Radical Digital Frontiers Event, Rome 4/12
See you on Sunday to talk about privacy, censorship and whistleblowing
. Learn more about the event at the Official site.
Update: see full videos at Radio Radicale website.
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Roberto Galoppini
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Roberto Galoppini
SOS Open Source Tools and Methodology are Open Source!
I am so happy to say that finally SOS Open Source methodology and tools are now open source!The EU-funded initiative PROSE re-engineerined and enhanced my original tools, making them now available as open source.
If you need to run an open source software procurement process give it a try. Read more at SOS Open Source.
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Roberto Galoppini
The Share Economy is Dead, Long Live to the Share Economy!
Airbnb, Uber and many other centralized sharing approaches are collecting big money from investors and opening every day new markets. The problem with ‘Sharing Central‘ is that there are business reasons to hide negative feedback, put strong ID system in place, push people to write comments using quid pro quo strategies and more.Sharing Central is not evil per sé, but its main focus isn’t to provide end-users with full access to knowledge and reduce asymmetry of information. Goal is to maximize returns. And this happens also in other social media, as seen with Twitter’s recent “mistakes” for example.
Ad-free social media like Ello are hitting the news, but how long they’ll stay ad-free?
The so-called “shared economy” is just replacing the existing and often inefficient and/or ineffective intermediaries, with a new set of powerful intermediaries. While the companies backing all the share-central initiatives are somehow failing to see their true social potential, they introduced many people to the collaborative economy.
Will these new intermediaries harder to disrupt? Maybe, or maybe not.
The Bitcoin revolution and its role in the Share Economy.
The Blockchain‘s biggest promise is still yet to be fulfilled, but it will soon allow us to share knowledge in a trust-less network removing or replacing the middle-man and his desire for control.
Let’s discuss briefly some possibilities:
1) P2P Purchasing Groups. People interested in a product or service category might collectively buy something. There are actually few ways to get this done:
- a group of friends could rely on a friend’s ability to barter with the supplier;
- via a “common-based peer-production” using separation of duties;
- an intermediator could do that and build and nurture a community (e.g. woot).
2) P2P Direct Selling. The blockchain would make easier for potential buyers to check out sellers’ honesty and products’ pros and cons. Sales’ traceability would make possible to implement either single or multi-level marketing approaches in a error-prone fashion.
3) P2P Word of Mouth. Manufacturers and Service providers could engage with their customers and get them to talk about their products by incentivizing advocacy with gift cards, discounts and prize. Basically doing that Puma has been doing with its employee.
I’ll be covering this topic more and more consistently, bringing examples of how Bitcoin (the protocol) can change the digital world in unexpected and unpredictable ways.
Roberto Galoppini
Open World Forum 2014: CfP is about to close!
The Open World Forum is back! Check out the CfP, it’s closing in two days!
"For this 7th edition the program is build around the guideline “Take Back Control†and will show you how to take back control of your digital world.
Roberto Galoppini, and 
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Kris Buytaert
If their subtitle is “Take back Control” does that mean they are going to make it a real Open Source event again and not the most closed and open source unfriendly event with people talking bullshit on stage like last year ?
Not that I plan on ever speaking there again .. btw..
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Roberto Galoppini
Hi Kris,
my sincere apologies for not having approved your comment before.
Having been a Program committee member for few years now, I can tell that in my opinion the event progressively became a bit too French. I can’t tell if that’s the result of the lack of support/interest from us international committee members or an organizational drift away from a more international perspective, though.
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Stefane Fermigier
Thanks Kris for your feedback. I don’t agree on a lot of things you said, but we will take care of the things we agree on this year.
An Roberto, thanks for your long term support of the event.
The program for 2014 should be announced soon.
Also, see: http://opensourceweek.fr/
Regards,
S.
Roberto Galoppini
Innovation By Design
I have contributed to Engineering’s Ingenium webzine talking about how open source is the innovation backbone powering the Bitcoin revolution. Below you find the English version, read more at the Engineering site.
