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  • Roberto Galoppini 10:40 am on August 10, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Government: Italian Parliament, two-year switch to begin in September. 

    The IT department of the Italian Parliament presented plans for the migration of all of its 200 servers and more than 3500 desktop PCs to GNU/Linux and Open Office. The switch will be carried out gradually, as reported by IDABC, it will start next September and it will take about two years.

    After reading that the Italian parliament bets house on SuSE Linux I asked Pietro Folena to tell me more.

    According to IDABC the IT department of the Italian Parliament presented a massive migration plan (200 servers, 3500 desktops) that will take about two years. Could you tell us more about it?

    Pietro Folena Pietro Folena, courtesy of Chamber of Deputies

    Mr. Pietro Folena, Member of Italian Parliamente, proposed on July 2006, to adopt Free Software in the Parliament (low house) IT infrastructure and on desktop Pcs, both. The second proposal was to allow to MPs the choise between Windows and a Free Software Operative System, like GNU/Linux. This year the IT department of the House of Deputies (the low house of Italian Parliament presented a plan to migrate to Suse Linux Enterprise Edition the desktops of MPs, parlamentarian fractions, offices, but servers was migrated during 2005 and 2006.

    In order to introduce politicians to Linux are you consider a sort of “One Laptop per Politician” initiative? If this is the case, how would you get them interested in learning a new paradigm?

    No, It’s matter of freedom. We have Windows 2000 on our desktops. But this was an imposition that I didn’t accept. I’m a elected MP, so I want to decide if using Windows or a Free Software Operative System. I think that I’m more free using free software.
    I hope that all MPs will chose GNU/Linux on desktops, to know this alternative to proprietary software. If MPs will know the Free Software filosophy I think that laws on software and culture will be better.

    You said that “This migration will be a very important case study and will present us with best practices, relevant for all public offices.”, is the IT department wondering to write a blueprint (i.e a replicable and complete description of a set of tools and processes that satisfied a specific need)?

    At this moment I know there isn’t a blueprint, because migration of desktops will start on september. But I think that it will write next year or after.

    A political question, what do you think of the idea of “open-source politics”?

    There are some interestin projects of this. I think that “open source politics” are necessary. Politicians and cityzen are too far. But I see some facts: European Parliament, in example, changed the IPRED 2 directive by Internet-people riot. In Italy we deleted a fee on cell phone by a petition signed on Internet. The Net is a chance of democracy and partecipation.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, Italian Parliament, PietroFolena, blueprints

     

  • Carlo Daffara 9:54 am on August 6, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open source collaboration: non-source code open projects 

    In the context of the joint research work with Roberto, I would like to present a small update in the OpenTTT project. OpenTTT is a EU-funded project (SSA-030595 INN7) that aims at bridging the separate worlds of technology transfer and open source software (OSS), by introducing novel methodologies for helping companies in the take up of technology.

    As part of the project, we are collecting examples of non-source code projects where collaboration or open licensing are critical, and prepared a listing of such activities. Such listing will be extended in the next weeks, also including previous work like the “Open Source Gift Guide” or a list of non software open source goods.

    As already discussed a large portion of work in OSS projects goes into non-code aspects, and as such should be investigated probably with the same interest that OSS commands today.

    Technorati Tags: openttt, EU projects

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 2:51 pm on August 1, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source at Microsoft: some thoughts 

    Bill Hilf participation to OSCON 2007 raised up contrasting “sentiments”, as seen from the Tim O’Reilly post on, and from Groaklaw to Miguel de Icaza known voices from the Open Source blogosphere keep joining the conversation.

    Game of Life Game of Life by Demirtunc

    Hilf announced a new Microsoft’s Open Source portal, talking about Open Source from a Microsoft’s perspective, and that they were going to submit shared source licenses to OSI for the approval process.

