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  • Roberto Galoppini 7:33 am on April 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Production: Time-based release management 

    Martin Michlmayr, a well known Debian developer and formerly Debian Project Leader, is completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge with a thesis entitled “Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free, and Open Source Projects: Exploring the Impact of Release Management“.

    Time Time by gastronauten

    I happened to know about his thesis reading an article on linux.com, and I saw also Matt Asay posted on the subject, so over the weekend I took my chance to read it.

    First I wish to public thank Martin to mention our paper “Capability Coordination in Modular Organization: Voluntary FS/OSS Production and the Case of Debian GNU/Linux“. He cited our findings talking about release management in volunteer teams and also about problem of organization when a coordination effort is required to accomplish complex goals.

    I totally agree with him when he states that the ‘release when it’s ready’ policy might heavily affects large (complex) projects, because:

    It can lead to delays, out-of-date software, and frustration, and it also means that users and vendors cannot plan, because nobody knows when the software will actually be released.

    I remember Mark Brewer, Covalent CEO, saying that, even if Covalent has about 40 software engineers involved with Apache, they can’t assure that a feature will be available at a certain date. He also did similar considerations talking about road-map’s decisions. No wonder though, that is the way it is when it comes to community-driven Open Source projects.

    Getting back to Martin research his abstract reports:

    This dissertation explores why, and under which circumstances, the time based release strategy is a viable alternative to feature-driven development and discusses factors that influence a successful implementation of this release strategy. It is argued that this release strategy acts as a coordination mechanism in large volunteer projects that are geographically dispersed. The time based release strategy allows a more controlled development and release process in projects which have little control of their contributors and therefore contributes to the quality of the output.

    I read some chapters of the paper, and I was impressed by the quality and the depth of his studies. I believe that the introduction of time based releases leads to a more controlled development, positively affecting the resulting overall quality. In his words:

    [..] the time based release strategy can be considered as an important means of quality improvement in FOSS projects.

    Kudos to Martin to honestly have highlighted that there are problems in Open Source projects, he also stressed the importance of Regularity and the Use of schedule. As a matter of fact the use of schedule claims a project management function (release manager), reducing somehow the degree of independence among contributors. Our research in this respect stated that:

    [..] a pure modular structure – that is one lacking of hierarchy, such as a market – embeds flexibility, but it lacks coherence, the ability to coevolve after adapting to change.(cfr. Langlois Richard “Do firm plan?” 1995)

    A hierarchy is a must, then, when you need to manage a complex activity coordinating many contributors, either volunteers or employees. Martin makes clear that policies and infrastructures are needed to support his release strategy.

    Reading the paragraph “Limitations and Future Research” I would suggest another question:

    Introducing time-based release management could move developers’ focus from software’s effectiveness to meeting release targets? How to balance the trade-off between time and quality?

    Technorati Tags: Open Source, Modularity, Hierarchy, Coordination costs

     

    • Simon 11:22 am on April 28, 2007 Permalink

      How to balance the trade-off between time and quality?

      I think this is the key question.

      GNOME has happily released versions with key features missing because they weren’t ready in time. This just isn’t viable for a commercial provider of desktops, who would then have to cover for the “failure” of the open source model, probably by not shipping that version of GNOME in their desktops.

      Ubuntu similarly has shipped releases with major holes in them, again something that the proprietary world would not do, because it would slow adoption, and defeat the commercial point of a release.

      Sure clearer time tables, and clearer planning may be good for organizing the work, but ultimately deadlines will go whoosh, if the work isn’t done, and that is how it needs to be if people depend on the product finally delivered.

    • Roberto Galoppini 7:29 pm on May 1, 2007 Permalink

      Simon,

      I totally agree with you, at the end of the day time-based release management can address few issues indeed, but it is not a panacea.

      In another post I mentioned that within an hybrid production model paid employees are often responsible for less attractive tasks, as results from “GNOME, a case of open source global software development”, also by Martin.