2013 was considered the year of Bitcoin, the new cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer communication protocol that provides a secure and decentralised system for the transfer of property rights. Each block in the chain of transactions is certified by network nodes which are paid for this activity. Known as “mining”, this activity is financed by the limited and controlled production of new Bitcoins. To circumvent the system’s security it is necessary to invalidate the rules applied to each transaction, and this requires obtaining control of more than 50% of the network nodes. Investing in Bitcoin is not without risk. In December 2013, China banned bitcoins, on 28 February 2014 the main exchange (Mt Gox) declared bankruptcy and, more recently, the U.S. administration has expressed its willingness to fiscally regulate the cryptocurrency. Each time the market has reacted negatively and then recovered, but it is certainly premature to express an opinion on the future of this means of payment. But a question is worth asking: why are innovation and Open Source inseparable in Bitcoin?
The protocols underlying internet, and Bitcoin is no exception, are based on “rough consensus and running codeâ€, that is, on public discussion and implementation. If Bitcoin had been a private protocol it would have been impossible to verify collectively the effectiveness and an ecosystem would not have been developed which to date has already attracted 100 million dollars’ worth of investment by venture capital, and has already been able to cope with problems in software thanks to the timely mobilisation of the community of developers. The Bitcoin project is in fact developed on GitHub and distributed and discussed on SourceForge.
But if cryptocurrency is the first practical application of the protocol, it is not necessarily the one with the greatest potential for innovation. Today, applications are being designed that intend to extend the principle of operation of this protocol for the transfer of ownership of other assets, such as the management of derivative instruments like ‘Contracts for Difference’. Developments are also being conceived that will enable the creation of “virtual companies” in which each stakeholder will participate through the purchase of “shares” or receive them in exchange for their contributions, thus achieving the business rules of the organisation ‘cabled’ into the code. It is the cooperative model underlying the Bitcoin community, and more generally the Open Source community, which transforms the very way in which the business is established and evolves. Bitcoin could be the platform on which businesses, customers and users will find a new way to exchange value, products and services.
Roberto Galoppini
SourceForge’s Platform Becomes Apache Alluraâ„¢!
I am excited to share the news, Apache Allura just became an Apache Top-Level project! It has been both an honor and pleasure to work with the Apache community and a personal thrill to see my dream finally turning into reality.
I still remember our first internal discussions about submitting Allura to the Apache Incubator, over two years ago. The great work we did to draft our proposal – thanks Rich Bowen – and the exceptional level of support from our former CEO, Jeff Drobick.
I wish to thank again the whole SourceForge engineering team, without them it wouldn’t have been possible to graduate. I wish also to say thank to our General Manager Gaurav Kuchhal that made the graduation a goal for all of us, and last but not least all our great mentors, and among them in a special way Jim Jagielski and Rich Bowen.
Read more at SourceForge and Apache blog.
Jeff Drobick are discussing. -
Jeff Drobick
Roberto, big congratulations to you and the rest of the Apache Allura contributor team! I hope you all are well 😉 – Jeff
Roberto Galoppini
Open Source for Real! Rome, 2/26/2014
See you tomorrow at the Open Source for Real! event, the first SUSEÂ international event dedicated to the discovery of the SUSEÂ open source ecosystem, including database (EnterpriseDB), middleware (Â WSO2) and enterprise CMDB applications (CMDBuild).
Roberto Galoppini
An Opportunity for Open Source Entrepreneurs
If you are a startupper and a fan of the role of open source in startup development, it is your time to get a feedback on your pitch from noted Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper. Thanks to the editors at Dice News, Draper will sit down with three startup founders on Jan. 23, 2014, at his Draper University in San Mateo. Read more at SourceForge blog.
Roberto Galoppini
Going to the Open World Forum
Look forward to catch up with new and old friend from the European Open Source scene later this week at the OWF, in Paris. In case you missed from the 3rd to the 5th of October political representatives, decision-makers and experts will meet to debate on the technological, economical and social impacts that the Free and Open-Source technologies bring to market.
I’ll give a speech on the 4th at the Community Summit – Open Source Innovation Stories.
See you there!
Roberto Galoppini
Finally SOS Open Source Goes Open Source!
I am happy to inform my readers that finally SOS Open Source will soon be released in open source!
This has been a long due move and I am glad the actual SOS Open Source team is now working on updating and polishing the code before releasing it.
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