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  • Roberto Galoppini 8:49 pm on February 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Micro-Blogging: The Pulse of Open Source, by Raven Zachary 

    While at the Open Source Think Tank Raven Zachary came up with the idea of creating the Pulse of Open Source, a new web application tailored to highlight open source activity on Twitter.

    Just as Raven I was also initially skeptical of this service, a sort of micro-blogging (140 characters or less) to share tiny URLs and no much more. But I was proven wrong, as Stormy Peters pointed out twitter could well be your cup of coffee, maybe also Matt Asay will change his mind at some time.

    One of the things I have found useful about Twitter besides following close friends is following people in my profession. The more I looked, the more interesting participants in the open source community I found on Twitter.

    Raven, I couldn’t say it better myself, I totally agree. Raven told me about his initiative -  based on a conversation he had with Ross Turk, Mark Hinkle, Reuven Cohen, and Aaron Fulkerson– at breakfast the very last day at Napa, and I am glad to be part of the ‘kernel’.

    As of launch today, the site is following 87 people and I expect that number to grow substantially over time. Take a look at who we follow. If you are an active participant in the open source community and would like to be included in this stream of consciousness, instructions are on the site about how to participate. I’m hoping that my colleagues Jay and Matt will take the hint and join Twitter, too. 451 colleagues Nick Patience, Vishy Venugopalan, and Rachel Chalmers are on Twitter. You can also track our analyst releases using the service.

    I wish the Pulse of Open Source all the best, but get to twitter now.. 😉

    Technorati Tags: twitter, RavenZachary, the451group, StormyPeters, MattAsay,  

     
    • sandeep 3:30 pm on June 24, 2008 Permalink

      Just confused by the article.
      I mean; is twitter a opensource application?

      Sorry if I misread.

    • Roberto Galoppini 6:41 pm on June 24, 2008 Permalink

      Twitter is definitely not an open source application. Raven Zachary created a web application to keep us updated with twitters from the open source community, as he explained:

      This is the stream of collective consciousness from the open source community on wTwitter. Who are we following? Take a look at the who we follow

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:07 pm on February 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source at Microsoft: Open Source Interoperability Initiative, NXT Partner Program and Commercial Open Source Firms 

    Microsoft announced a new interoperability approach, opening up previously secret specifications and protocols to open source developers (and heroes), providing a covenant not to sue them for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.

    VisionaryAm I a visionary? by osse

    The Open Source Interoperability Initiative is just started, and the EU seems skeptical on Microsoft sharing plans, as is Red Hat, while Groaklaw recaps us on Microsoft’s promises. ArsTechnica reports that the EU investigation seems to have played a role, stating that Microsoft may not be up for yet another fight with regulators.

    Besides the ballot resolution meeting, I doubt Microsoft is changing everything so that it can stay the same. Beyond any possible speculation of the real meaning of the non-commercial covenant, Microsoft today is probably giving up with its vertically integrated corporation approach.

    The Microsoft’s de-verticalization has begun, Microsoft opening its interfaces and APIs will allow applications to be hooked more easily its products. This is a huge change, and it will affect the IT market at large. Before exploiting it further, and how and if it will impact on the open source market, a little background.

    One of the most promising value of open source software is that its licensing enables coopetition. The neologism refers to a market situation in which two or more organizations compete and cooperate simultaneously. The non-rivalrous nature of software distributed under an OSI compliant license is the basis on which cooperation among open source firms can take place.