      Corporate production has to be on Time on Budget. The firm solves the problem of finding the efficient management of human resources through time not allowing the free entry and exit, and delegating production control to a manager.

      Community-based production on the contrary allows volunteers to enter and choose their tasks. Volunteers choosing what to do apply for tasks they like, and that they are likely to accomplish effectively. They can also freely exit from a project though, or not to end their tasks on time.

      Do you agree?

    • Jon 3:58 pm on March 3, 2008 Permalink

      I don’t see why dropping features to hit a target is necessarily a hallmark of F/OSS process failure. Consider Microsoft pulling WinFS from Vista.

      The company I work for will not consider using Debian for any server because of the lack of any kind of predictable release cycle. Indeed, having a commitment to (say) 12 month release periods, and missing that commitment, would be better than none at all.

  • mfioretti 8:58 am on April 1, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    File Format: Hidden traps in OpenDocument (or any other open standard) and how to avoid them 

    (Note: this post is an excerpt and a follow-up of an article published in December 2006 in the monographic issue on the OpenDocument Format by Upgrade, the online version of the Spanish magazine Novatica. The whole monography can be read online)

    It is almost sure that, eventually, all major producers of both proprietary and Free software in the office files space will support OpenDocument. In and by itself, however, that standard is open to several ways to keep monopolies possible, or to nullify its usefulness for long term archiving.

    Technically speaking, OpenDocument is very powerful and useful because it can be extended. The standard doesn’t mandate, however, nor it should, that all extensions are licensed in the same way as the standard itself. Even ignoring future extensions, the standard as it is today has plenty of backdoors for proprietary traps. Some examples are (see the full Novatica article for details):

    • digital signatures
    • macros
    • embedded images, audio or any other multimedia object embedded in texts spreadsheets and presentations
    • in-file databases

    Objects of this kind can be placed inside an OpenDocument file even if their format is accessible only through patent-covered or otherwise proprietary software. Nothing in the OpenDocument specification prevents this (and, again, it shouldn’t!).

    The practical consequence is that it is possible to have a perfectly Free as in Freedom XML container which is full of patent-ridden components. A container, in other words, which is culturally, economically and politically useless to guarantee long term preservation of information, public ownership of public documents or a really free market in the software industry.

    If anything, the fact that an office file standard is not owned and controlled by one vendor may make it even easier, not harder, than proprietary extensions appear to keep end users locked in, at least in some scenarios.

    Does this mean that OpenDocument is useless?

    Not at all. Personally, I am still convinced that OpenDocument is by far the best possible solution for a very serious problem. To the best of my knowledge, OpenXML is still much worse than OpenDocument both in terms of feasible support in third party applications and in terms of space left to reinventing the wheel and unnecessary proprietary extensions . For these reasons, I remain convinced that it is necessary, at least for creation of new public documents, to just say no to OpenXml (available to unregistered users by the end of April).

    At the same time, I am convinced that it is necessary to stop, at least in the public sector, to just “switch to OpenDocument” and feel happy about it without looking behind the corner. I believe that further steps need to be taken, steps which, by the way, are not specific to OpenDocument.

    What is the right solution?

    OK, so “100% OpenDocument (or OpenXML) Compliance” isn’t enough to guarantee that an OpenDocument report or law proposal stored today will be completely readable and usable 20 or more years from now. The real solution, however, is not a technical one. Technical ways to apply it once it exists are available, and they are mentioned in my Novatica article.

    This said, this is not a format specification issue. When present, technical extensibility of a standard is (and must remain) neutral with respect to intentions. It would be very inefficient, if not plain wrong, to place specifications of a legal nature inside what must remain purely technical documents.

