The Open Source Initiative board, after visiting the European Commission, has finally approved the European Union Public license on the 4th of March.
The EUPL 1.1 – the revisited version of the EUPL 1.0 including recommended modifications resulting from the OSI discussion – is supported by the EUPL community. Stakeholders can share opinions and pose questions through the EUPL forums and blog.
Hi Patrice-Emmanuel,
I am glad you joined the conversation. I think that having a license (EUPL or not) translated in all European languages is a great thing.
What I object to the EC is that you decided to go your way, instead of participating the GPLv3 process, managed with a public and transparent consultation.
What I object to you is your adversarial approach. I believe that opening to FSF licenses is your concern, since you are trying to convince European public administrations to use the EUPL.
Show them that is convenient, that they can still stand on the shoulders of giants, and try harder to consider GPL, and software licensed under the GPL, as your best friend, not a foe.
My two European cents
Better Software 2009, an Italian conference on software development for IT managers and entrepreneurs, will be held at the Viva Hotel Laurus in Florence, on the 6-7 of May 2009.
The conference will bring together national and international experts in the fields of agile programming, open source and web marketing. Aim of the event is to discuss around the process of software production, emphasizing many different aspects ranging from user requirements analysis, user interface design and product usability evaluation.
Registration are now open, to know more you follow Better Sotware blog or twitter.
In addition to hold workshops, and presenting or keynoting at conferences, I give private speeches at companies, talking about open source business models, Italian open source offering and how to build an effective commercial open source strategy.
Earlier this week I was invited speaker at one of the biggest Italian system integrators, and I want here to take a chance to recap some highlights and few answering questions from the audience.
The Italian association Concreta-mente for the second year will held the Open Source in Public Administrations conference, on the 1st of April 2009 in Rome, at the LUISS Guido Carli university.
Four different case studies of Italian public administrations using open source software and open standards will be presented. Carlo Mochi Sismondi, Forum PA General Manager, will moderate a round-table discussion with representatives from public and private sectors.
The NEXA Center for Internet and Society of the Politecnico di Torino – a multidisciplinary research center on the impact of the Internet on society, with a focus on technical, economical and juridical issues – on yesterday published a position paper on file sharing and extended collective licenses.
NEXA’s attempt to over turn the piracy debate with a solution that try to accommodate authors’ and users’ needs, following the example of Nordic European Countries.
Read the full paper (PDF, Italian), a result of NEXA’ Wednsdays.
The Italian OpenOffice.org Association (PLIO), two years after its foundation yesterday – during the annual assembly – appointed the new board.
Italo Vignoli is now PLIO’s president, Paolo Mantovani is PLIO’s vice-president. I want to publicly thank Davide Dozza for his great job during these two long years, without his efforts and determinations we would not have been to start it all.
Openoffice.org: 7 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do – An essay of OpenOffice.org tricks, with pointers to other good post on the subject.
Does OpenOffice have 11 million active U.S. users? – Matt Asay on OpenOffice.org US pervasiveness, look at the numbers!
Black Duck Software, the intellectual property management firm headquartered near Boston with offices in San Francisco, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong – announced the release of the Black Duck Suite, a unified framework bringing together three Black Duck products (Black Duck Code Center, Export and Protex).
Black Duck ‘s survey conducted among software developers gathered at the SD West Conference held this week in Santa Clara (California), revealed little awareness about compliance, security and management problems. Actually those issues are addressed by Black Duck products and services, and I asked Tim Yeaton, one of the new CEO met at the open source think tank last week, to tell how he sees the market changing and how Black Duck strategy fits in the big picture.
The Venice International University‘s research on Open Source in Italy, conducted by Antonio Picerni and Alessandro De Rossi, was presented last Tuesday at the VEGA technology park, in Venice.
Among the many findings presented – resulting from on-line surveys and interviews to 181 Italian firms – the research states that Italian IT companies offering solutions based on open source software reach bigger customers.
The webinar aims at comparing the leading open source application development frameworks such as MyFaces, SEAM, Spring, Struts, and Tapestry. The webinar will be held next Thursday, March 12 2009, between 6:00 and 7:00pm GMT.
Attendees will learn key differences amongst leading frameworks and also about other frameworks on the rise, how to choose the most appropriate development enivronment and how to create web applications with them.
Register on line on OpenLogic website.
Roberto Galoppini, and 
P-E Schmitz are discussing.
Hi Roberto,
Publishing legal instruments with equal value in all EU languages and letting European courts work with it, is really “business as usual” for the European Institutions: Community Law counts million pages, valid in 22 or 23 languages. In case of uncertainty, national courts may ask the European Court of Justice to clarify. It is a simple fact that the GPL V2 and V3 (relative) failure is that FSF was unable to deal with linguistic diversity (that they consider as a major risk; it is true that they do not benefit from a supra-national court to help). Having said that, the EUPL has other merits: the license complies with European flavour of copyright, information to consumer, warranty and liability. The most important however, is that the intention of EUPL promoters is not to compete with the GPL or any other license. The objective is long term: to bring more administrations to license their source. We are at the early beginning of this, but there are currently substantial move in this direction and several Member States consider policies to license under EUPL. Last, the EUPL has a compatibility list (with GPLV2 and other copyleft licenses). This is also unique: it would be interesting to try solving license proliferation through “mutual recognition” between a club of equivalent licenses, sharing the same compatibility list: this would also provide more freedom to developers. Who has comment on this idea? It is a fact – unfortunately – that “compatibility” is seen by the FSF as “compatibility in the one-way direction of GPL, GPLv3 and AGPLv3”. The reverse situation is not even imagined by the FSF, (and by the way, their current web site ignores totally the EUPL – remember Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignored us…”). A last word about the “biased” comparison I did between the EUPL and GPLv3 during the EOLE event in Paris: Of course you can say it was biased! (since I am a EUPL advocate), but please do not take my comparison as an attack “against” the GPLv3: I just report facts: GPLv3 is about 3 times longer, is full of technical details, is complex (even for a lawyer) and as it is officially valid in English only it may not be the most persuasive license for a German or French administration. Could anyone object? Now if you are happy with GPLv3 and AGPLv3 no problems, go on!