    The Observatory of European SMEs, given the importance of High-tech SMEs in Europe , analyzed success factors and among them the role of networks:

    Studies dealing with barriers to networking and co-operation in the area of high-tech SMEs identify a number of
    reasons hampering the formation of networks among these enterprises. Many of these factors are the same as for SMEs in general, e.g. different objectives and expectations among partners and differences in enterprise culture. Also, the lack (or the importance respectively) of a ‘co-ordinator’, e.g. a larger leading firm or an agency, is relevant for the networking among high-tech SMEs, too. [..] small and large high-tech enterprises seem to have different motives to engage in networking: for high-tech SMEs the main motivator is to achieve (quick) access to markets and credibility. Hence, networking is seen to be a ‘necessity’ for high-tech SMEs. In contrast, for large high-tech firms the reasons to engage in networks include primarily access to competitive R&D and technology. [..] These fundamentally different approaches imply that smaller firms are rather oriented towards short term and concrete results. SMEs want projects to have a quick path to market and achieve returns as quickly as possible. However, networking often requires a lot of time-consuming communication and efforts before actual results are achieved and benefits are not visible immediately. But SMEs have difficulties in allowing time and delays for different processes and exchange of information. A further consequence is that SMEs prefer to form one to one collaborations rather than collaborations between groups of enterprises.

    Open source consortia and other “loosely coupled” organizations among open source firms could definitely play an important role to foster communities, but as a matter of fact they suffer from above mentioned limitations.

    Despite the recent rise of interest toward coopetitive alliances, effective coopetition doesn’t occur too often. Strategic-business literature lack of descriptions explaining how organizations should manage a coopetitive relationship, and how they in practice manage to compete and cooperate with other organizations.

    How co-operation and competition could possibly merge together to form a strategic interdependence among firms, eventually giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation?

    ZEA Partners experience shows the importance of the creation of an intermediate organization, providing rules and regulations, aiming to secure the long term survival of the association. ZEA Partners is on duty to resolve conflicts, and considering that fields of expertise are not complementary, one of the most important reason to become a ZEA partner is definitely to get a more formal status. Organizations within ZEA Partners are willing to cooperate on activities that are far away from applications that could generate an income:

    It is knowledge that is not close to an application, and that means that it is knowledge that can easily be shared.

    Therefore OS firms sharing the same knowledge can easier co-operate through customer distance (i.e. the closer to the customer, the more competition). The rules and regulations that an intermediate organization could issue don’t include licensing to manage the coopetitive relationship.

    But the concept of competition might include relationships with suppliers and customers, rather than restrict coopetition only to relationships among cooperating firms that compete in the same market and want to reach the same customers.

    Customers asking for not differentiating IT solutions or not competing (e.g. public administrations), could take advantage of the possibility to share with suppliers assets like source code and also blueprints to implement such technologies. Allowing them to reuse by other customers might turn to be a viable strategy to obtain enhancements and discounts.

    Suppliers on the other hand can take advantage of customers’ ability to set user requirements and through blueprints can turn their customers in testimonials, reporting about such best practices.

    Now, how does the Open Source at Microsoft fit into the picture?

    Microsoft recently launched another initiative, the NXT partner program geared towards Open Source ISVs. The program is aimed at providing open source ISV with information to make it easier to develop and sell open source software on Windows. Microsoft NXT partner provides ISV with a range of services, ranging from marketing support to technical advice, including also business model definition and channel delivery plans.

    All in all the Microsoft NXT partner program, the Open Source Interoperability Initiative and the just started Forge New Powers to me seems to be part of a general strategy. As a matter of fact there is a lot of free and open source software deployed on Windows, and Microsoft is refocusing on fostering value creation also partnering with open source firms.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft will eventually give rise to a coopetitive system of value creation in the next future, helping IT firms to exploit the role of networks, as none else could possibly will to do.

    Am I a visionary?

    Technorati Tags: open source microsoft, microsoft, open source interoperability, NXT, open source hero, Forge New Powers, commercial open source, open business

     
    • Juergen Geck 9:29 am on February 29, 2008 Permalink

      Google is beating everybody including Microsoft in owning customer data. If you keep everything on your servers, make it voluntary (or at least make it seem voluntary) and convenient, you have a achieved a lot more control than even Microsoft. In this reality, what use are artefacts of a time when there were no standard file formats?