    What I believe to be necessary is to establish and enforce:

    • in the first place, some official “OpenFile” trademark or equivalent label which can be legally applied only to files in which no component has restrictive licenses or uncomplete documentation
    • immediately after that, laws requiring that OpenDocument files can be stored by, or exchanged with public Administrations, libraries and so only if they carry this “OpenFile” seal. Exceptions to this rule should be temporarily granted only in really exceptional cases, when there really is no alternative

    What do you think? Are these conditions enough? Who should define the “label”? Governments or standard bodies? Who should enforce its usage? Which exceptions could or should be tolerated? Please let me know: I am very interested to hear your opinion and to participate in any future discussions on these issues!

    (Thanks to Roberto for suggesting that I write this post and for hosting it!)

     

    • Llorenç Pagés 9:59 pm on April 18, 2007 Permalink

      I think that your arguments are very interesting and the dilemma you are posing very challenging.

      I have translated your message into Spanish and posted it onto the ATI debate forum devoted to Open Document Standards

      I am planning to summarize and post that summary here, if exist, the most interesting opinions we collect on the ATI forum.

      Thank you very much Marco for giving me permission to make that translation.

      Llorenç Pagés
      Chief Editor of Novatica and Upgrade

    • Hikari 4:59 pm on February 19, 2012 Permalink

      Well, the features you listed are needed, and some of them can’t be open.

      Digital Certificate code can be open, I believe its hash data can also be, does ODF formats support it? But, AFAIK, there’s no open software to handle DC, and editor must access its proprietary DLL to sign the document. In the same way, to validate the sining we must access its AC. Would we wanna give up on signed documents and DC?

      Macro is editor-related in the way that it automates editor features, it can’t be standardized because it’d limit how editors work. Well, we need macros to automate our work, and when we decide to use it we know it will be bound to current editor and we’ll have trouble porting it to other editor, even the same model in different version. The solution would be ODF formats support multiple macros in them, related to specific editors, in a way that one editor can’t change or delete other editor’s macros. OR, macros be completely banned and each editor create external files to store its macros.

      Embedded multimedia data is also trouble. HTML 5 supporters are having hard time for years to define which formats will be standardized. Of course, any user worried with long time storage will use properly formats for their multimedia data as they do with their text, be we also can’t stop users from storing proprietary formats, because they’d get angry and go to Micro$oft ones.

      In general, I think ODF formats don’t need to force “openess”, they just need to support and allow it, and each user uses it in the way it’s better for them. Let’s not forget GIF, whose support is gone for years but is still largely used and supported by readers and editors.

      What we can’t allow, at any cost, is that editors add proprietary data inside ODF files without user explicit knowledge and acceptance, because if that’s done the user will only find out years later when it’s too late.

  • Roberto Galoppini 1:56 pm on March 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge’s Long Tail and Blueprints 

    Savio Rodriguez in response to my post about the post about the SourceForge’s initiative, said that, being SourceForge the place where to look for if interested in OSS products, the idea of making a marketplace out of it sounds quite natural. Rodriguez addressed also other interesting issues.

    For emerging projects or for projects with a small development team/community, a majority of the 144,548 projects on SF (i.e. Longtail projects), getting included in the Marketplace would make a lot of sense. [..]
    Experience tells me that customers are cautious when it comes to spending money. When they do, they want to spend with vendors that have a strong future. So, for longtail projects on SF, I’m not sure that the SF Marketplace will change much of this customer behaviour.

    I just received SourceForge Update: 2007-03-30 Edition email, and in the top 25 projects’ list there is about no trace of large projects who already have support & services business attached. I know that is not easy to turn a user in a customer, but many are downloading packages that do need some work to be setup in a working environment.

    Blueprint Blueprint by sweetsexything

    Alex Fletcher commenting Savio’s post come out with some examples of the diversity of use cases for open source, showing how an open source package can be a key component within customized solutions, regardless if are developed in house or otherwise.

    Commenting the examples Alex wrote:

    The associated process involved much more than downloading and running an executable version, but did not entail the purchase of a commercial version or indemnification protection from a vendor. [..] This is exactly what needs to be standardized for open source products across the board.