    Reading Open Source @ Microsoft FAQ, it is pretty clear that the portal is not (yet) part of a new strategy, but a medium toward a goal: accomplishing heterogeneous customers’ (and partners) needs. Nonetheless, as far as Microsoft’s partners will be progressively embracing open source technologies, I bet Microsoft will turn this into a long term strategy. Since Microsoft’s business is mostly about infrastructural software, they might get advantage of the pervasive capillarity of Microsoft’s partners (750.000) to foster collaborative development over their proprietary technologies.

    Of a different sign, the decision to submit shared licenses to the OSI approval process: reading Rosenberg’s post at Port25 it is clear that Microsoft understands the impact of its move:

    As we look forward to the next three years, we already see the needs of our constituents driving our priorities for licensing, infrastructure, and process. Although open source at Microsoft and the OSI are two different animals, I would submit to you that both are at a point in their maturity where their constituencies need to become more involved to maintain growth. [..]

    So what about the flip side of the OSI becoming a membership organization? Could they really be voted out of existence or rendered ineffective? It doesn’t seem likely to me. Participation in the OSI and adherence to OSI licensing guidelines and Open Source definitions is entirely voluntary. If it isn’t serving the best interests of the community, the community will go elsewhere. Anyone considering an effort to “vote the organization into the ground” would surely realize that such heavy handedness would be self-defeating. That’s not to say that a new membership structure wouldn’t lead to change, but I believe that these changes would have to be the result of vigorous consensus building and that’s probably not a bad thing.

    Shall we see Microsoft joining the new OSI, in the very next future?

    I wish to thank Robin Good to ask me an opinion on the subject through his last invention, Robin Good World News, a web-tv channel collecting independent video news from around the world.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Strategies, Commercial Open Source, Microsoft, robingoodtv

     

    • Alex Fletcher 7:17 pm on August 2, 2007 Permalink

      Roberto,

      More than simply provocative, your question is spot on. Microsoft really should consider joining the OSI Board of Directors as an observer. Apple and Google have already done so. A move like this would help them develop a clearer identity & strategy as a participant in the open source bazaar.

      Alex

    • Roberto Galoppini 10:59 pm on August 2, 2007 Permalink

      Alex, I totally agree with you. I claimed it was a ‘provocative’ question because, for a large part of the Open Source/Free Software world, it is. While unthinkable for many, I believe it is going to make sense, but it will take a while before <<another Microsoft, inside the Microsoft!>> 🙂 will eventually take over the company.

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:39 am on July 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Wiki: a chat with Ludovic Dubost, Xwiki CEO 

    Xwiki, a French company aimed to bring open source wiki to the enterprise, recently won the i-Expo Prize for Economic Intelligence at the i-Expo 2007 show in Paris for XWiki Watch.

    Ludovic Dubost Ludovic Dubost by rsepulveda

    I happened to know about Xwiki few moths ago reading that at ENST were having two internship proposals to work on XWiki, later I got in touch with Luis Arias and since then we occasionally exchange opinions and ideas about Open Source business models.
    Yesterday I had a conversation with Ludovic Dubost, Xwiki CEO, and we start speaking about how Wikis in general are getting more an more interest and attention, despite Knowledge Management and Collaboration tools are not on the food chain.

    Then I asked Ludovic about XWiki Watch.

    XWiki Watch concerns an activity which is well defined in the enterprise. monitoring what competitors do, how your company is perceived, how much press is received.. The concept is not new, it’s just Internet opened new opportunities.
    I mean, the Wiki is already perceived as a way to record knowledge about the competition, but only manually before XWiki Watch.

    Why should I use Xwiki Watch?

    With XWiki Watch you can mix retrieving info from the Internet, flag it, comment it but also write your own info, create wiki pages about the subjects you are watching and you can construct a knowledge base (wiki style) which will the connected to the internet info

    We are also planning to have delivery as a web site or in a blog, in addition to the delivery as mail, pdf, and RSS feed.

    The big differentiator versus RSS aggregators is the delivery tools, while the big differentiator versus existing Competitive intelligence tools is the collaborative aspects (flags/comments) and the Wiki integration.