      The answer is none.

      Because artefacts is exactly what Microsofts proprietary APIs and data formats become if solutions are either build as hosted environments (Google), or based on open standards (many open source projects), or hosted or inhouse at the customers discretion and built on open standards (Open-Xchange).

      So it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to release as much as possible into the open, before it can become a legacy that costs them money to maintain. And at the same time, with the same decision, complement their farce of a standard – ooxml, which is going through heavy turbulences right now anyway – with a backup strategy.

      What that means for the IT market in general is that Microsoft stacks become incrementally more open to integrate with. And open to integrate with in two ways: a)
      to have ISVs pay license fees to Microsoft if they want to use the newly released APIs. Fair is fair, access to markets is an assett worthwhile selling. b) for free for open source projects. What makes b) interesting is that via an open source project, not for profit, sponsored by company xyz etc. it now becomes possible to have data reside in non-Microsoft associated repositories. For free. With open source. And no inhibition to service this open source plumbing.

      And this means that integration with customer data hawked by Microsoft software has just become a little easier. First and foremost for those customers who have their data locked away from themselves by Microsoft.

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:33 am on March 1, 2008 Permalink

      Juergen,

      thanks to join th conversation. It looks like if you have a lot to say about it, I will ask you more to write a post if you don’t mind.

      Is it ok with you?

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:07 am on February 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Conference: Vote for Italy, now! 

    The next OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 (OOoCon) will be held in one of the following locations, and it is up to you to choose which one: Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Beijing, China; Bratislava, Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary; Dundalk, Ireland; and Orvieto, Italy.

    OrvietoOrvieto (Duomo) by Mirjam75

    The biggest concentration appears to be in Europe, as far as John McCreesh – Marketing Program Lead of OpenOffice.org – himself reported. Holding the OOoCon in Beijing could bring the China-based developers into the fold, but it sounds pretty expensive for many of us.

    Today I asked my Linkedin contacts if they would vote for Orvieto, and I wish you all vote for us.

    John McCreesh writing about the different options stated:

    [..] I believe one European bid this year stands above the others, which is the bid from Italy. I believe the combination of an experienced organising team, a delightful warm location, and a thriving local community would be hard to beat. I would urge anyone wanting an OOoCon in Europe this year to unite behind Orvieto.

    Remember that voting closes on Friday 29th, vote it now!

    Technorati Tags: OpenOffice, OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice conference, OOoCon, Italy, Orvieto, JohnMcCreesh

     
    • Piergiorgio Lucidi 8:21 pm on February 27, 2008 Permalink

      Thank you for this post Roberto, I try to spread it as soon as possible!

      Good luck.

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:13 pm on February 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    European Open Source License: Happy Birthday EUPL! 

    The European Union Public License is one year old now. The EUPL License, created by the European Commission to release software as Open Source, is available in all official EU languages (English, French and German).

    Life in vitroLife in vitro by IRRI Images

    Upon invitation of the IDABC Programme, legal experts and OSS practitioners from across Europe have met on 25 January 2008 in Brussels to discuss their experiences with the EUPL.

    Reading the workshop presentation, I learned that the European Commission understands very well how difficult is to turn the in-vitro conception into a living reality. About 50 lawyers were involved in the legal quality verification of the various linguistic versions of the license, but only CIRCA, IPM and eLINK were actually distributed under the EUPL license.

    The European Community is definitely not a software house. We might better spend our resources on different goals, but maybe we need more time to give up on trying to get EUPL acceptance.

    I wish a more pragmatic Europe, now.

    Technorati Tags: European Community, Open Source License, EUPL, IDABC

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 11:30 am on February 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Sarbanes-Oxley, Opinions on Microsoft Interoperability Initiative: open source links 24-02-2008 

    Sarbanes-Oxley IT Compliance Using Open Source Tools – A book illustrating Open Source cost-saving opportunities that public companies can explore to meet mandatory compliance requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley act.

