the current franchise owners have? Do they have prior technical backgrounds or special training that helps them succeed? Do you have a similar background?

  The demand for these services is still partially unexepressed, and need to be stimulated, while on the other side we might consider there is no competition in this respect, yet.

  A strong Brand is important, and that’s why my perfect franchisor is Sun.

  Training will make the difference, moving from artisanship to industrial has never been too easy, though.
  

  Technorati Tags: commercial open source, business model, franchising, jean louis david

  ][ stefano maffulli » The power of a brand added to Free Software Business is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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  Roberto Galoppini 2:54 pm on May 25, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Open Source Links: 25-05-2007 

  Ubuntu Dells – Derek Buranen did price comparison of the cheapest Dell desktop compared to a Windows-loaded version of the same specs.

  Open Source CMS offers great benefits to scientific collaborative research – The new ZEA partners talks about the potential of collaborative software for research within EU projects.

  HP looks to expand open source services – is HP about to sell legal and license compliance services?

  Briefing analysts on open source – Alex Fletcher provides some tips on briefing analysts on open source.
  Microsoft goes open source for identity – Microsoft has started four open source projects to aid interoperability between identity management systems.

  Novell to publish more details of Microsoft agreement – Novell will publish more details on its collaboration agreement with Microsoft before the end of May.

   
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  Roberto Galoppini 7:05 pm on May 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Open Solutions Alliance: Sartorio unveils OSA’s strategy 

  The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) debuted recently with a strong emphasis on promoting interoperability among open source software solutions, and its membership was supposed to be open to organizations providing open source solutions. Dominic Sartorio – OSA’s President – few days ago stepped by and eventually get engaged in a interesting discussion with me about Open Solutions Alliance’s strategy.

  Oblique Strategy by gualtiero

  At the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance), we have a diverse membership and are often asked what we consider to be “open” business models. So, we track this issue with great interest.

  Inevitably, discussion goes down the path of licensing, or how strong each member’s community it. What isn’t discussed enough, IMO, is what best meets customer needs.[..] Because open source, especially in the applications space, is still relatively new, we think there is much room for experimentation regarding what business models are best for the most customers. Consequently, we don’t limit our membership based on some preconceived notion of business models we think ought to be the best.[..]

  I have been pretty critical about OSA’s decision to accept members not using open source licenses, calling them “false positive” , but reading Dominic’s comment I learned that there is one notion that they don’t compromise, namely the degree of openness:

  We fundamentally believe that open and collaborative behavior is consistently superior to closed and unilateral behavior. This difference go beyond how the source code is managed, to how the company fundamentally operates; How it engages with its customers and partners, its corporate marketing, and even corporate culture and internal politics.

  I replied suggesting to be clear about it, and tell everyone that OSA has decided not to talk about open source, while now the logo itself reports “open source at work”. I invited OSA to avoid to make open source definition uncertain, considering make some adjustments to the website, reporting:

  From time to time, the OSA may use the term “open source solutions” or “open source based solutions.” We do not mean to confuse this with the OSI’s Open Source Definition, which includes requirements not included in our open solution definition.

  Dominic come over again, below his full comment.

  Hi Roberto, Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Yes, we had our own “false start” through sloppy use of the term “open source” when we originally launched last winter. Open Source (capital ‘O’, capital ‘S’) means something very specific, as defined by the OSI, and the OSA intends to cover broader ground, for the reasons I described in my previous post. Our collective experience has been that customer value can be achieved in a variety of ways, and some of them don’t always fit a strict definition.

  You found other parts of our website that we overlooked. Thanks for finding this, and we will fix this. We don’t intend to cause further ambiguity around what it means to be “open source”, but rather clarify an issue that we believe hasn’t received enough attention: focus on customer needs. In an effort to avoid confusion, we came up with our own term, “Open Solution Definition” (PDF).

  Rest assured that our continuing work on this issue will be done in fully open and collaborative ways. Just like open and collaborative development has led to great Open Source products, we believe that open collaboration by the vendor community on various business issues is the best way to achieve customer success.

  Many vendors are incapable of this behavior. Some grew during the pre-WWW time when business success depended on unilateral behavior and “knowledge hoarding” than the collaborative behaviors that modern technologies now enable. Take a look at a more recent blog re: the Microsoft patent issue as an example.

  Searching for “Open Source” occurrences I noticed that among the actual members only two out of 19 don’t mention open source in their presentations. Apparently OSA is building a stack of open source products – where I see Red Hat RHX more credible offering open source stacks – and a stack of open source services. The latter hypothesis sounds more interesting, OSA would be the first to exploit the potentialities of open source firms taking advantage of the absence of a Corporate actor.
  

  Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, RHX, Open Solutions Alliance, Sartorio

  Roberto Galoppini and Dominic Sartorio are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Dominic Sartorio 1:00 am on June 1, 2007 Permalink

    Hi Roberto,
    Interesting ideas. We have a lot of product vendors among members, but mostly products whose success depends on horizontal services being relatively standard in the industry (integration, management and monitoring, project management, reporting, content management, and broadly-scoped business applications such as ERP, all depend on best practices for various services). We are also starting to attract more “integrator” members, who don’t represent an open source product themselves but focus on support and professional services. So, your observation appears to be proving itself out in practice, and I would expect the OSA to focus on these areas in the future.

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    Roberto Galoppini 3:36 pm on June 2, 2007 Permalink

    Dominic, I guess that OS firms with “vertical” offering won’t apply if among OSA’s members someone else has already a similar offer. So, at some point you might consider that one database is not enough, but could you bring in any other?
    I can hardly see other OS database firms investing in a common brand-oriented strategy, because appropriating returns sounds uncertain. Dominic, go for focusing, go!