    In XWiki Watch once the different users select the best news and comment them, and tags them, once you have done this you can construct a filter and ask for a specific delivery. So the filter could specify that you want only the flagged articles and specifying that you want them by email, or PDF, or on a web page, or a news RSS feed.

    Actually XWiki Watch doesn’t collect news from source that are not RSS enables, as tools like MySyndicaat (actually not Open Source but a great tool to do newsmastering), but they eventually could do some custom coding. After all their business model is a mix of Products specialists and Split OSS/commercial Product. FLOSSMETRICS taxonomy describes Product specialists companies that created (or maintains) a software project, and use a pure FLOSS license to distribute it, and the main revenues come from services like training and consulting. But XWiki it is also adopting the Split OSS/Commercial product business model, selling XWiki Enterprise edition, and I guess they will soon expand their offer in this respect.

    Can you tell me why Xwiki Watch won the prize?

    We were in a conference about Competitive Intelligence, and XWiki Watch won the innovation prize. The main reason for the prize was because of the ability for XWiki Watch to “democratize” Competitive intelligence. As a matter of most organization tend hire a person to do that and deliver info to the management or to the company, with XWiki Watch you can decide to organize things differently, like everybody in the company becomes a Watcher and everybody gets the most interesting info delivered. While actually if you look at it precisely you’ll see that everybody is doing watching on his space, it’s just not shared.

    While firms like Wikispaces are mainly working with on-line collaboration and open source industries, XWiki apparently is differentiating its offer going further than the wiki, targeting collaborative tools, project management and collaborative watching. In order to do that they are through partnerships with other players, like Nearbee, CHRONOPOLYS.

    Thank you Ludovic, and happy hacking!

    About XWiki.
    XWiki is an open source Wiki, and it is also an Enterprise wiki which allows the creation of applications within the Wiki interface. The languages that can be used are Velocity and Groovy, it is written in Java and it uses database like MySql or HSQLDB.

    Technorati Tags: XWiki, Xwiki Watch, LudovicDubost, Business models

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:39 am on July 29, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 29-07-2007 

    Where’s the grassroots marketing for Linux? – Alex says that the biggest barrier to Open Source adoption is (poor) marketing, and I share his vision. But appropriating returns from the commons is not trivial, and Open Source firms are not willing to invest huge amount of money to publicize public goods. In my opinion we need to implement unconventional marketing campaigns, spending little money and possibly through a collective action. Consortia and similar organizations could play their role in this respect.

    Open Source at Microsoft – Bill Hilf announced a new web “property” (fix the FAQ page) that outlines Microsoft’s position on OSS, while Port 25 will still be the source for technical issues. Microsoft is getting closer to OSS (SpikeSource certifies OSS on Windows), but I really doubt they are going to buy Red Hat. While I believe that Savio’s analysis is lucid and intriguing, I am afraid that Microsoft’s investors are too IP-addicted, and the 235 patents story tells a lot about how important is to keep them calm. The “cultural” issue is an issue, if we talk about investors, IMHO.

    California city connects with open-source networking – Now it is clear why Cisco is trying to prevent Open Source networking to be successful.

    WHurley spins BMC into open source – Dana mentions Whurley’s experience at BMC, apparently another known hacker is leading the Open Source strategy of a (previously) not OS firm. Just as Bob Bray is doing at Autodesk. Again, when talking about hybrid production model (firm+community) people matter.

    Advertising the open-source way with Openads – Matt met Scott Switzer, Openads’ founder and CTO, to learn more about Openads business model.

    OSCON: Open Source Awards 2007 – David Recordon won the Open Source Awards 2007 as Best Strategist because he has turned OpenID into a viable alternative to non-open identity systems.

    SourceForge Community Choice Award winners are…. – Matt commenting SourceForge community-driven awards process says that participants had a tenuous grip on what “enterprise” means, may be he is right, and not just green of envy because Alfresco didn’t win! 😉

    OSI Approves New Open-Source License – Ross Mayfield, CEO and co-founder of Socialtext tells eWeek the whole story of the CPAL long approval process.
    The Bug in OSI Approved Licenses – I don’t see any “bug”, besides the partially missing transparency, and VCs’ attitude to invest in OS firms is definitely not an OSI’s issue.