    I do totally agree, but the construction of open implementation standards could be highly expensive. SMEs, creating and supporting most of the commercial open source products in the “long tail” are not going to do that, because too busy with daily activities. In this respect the previously mentioned Observatory of European SMEs finded that:

    Small firms have a short-term perspective and expect quick and concrete results.

    Could eventually SF help them to get paid to produce vertical, clear, good blueprints?

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, SourceForge, Marketplace, blueprint

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:22 pm on March 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    European Open Source Observatory news – 30 March 2007 

    IDABC‘s Monthly Open Source News Service has been just released. The Open Source Observatory ‘s monthly new service keeps us updated on news related to the use of FLOSS in the European Public Sector.

    Some interesting spots:

    IT: Umbria to promote Open Source in schools
    Open Source News – 27 March 2007 – Italy – Policies and Announcements

    The regional government of Umbria is investing 100.000 euro to promote the use of Open Source in local schools. The Italian region will soon train students, teachers and education management in the use of this type of software.

    DK: Open standards made mandatory
    Open Source news – 19 March 2007 – Denmark – Policies and announcements

    Denmark is making the use of open standards mandatory in state, region and municipal governments starting next year. This was announced on February 23rd by Helge Sander, minister of Sciences, Technology and Innovation. His plan comes eight months after a resolution in the Danish parliament.
    FR: OpenMairie, competitive Open Source services for medium-sized cities
    Open Source News – 15 March 2007 – France – Deployments and Migrations

    OpenMarie, a French Open Source project aiming to develop governmental applications for medium sized French cities, is increasing the competition in the market for applications for public administrations.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source, IDABC, Italy, Denmark, France

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:45 am on March 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    GPL: Linux’s father is pleased, and Google doesn’t see any problem. Everyone is happy? 

    The GNU GPL draft for the long-awaited third revision has now been read by a multitude of people, and all changes went under deep scrutiny. The blanket prohibition on DRM has been removed, and the SaaS loophole has not been fixed. As a result both Linus Torvalds and Chris DiBona are happy.

    chooseChoosing sign by elston

    Today reading Fabrizio Capobianco’s post, I understand there is a “minority” that is not welcoming all these changes. Before Funambol wrote the Honest Public License people at Affero worked on the Affero License and also my friends at Partecs spent some efforts to find a countermeasure at the service loophole.

    Congratulations to the Free Software Foundation for daring, choosing is always difficult and I believe that it wasn’t easy to take an unpopular decision, but I guess they had to.

    Changing topic: Will OSI eventually be able to sort out what to do with the attribution thing? They were supposed to close the issue within February.

    Post Scrittum: Steve Mills, IBM Software General Manager, and Matthew Szulik, Red Hat CEO, are happy too. The former said:

    At some point you become so shrill and beyond what’s required that you lose the audience and the audience moves on to something else. We’ll have to see what finally evolves through the [GPL] process, it’s going through an update and the Free Software Foundation has a particular view of free software. Free software is a wonderful thing but there’s also a business model.

    while the latter said:

    I think the draft we saw last night was much better than the earlier drafts, especially around patent infringement and TiVo-ization.

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv3, Affero, OSI, FSF, attribution

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:05 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org new release: The Italian OpenOffice.org Association announces version 2.2 

    “OpenOffice.org 2.2 just released”

    Trieste, 29th of March 2007 –The OpenOffice.org Italian Association (PLIO) is proud to announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.2, the latest version of the leading open-source office suite. OpenOffice.org 2.2 also protects users from newly discovered vulnerabilities, where users’ PCs could be open to attack if they opened documents from, or accessed web sites set up by, malicious individuals.