    Don’t Compete and Microsoft Won’t Sue – It is not yet clear exactly what qualifies as “non-commercial distribution”

    Microsoft Interoperability Principles – an improved forum for open source interoperability sounds a good thing.

    Microsoft’s New Leaf On Interoperability – Slashdot on Microsoft’s move.

    Promises, Promises from Microsoft. Again. – Groklaw on Microsoft’s move.

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 9:17 am on February 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Italian Minister answers questions posed, the Italian IT market: my facts and figures 23-02-2008 

    Italian Minister answers questions posed in our open letter (Italian) – Now that we managed to get an answer to our letter it is great time to pose more questions..

    Myself interviewed by Marco Rossi (ADIT Innovation Network Association) (Italian) – Sequential innovation, coopetition and an analysis of the Italian IT market (Italian)

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 10:43 pm on February 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org: The Italian OpenOffice.org Association welcomes Microsoft’s move to open its API 

    PLIO, the Italian OpenOffice.org Association who support and promote the Italian open source office productivity suite OpenOffice.org, today after Microsoft’s announcement wrote an open letter to Microsoft.

    Welcome, Microsoft.

    Following yesterday’s announcement, we are ready to co-operate at the promotion of open formats in order to support this new endeavour in the area of office suites. We are ready to co-operate, but we will criticize you for every uncertain or false step.

    Inside interoperability there isn’t any space left for tricks: interoperability means that you have chosen to be on the same side of the users.

    We believe in your good faith more than the EC doesWe trust you more than the European Commission, as they have told the world who highlighted that this is the fourth time that Microsoft makes an announcement about interoperability, without any impact – until today – on the company strategy.

    We sincerely hope that this time, for a number of reasons – including our proactive opposition to the fast track standardization of Office 2007 file formats, which will go on until all the necessary changes will be made, the chances that mere words are going to translate into facts are higher than in the past.

    At the same time, we invite all the companies that support the ODF format together with us – and those that belong to the OpenOffice.org community: Sun, IBM, Novell & Red Flag – to work for a full interoperability, as the technical and legal obstacles are going to disappear soon.

    Users should be able to exchange transparently Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org documents, in both directions.

    The software industry, which is not based just in Redmond, must demonstrate a true commitment to make ODF a more widespread format.

    If this will happen, users will win, and the market – i.e., all of us – will win.

    Associazione PLIO (Italian National Linguistic Project OpenOffice.org)

    Today at the international event ECOySOLSemana de promoción científica y tecnológica para el desarrollo del Ecosistema Digital y del Software Libre – I had the pleasure to share our strategy with the attendees, including our very last decision to open a constructive dialog with Microsoft.

    We just broke up 1,000,000 downloads last week, but I told them also where the story starts.

    Five years ago we were already working hard to promote OpenOffice.org: cooperating with Italian free software organizations I managed to get our Minister of Education head up on the importance to tell Italian schools about OpenOffice.org. She eventually did it indeed, thanks to our common efforts and some media coverage.

    Media became very receptive to our news only later, when Italo Vignoli joined our community, and the story goes on.

    Fostering perception of the existence of OpenOffice.org is not an issue anymore for us. OpenOffice.org’s low end disruption is taking over in Italy, our users are not the innovators of the innovation adoption curve, but early adopters.

    Now we need help, and we are asking Sun (already paying a lot of attention to our open letters), IBM, Novell & Red Flag to work with us for a full interoperability, as soon as the technical and legal obstacles will disappear.

    Users demand inter-applications interoperability, let’s do it now!

    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.

    Technorati Tags: PLIO, OpenOffice, disruptive innovation, Sun, Red Hat, IBM, Microsoft, interoperability, OpenOffice.org

     
    • Stefano 8:24 am on February 26, 2008 Permalink

      I believe there is a mistake in the translation where it talks about trusting Microsoft more than EC?