    Intervista a Bruce Perens (Italian) – When Bruce Perens met the blogosphere here in Italy, I happened to interview him, and Nicola Mattina managed to get it published on Nova 24 (Il Sole24 ore).

    [cisco, OSI, Perens, NicolaMattina, BobBray, Whurley, BMC, DavidRecordon, OSCON, commercial open source, open source strategy, Microsoft, SavioRodrigues, SugarCRM]

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:04 pm on July 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Initiative: badgeware is OSI approved now! 

    Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative, recently talking about SugarCRM, SplendidCRM and Centric licenses said clearly that are abusing of the term Open Source:

    THESE LICENSES ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE LICENSES.

    Juggling with feet Always in control by Taomeister

    Today he personally published the Common Public Attribution License: OSI eventually approved badgeware licensing as OSI compliant. Congrats to Bruce and OSI to close this old debate, well done!

    Nowadays one of the open issues has been solved, but the democratic approval process still needs some tuning, since apparently OSI made some last minute changes to the CPAL license.

    Never mind, I agree with Bruce saying that OSI’s approval was a success, but it was slow, and worse he happened to stand up against them just before approving their licenses, something that I can hardly define as opportune. Even if it likely brought SugarCRM to take the decision to adopt the GPLv3, though.

    I am a fan of Open Source Initiative, four years ago I asked my editor to create a logo for my rubric representing also the Open Source mark, but I really wish them being transparent and to react on time.

    Open Source now is ready for prime time, and we need OSI taking is role really seriously, and I suggest them also to consider changing the home page, reporting:

    Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

    The Open Source Initiative (OSI) to me is about maintaining the Open Source Definition, it is a very important task, and it needs to be carried on time and with the highest transparency.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Definition, tiemann, GPLv3, badgeware, sugarCRM, socialtext

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:45 am on July 26, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Italian Association: Final comments to the proposed Microsoft Office Open XML Standard 

    Trieste, 17th of July 2007 – The Association PLIO has deeply analyzed the Microsoft Office Open XML standard, and reading the over 6000 pages PLIO’s experts believe that the format should be substantially revised before being approved as standard.PLIO Association really appreciates the effort and the commitment of Microsoft, in relation to the declared availability to create a task force for the development of a reference implementation for OOXML. Anyway, this implicitly admits that the reference implementation is missing, and this creates a problem for any OOXML would-be implementor other than Microsoft itself.

    If the proposed OOXML file format will follow the ISO standard track in order to address problems which are still open, the PLIO Association is interested in becoming a member of the OOOXML reference implementation task force.

    (More …)

     

  • Carlo Daffara 7:45 am on July 25, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Models: Joint Research Announcement 

    I am extremely happy to announce the start of a new joint research activity between the FLOSSMETRICS project and Roberto Galoppini, one of the most important European researchers working on FLOSS-based business models. The joint research work will be carried with Carlo Daffara and will be centered on business models taxonomies, and how the participant actors (like the FOSS communities, commercial companies, individual developers) and the licensing choices interact in a commercial exploitation context. The research will leverage the tools and research work carried in the European project for analyzing OSS project participation and contributions, and as for all of FLOSSMETRICS will be publicly avaliable.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Open Source Strategies, FLOSSMETRICS, robertogaloppini, carlodaffara, taxonomies

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 2:03 pm on July 25, 2007 Permalink

      Congrats Roberto! Look forward to seeing results from the research. Will you be studying the use of OSS by Traditional software vendors (like IBM, Oracle, Sun) to drive their Traditional software revenues?