    In version 2.2, users will immediately notice the improvement in the quality of text display in all parts of OpenOffice.org. The reason for this is that the previously optional support for kerning, a technique to improve the appearance of text written in proportional fonts, has now been enabled by default. OpenOffice.org’s unique pdf export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and support for user-definable export of form fields.

    openoffice.orgOpenoffice.org ads by factoryjoe

    (More …)

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:22 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    GPL: OSI’s President blesses GPLv3 draft 

    Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative, today posted about the last draft of the GNU General Public License, just released by the Free Software Foundation.

    As result from the FSF Press Release changes include:

    tiemannTiemann by pdcawley

    • First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if they remedy the problem within thirty days.
      .
    • License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of making them easier to understand and administer.
      .
    • Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also provide installation information for the software along with the source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that were proposed in previous drafts.
      .
    • New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection from patents.

    Tiemann commenting the draft wrote:

    I have read the newly released draft of GPLv3 carefully, and I believe it is a stunning accomplishment. (Disclaimer: not only am I no Einstein, I am also not a lawyer. However, my 20 years of experience with free software, the GPL, and 18 years of commercial experience should count for something.) My reading tells me three things. First, the GPLv3 is familiar; it is not as if everything we know must be relearned. Second, the GPLv3 deals with corner cases which, if left unfixed, will collapse, taking all our good work down with them; collapse is bad enough, but predictable collapse is shameful. Thirdly, the GPLv3 reaffirms that in spite of all the growth and all the success that the free software movement has enjoyed these past 20+ years, the goal of the Free Software Foundation remains centered on software freedom, and that the only prohibition they uphold is against those who seek to undermine such freedom. It is encouraging to see an organization maintain principle in the face of prosperity.

    This morning, with GPLv3 on one monitor and the OSD on the other, I read a license that should have no trouble achieving OSI certification. Based on my reading, I encourage the Free Software Foundation to submit their final draft when they are ready so that the whole open source community can review, discuss, and recommend to the OSI board whether they, too, see what I see. If so, we should see a much-needed update added to the roster of OSI-approved licenses, and we will be in a position to encourage those whose business depends upon fairness to offer them a licensing choice that is both sound and safe.

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv3, OSI, FSF, Tiemann

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 4:52 pm on March 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Licensing and Patents: GPLv2 has already adressed the issue 

    Reading Groaklaw I happened to know about “Potential Defenses of Implied Patent License Under the GPL“. a must read for people who thinks that GPLv2 is silent about patents.

    Laura Majerus, OSI Director of Legal Affairs and Partner at Fenwick & West, previously wrote “Patent Rights and Open Source – can they co-exist?“, already containing some interesting spots on the subject:

    no sw patentAgainst software patent by kianee

    Setting aside any arguments that the Preamble of the GPL is somehow not a part of the license, it seems clear that an author or modifier who distributes software under the gpl cannot assert his patent rights against subsequent users and redistributors of the GPL’d software. Thus, there is
    at least an implied license to those who receive the GPL’d software in any patents covered by the software.
    Why then, would anyone want to obtain a patent on an invention that is going to be distributed under the GPL?
    There are several reasons:

    1. the author may plan to license the patent to others to produce a revenue stream
      .
    2. the author may want to assert his[/her] patent rights against redistributors who do not conform to the GPL license terms (for example, by failing to redistribute under the GPL)
      .
    3. the author may want to have patent rights to use as an offensive or defensive weapon against infringers who are not using the GPL’d software and
      .
    4. the author may plan to also distribute a non-GPL’d version of the software.

    According to one reasonable interpretation, the GPL only precludes the patentee from asserting his [/her] rights against people who are practicing the invention by using his[/her] GPL’d software. People who independently create other software are not subject to this implied license. As an aside, it seems that the author could assert his[/her] patent rights against a competitor who is himself releasing independently developed software under the GPL, as long as it is not based on the original author’s distribution. The fact that the infringer himself distributes under the GPL is irrelevant as to whether he[/she] is infringing patents of others. The original author has not given permission for his[/her] competitor to use the patented technology.