      The Italian version of the letter says something ‘we believe in your good faith more than the EC does’, it doesn’t talk about trusting more one over another. Please correct this text before it spreads further and offends our allies in Bruxelles.

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:41 am on February 26, 2008 Permalink

      Stefano,

      I promptly corrected my post, and I informed Italo about your kind remark.

      I believe that Italo’s mistake was done in good faith, likely to spread the word fast. I see myself in him, blogging in English is a continuous learning process.

      Thank you!

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:18 am on February 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Community Awards: SourceForge launches the 2008 Community Choice Awards 

    SourceForge.net launched the 2008 Community Choice Awards, the third edition of SourceForge awards program it is now open to all FOSS projects, and it includes new categories.

    I asked Ross Turk some feedback on the awards:

    I’m really excited about this year’s awards – we’re doing some cool new stuff! The big news, of course, is that we’re no longer restricting it to SourceForge.net projects, so any FOSS project can be nominated in any category. I think that’s huge.

    We have some new categories, too. We’ve pruned the ones from last year that weren’t very popular and added a few new ones that we think will cause people to stop and think.

    Also, this is the first year we’ll be selling sponsorships. It’s a way for us to fund a bigger, cooler party, and a way for us to provide our sponsors with good access to one of the coolest communities around.

    SourceForge allowing nominations for any open source project, not just those on SourceForge.net, it is definitely going to be much more interesting this year. I remember Matt Asay saying that participants had a tenuous grip on what “enterprise” means last year (firebird won), I guess opening will help in this direction.

    I am looking forward to see who is going to win the new category “Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition”..

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Award, SourceForge, MattAsay, RossTurk, Firebird

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 6:10 pm on February 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Microsoft Interoperability: Microsoft opens up its data formats and platforms 

    Microsoft today announced new interoperability principles to increase the openness of its flagship products Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 as well as future versions.

    To drive greater interoperability Microsoft sets four new principles, the Questions and Answers page by Bob Muglia is a must read.

    PressPass: Isn’t this also intended to be a part of an agreement with the European Commission?

    Muglia: Today’s announcement isn’t part of an agreement with the Commission. However, it’s a reflection of the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the industry as a whole. It’s an important step forward in our ongoing efforts to fulfill the responsibilities and obligations outlined in the ruling of the European Court of First Instance in September 2007.

    To me it sounds like a huge change, but I want to go deeper into before writing more about it.

    Technorati Tags: Open Standards, Microsoft, BobMuglia, Microsoft Interoperabilty

     
    • Carlo Daffara 11:37 am on February 22, 2008 Permalink

      Many others have commented that this kind of announcements are being done with a certain regularity, and that the patent covenant are not extended to “commercial open source developers” (whatever that may means) but only for “noncommercial OSS developers”. I have found much more interesting the announcement that Microsoft will provide a list of patents that cover specific API and technology, and this will provide a “navigation” across potentially infringing open source implementations, or the possibility for invalidation (by the identification of prior art, for example) of patents that cannot be circumvented.

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:40 pm on February 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Standards: Document “Freedom” Day 

    My friend Giacomo Poderi, Free Software Foundation Europe Italian representative, today forwarded me a document introducing Document Freedom Day, a global day for document liberation scheduled for 26 of March.

    It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general. The DFD is supported by a large group of organisations and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS, Esoma, Free Software Foundations Europe and Latin America, IBM, NLnet, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Inc., The Open Learning Centre, Opentia, Estandares Abiertos.

    The initiative clearly promotes ODF, the website reports the ODF logo and, just to name another open standard, the Portable Document Format (PDF) is not even mentioned. Why you didn’t call it Open Document Format Day then?

    ODF logoThe ODF logo, courtesy of RedHat

    My friends, Freedom it is about choice..

    Technorati Tags: Open Document Format, ODF, Portable Document Format, PDF, Open Standards, FSFE

     
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