      Savio

    • Carlo Daffara 7:37 am on July 26, 2007 Permalink

      Dear Savio,
      yes, the study on how OSS models are used in traditional commercial software companies is one of the aspect of our research. We expect to produce in the end a set of papers helping companies assess existing OSS projects and how to compare the potentially applicable business models to decide the most appropriate one. We hope to turn the results of what is basically software engineering research (as FLOSSMETRICS is) into a more concrete and helpful tool for companies interested in OSS.

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:04 am on July 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Ecosystems: some considerations 

    Channel ecosystems and the way vendors and Commercial Open Source vendors treat them were recently commented by Vinnie Mirchandani, Dana Blankenhotrn and eventually Alex Fletcher. I wish to add some considerations, bringing also Open Source Franchising in the picture.

    Let’s start talking about VARs’ importance, I agree with Dana reporting:

    Whether the SugarCRM license conforms to the OSI standard is not important, Whitehead said. Affordability is all. License gotchas don’t matter as much as the small business’ relationship with their reseller. 

    Whitehead concludes that to succeed in the mass business market, open source companies need to keep Value Added Resellers (VARs) happy. Make a long reach toward VARs and your project can crack this market.

    As results also from the interview to Juergen Geck, firms like Open-Xchange are addressing market needs with two different solutions: a customizable platform for who needs integration through VARs, and a turn key solution to sell through Resellers and Distribution channels.

    Alex Fletcher talking about Open Source Firms added:

    Operating a successful commercial open source software operation requires maintaining the delicate balance between enabling the free user and flat out making money.[..]
    The point being, traditional forms of partner engagement tend to not scale well with the current realities of open source software.

    As I already have observed I see space for growing in computer services franchise arena, but before talking about that, I think it is important to stress once more that there are just two ways to make money from OSS: “best code here” and “best knowledge here”, tertium non datur. Vendors willing to empower their channel need to think about it, and arrange training programs and marketing plans able to massively deliver fixed-time, fixed-price and standard quality through their partners.

    Open Source Franchising strengths, in terms of vendors’, customers’ and partners’ goals and perspectives, are worth to be analyzed and might be applied to other vendors besides Sun.
    If you didn’t like the barber’s shop analogy, have a look at this enlightening post talking about Packaged (Productized) Services in a Hospital by Michael Krigsman, and wonder:

    In reassessing how they perform bypass surgery, Geisinger doctors identified 40 essential steps. Then they devised procedures to ensure the steps would always be followed, regardless of which surgeon or which one of its three hospitals was involved.

    Next time a services vendor says your project is too complex to define a fixed price, ask whether it’s more complex than heart bypass surgery. If packaged services can successfully be applied to surgery, they can be applied to enterprise software implementations.

    I totally agree with Michael, it can be done, it must be done.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Franchising, Open Source Strategies, AlexFletcher, DanaBlankenhorn, MichaelKrigsman, ecosystems

     

    • Michael Krigsman 10:11 pm on July 25, 2007 Permalink

    • Roberto Galoppini 7:26 am on July 27, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Michael,

      thank you to join the conversation!

      Of course I agree with you when you say that we should consider software costs beyond the license fee, more important to me is the following statement:

      Implementation costs are a major variable in the ROI equation, since service expenses are often unpredictable.

      That is just what I believe Open Source Franchising should address, in short:

      Open Source franchising is aimed at delivering to the market IT basic services using OSS, with a fixed-time fixed-price methodology meeting clearly defined performance criteria (SLA).

      Your opinion is welcome!

    • Michael Krigsman 12:26 am on July 28, 2007 Permalink

      Roberto,

      I see no difference whatsoever between open source services and traditional consulting services. Once the license is obtained, whether through payment or free, the software must be deployed.

      At that point, integrating the new software into an existing technical and business infrastructure becomes the big issue.

      I agree that fixed-price services are the right model, as I have written here.

      However, I don’t think it’s specifically an open source issue.

      Michael Krigsman
      http://projectfailures.com

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:51 pm on July 29, 2007 Permalink

      Michael,

      as a matter of fact customers want software working properly, either is proprietary or open source.