    The author could sue people implementing his/her patents without using his/her GPLed implementation. Infringing activity falling outside the GPL scope are, in this perspective, subjected to patent infringement suit.

    The follow up article analyzes in more depth the impact of the GPL on the patent rights of the patentee, and various implied license theories that users of GPL’d software could use in defense against a patent suit.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: GPL, GPLv2, software patent, Majerus

     

  • italovignoli 9:40 am on March 28, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Security: OpenOffice.org Italian Association comments Secunia’s report 

    Secunia, the Danish company that collects, evaluates, verifies and analyzes all the information about software vulnerabilities, has just published the 2006 Report. The document summarizes the facts of the past year, and offers some statistics on the software that have been hit more severely by security problems.

    In 2006, OpenOffice.Org has been affected only by 5 vulnerabilities for the total of the three versions still available in the market (which have all been solved), while its largest competitor – a proprietary application – has been affected by 67 vulnerabilities (several of these problems have not yet been solved, even if they have been identified quite a long time ago). This makes this software a leader of a very unconfortable category.

    The last problem identified by Secunia last week, about three vulnerabilities – of which only the first, related to documents in WordPerfect native format, has been solved by a patch  while the others are still under scrutiny – is going to be solved by OpenOffice.Org 2.2, which is going to be released very soon.

    The full report in PDF format is available for download.

    PLIO, the OpenOffice.org Italian Native-Lang Project, is the Italian community of volunteers who develop, support and promote the open-source office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org supports the Open Document Format for Office applications (standard ISO/IEC 26300) and is available on major computing platforms in over 90 languages, available to 90% of the world-wide population in their own mother tongue.
    OpenOffice.org is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL), can be legally used in any context. 

    PLIO, Progetto Linguistico Italiano OpenOffice.org:
    http://it.openoffice.org
    “Vola e fai volare con i gabbiani di OpenOffice.org: usalo, copialo e regalalo, è legale!”
    For further information: Italo Vignoli (+39.348.5653829), stampa@openoffice.org

    Technorati Tags: OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice, PLIO, Security, Secunia

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:27 pm on March 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Marketplace: SourceForge Marketplace about to launch 

    I just received an email from Sourceforge.net team, advising me about a new feature to buy or sell services for Commercial Open Source on SourceForge.net.

    forging Forging by stefmaxwell

    Dear SourceForge.net community member,

    As an active participant in the Open Source community, you may be excited to learn about a new feature that we will add to SourceForge.net in late
    spring/early summer. This feature will allow you to buy or sell services for Open Source software on SourceForge.net.

    Interested? Follow the link below and we’ll keep you updated as we move towards the official launch of this feature:

    https://ostg.wufoo.com/forms/marketplace-interest-list/

    Thank you for your continued support,
    The SourceForge.net Team

    Sourceforge’s marketplace apparently will be soon released, and I believe it is great time to, and no one is in the position to do it effectively as they are.

    They also opened a position for a Senior Marketing Manager, SourceForge.net Marketplace in Fremont, California. In the meanwhile they invite all SourceForge users to fill in a simple form, a sort of marketplace interest list.

    VA Linux’s quarterly report contains many forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The software segment, focusing on SourceForge Enterprise Edition products and services, despite the increase in the number of customers, is of little importance nowadays, being less than 10% of the last quarterly results. It worth to notice that sales were primarily to customers located in US.

    Considering that their network of web sites serves more than 30 million unique visitors monthly I believe that they can easily open up new markets acting as the mediator.

    I wish them best of luck in the near future!

    Technorati Tags: SourceForge, Commercial Open Source, Marketplace

     

    • Andrew 1:49 pm on July 17, 2007 Permalink

      SourceForge has been a great forum and promoter of the OpenSource community for some time. I’m excited to see them get the exposure they deserve. I hope that “marketplace” won’t become synonymous with “giant sponser-driven site full of crap”, but that doesn’t seem to be SourceForge.net’s style.

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