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  Roberto Galoppini 12:33 pm on May 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Open Source Business Models: the Beekeeper model 

  James Dixon, Pentaho Chief Technology Officer, commenting a post introduced me to the “Beekeeper model“, a model used by open source firms writing the majority of the code.

  Beekeepers (private) parking by Phil Downsing

  The Bee Keeper mode, which applies to companies like Pentaho, Alfresco or Zimbra, is about open source products where the original author, a company, is the main (if not the only) source code contributor (corporate production, in my words).

  Going through the whole document (PDF), I found interesting Dixon’s observations about the different kind of professional open source (commercial open source) firms looking at them by the relationship with the code:

  • Passive / Committers: Did not write much, if any, of code themselves. They provide services and support for third party open source software. They do not have their own community.
    .
  • Outers: Code started as proprietary software and has been released into open source by the creators.
    .
  • Founders: Originated project to be professional open source from the start. Often need seed capital to achieve this.
    .
  • Converters: Started project as open source project without intent to make money from it. Added ways to make income from it after it became successful. These are sometimes small businesses. Examples: JFreeChart.
    .
  • Baiters: Released an open source project as a method to attract consumers to a different, proprietary piece of software. Examples: Actuate BIRT.

  What is missing is a taxonomy describing how Professional Open Source firms cope with their communities, and how (and if) their business models are affected by the relationship.

  I suspect that Converters examining later which business model would be right for them have lesser choice, nevertheless they have a community and they can get advantage of it.

  About Outers, I believe that a taxonomy of the reasons to give away software would reveal something really interesting. The reason affects how and if the software will eventually be developed in cooperation with a community (hybrid production).
  Founders are also intriguing, whether they belong to the “third wave” (applications), or are exploring business models based on the absence of a corporate actor, why VCs are interested in investing in open source software firms would be important too. I guess that VCs play a very important role in the community start-up process.

  Technorati Tags: Beekeeper, business model, Commercial Open Source, Dixon, Pentaho

  Roberto Galoppini and Debbie Moynihan are discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Debbie Moynihan 10:12 am on May 27, 2007 Permalink

    This is interesting. I hadn’t seen this list of business models before – thanks for sharing it. I attended OSBC this week where several different models were discussed. One thing that I find most interesting is how everyone seems to continuously evolve their business models over time as they figure out what works. I am hoping to get my notes from OSBC posted in the next 24 hours or so onto my blog.

    Deb

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    Roberto Galoppini 11:20 pm on May 28, 2007 Permalink

    Hi Debbie,

    unfortunately I couldn’t join OSBC this year, so I am eager to know more about it, please.

    About business models I believe that OS market is young enough to keep changing, because it is fundemental true that:

    In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few (Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi)

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  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?

  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

   
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  Roberto Galoppini 12:28 pm on May 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

  Commercial Open Source is a Juggling act (part II) 

  Commercial Open Source has a lot in common with Juggling, and once you have broken the problem down into simpler steps, it is up to your discretion what to do next.

  Absentmindedly juggling by T Bell

  In juggling balance is an essential skill, but it doesn’t equal to stillness.

  The downside of balance is that you don’t want things to change. The moment you’ve achieved balance, you’d better be ready and willing to get rid of it. Because if you stay with what you think is perfect balance, you’ll be far from in control. Remember, there is no perfect balance; there’s only the approach to it.

  Open sourcing your software – throwing the balls – it is just the very first step, then you started playing you need to continuously refine your technique. Look at Funambol, now playing with two “balls” (community and carrier edition) instead of three: they are keeping moving and refining their business model. So does Alfresco, GPLing its software in order to give its new hybrid community a chance – and here I see a need for major adjustments, if they really want it to be a multiple vendors’ project.

  Juggling is also about being flexible to the unexpected:

  flexible to mistakes of any kind, like the wrong music coming up.When the unexpected flares up, you have to have a sense of humor — to know that your position has been compromised. It’s not the end of the world.

  May be at Novell they didn’t expect what’s going to happen because of the so-called nefarious deal, but it took ages for them to “catch” it, and the public get annoyed by not-so-humorous tricks. They were not proficient also in the “show-ending“, eventually.

  Open Source firms have to juggle different types of things, and the different characteristics of the objects affects your business game.

  Worse than dropping objects is letting them collide in the air and fall in random patterns. To prevent this, you need to create a separate flight path for each object. This comes from training and from knowing how objects move. A ring is a thin planar object that can slide through the air. A club creates a much bigger planar area as it revolves on its axis, and it takes up a lot more space. Then there’s the ball — the easy one that flits in and out of space. But the funny thing is that it’s usually the ball that screws everything up.

  Persons are like balls, if your business is based upon a community-based resource you really need to pay a lot of attention to retain them: a weak intellectual property asset need care.

  Customers are like clubs, the Internet it is just to small, and customers’ satisfaction gets more and more important when (and if) the exit cost is small. Despite the buzz can greatly help to get new users and eventually customers, but then you need to keep listening them.

  Partners are like rings, quite difficult to throw, but once in the air they are consistent with the original trajectory, unless you try to juggle them under wind conditions. Once you get partners, they tend to stay.

  And you better know that numbers jugglers do their best just with rings!

  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.

  Technorati Tags: commercial open source, juggling, moschen

   
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  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.

   
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  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 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]

  CIT2 News Wire :: Open Source Blueprints: replicable experiments… is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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  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!

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