      More than one year ago I wrote a paper about Open Source Franchising, showing Sun a possible way to turn all their OSS in a source of income. As I explained they are the perfect Franchisor, and I believe that they should seriously considering productized (consulting) services, as apparently they are starting to do. As you know this unfortunately doesn’t come for free (as in beer), and they eventually should spend time and effort to build an appropriate training program for the franchisees, besides some money for marketing, of course.

      What is new? “Just” the approach, bringing to the market a different billing arrangement, with a different perceived value (results, quality, etc), from artisanship to industrial. Customers are supposed to appreciate it, as you also pointed out in one of your interesting posts:

      Hourly billing arrangements are typical on IT projects. However, open-ended billing can create an incentive for consultants to work lots of hours, potentially increasing project duration and cost beyond what may strictly be required. In fact, unbounded billing arrangements are often a real contributor to the failures described in this blog. As a result, customers are demanding lower consulting and implementation costs, forcing service vendors to rethink how they price and deliver their offerings.

    • Michael Krigsman 3:35 am on August 1, 2007 Permalink

      Roberto,

      I have added an additional comment here (my new blog location):

      http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=309

    • Roberto Galoppini 9:33 am on August 1, 2007 Permalink

      Thank you Michael,

      I commented on your new blog, hopefully adding some salt to the conversation, keep it going!

    • Simon G 1:58 pm on August 2, 2007 Permalink

      I think fixing a heart may in fact be less complex than fixing a business. Hearts operate within rules of physics and chemistry, businesses operate with far more obscure rules and processes.
      You won’t hear a lawyer providing fixed priced legal advice, neither should an implementer be forced to do the same.

    • Roberto Galoppini 7:27 pm on August 3, 2007 Permalink

      Simon, I eventually joined the conversation on your blog, I understand your perspective and I believe that ‘productizing’ is not for all.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:20 pm on July 22, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 22-07-2007 

    IEEE group changes voting rules – Bob Sutor mentioned IEEE changing rules to prevent steamrolling, I am afraid is a very hot topic, whatever are your guts about the File Format War, the OOXML and the ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track process is a sad story..

    Alfresco: Competing in the Enterprise – John Powell, Alfresco’s CTO, said that he would guess that about 10 percent of Alfresco’s code was contributed by other people. Is that for real?

    Free Software acquisition by governments – Stefano Maffulli is looking forward to see Pietro Folena‘s laptop equipped with Free Software, while I am waiting to interview him about the lower chamber of the Parliament moving to Linux. Is that for real?

    Patents don’t pay – I am glad too to be based in Europe where software patents are not allowed, so far.

    Our commitment to open broadband platforms – Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, saying that, should the FCC adopting openness principles for the benefit of consumers, Google intends to commit at least $4.6 billion to bidding for spectrum in the upcoming 700 Mhz auction.

    Poor Man’s BI: Getting Started with Open Source Tools for Analytic Intelligence – The “poor man’s BI” with a combination of Python, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice.org and R can deliver value along significant points of the BI lifecycle, said Steve Miller.

    The CIO Conundrum – CIOs of a large company see decreasing by about 4% their budget, says Anthony Gold, and Open Source can greatly help in his opinion. I would like to see his presentation.

    Thoughts on Software Advisory Boards – James McGovern on Advisory Boards, I totally agree, and I am eager to participate to my first meeting.

    My UbuntuLive Talk – Stephen O’Grady slides on Ubuntu, have a look.

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 1:51 pm on July 23, 2007 Permalink

      Hey Roberto, re. the “10%” quote from Alfresco…I’d encourage you to take a look at the Alfresco jira site to see how many users are registered from outside the company. You can also see what each person has contributed. Unless something has changed, I think that John’s figure is off by an order of magnitude…i.e. it should be 1%.

      But maybe something has changed in the past 3-5 months.

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:38 pm on July 23, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Savio,

      I had a look, and I had just the same impression. Since John Powell guessed a different percentage, I am eager to know more, may be Matt might provide us with more information..

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