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  • Roberto Galoppini 7:56 pm on July 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 20-07-2007 

    Open Standards Rise in Japan – Jeff Kaplan reported that last week, the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued its official Interoperability Framework. At the moment Japan’s new Interoperability Framework recognizes only one acceptable document format, namely the OpenDocument Format. The File Format War goes on…

    Why rPath? – Billy Marshall this time talks about his rPath, I would like to see others commenting his post.

    Syndicating your feelings – at We Feel Fine are running an interesting experiment, I am wondering how it could possibly turn into a corporate blogging metric, eventually.

    Snort, GPL, open source, Cobia and copyright – Alan Shimey “explains” Cobia’s licensing choices through StillSecure’s ones. In his opinion GPL is not good for commercial use, as far as I understand.. weird, isn’t it?

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:04 pm on July 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source GIS: Autodesk’s first year in review 

    Autodesk‘s first year as a member of the open source community has been a successful one, as far as Kevin Flanders, Peoplegis President, reported.

    About three months ago MapGuide, a web-based platform aimed at deploying web mapping applications and geospatial web services, became a fully endorsed project within the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Originally developed by Autodesk, MapGuide besides being considered a leading project within the GIS arena – see “The State of the Open Source GIS” (PDF) – now has some interesting facts that is worth to mention, among them the number of downloads: 30.000 in the first year.

    Bob Bray Autodesk Platform Software Development Manager and Architect, talking to Kevin said:

    the open source development community has become a true development partner for Autodesk, generating tremendous enhancements and upgrades to the code base in significantly less time than it would have taken Autodesk to do it alone.

    Also Daniel Morrissette, now mapgears President, was very impressed with Autodesk move.

    He feels that Bray and his colleagues have converted their minds to working “open” instead of their old way. [..] To Morrisette, Autodesk is not just “acting the part,” it really believes in this new process.

    I totally agree with Kevin saying, that Autodesk got its goal for faster code development realized, and this is likely due both to the feedbacks by users and to the way Bray got into Open Source.

    People matters a lot, when it comes to the hybrid production model.

    Read the full article.

    Technorati Tags: Open Source GIS, BobBray, Autodesk, MapGuide

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 9:16 pm on July 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 18-07-2007 

    Disappointed: Nick Gall of Gartner – James McGovern wonders why at Gartner don’t spend time answering his questions. My guess is that they are not (yet) deeply into the ‘blog thing’, because if they had a look at their popularity James’s blog pops up as one of the most authoritative pointing to them.

    Office 2.0 Conference Website Now Live – The upcoming Office 2.0 Conference is now live, attendee registration are open by now.
    blogging is dead, long live communicating – Luis Villa says that most discussions about blogging would be much better off if we analyzed ‘communication that is public, searchable and persistent’ instead of ‘blogging’. I totally agree.

    We need an Open Service Definition – People at GNOME (Havoc Pennington’s blog) is thinking to to protect our private data, , but the same definition could reward also services which use and promote open knowledge. Interesting issue.

    Will Oracle Buy Red Hat or BEA? – Savio plays Nostradamus and predicts that Oracle will not buy Red Hat. Oracle may buy BEA. Read his post to know why.

    Managing backup of MySQL via iPhone – Whether it makes sense or not, Zamanda presented to a couple of their customers a solution to manage MySQL backups via iPhone, read the use case.

    Can’t buy me (OOXML) love in Italy – Bob Sutor enjoyed Carlo Piana’s post “OOXML does not buy its way in Italy“, and he posed also a question: is whether a large company with a lot of money and business partners will essentially be able to stack committees so that they are out of balance and therefore buy an ISO standard? I am afraid that the whole ISO standardization process lost some sense, the ultimate result of the File Format War might be just invalidate the process owner itself..

    Talend raises $3.5m in Series B funding round – Raven Zachary tells us about the Talend 2nd round.

    Funambol is a 2007 AO 100 Top Company – Fabrizio got listed in the AO 100 Top Companies, congratulations!

    Gartner, Open Source, and Microsoft – Seth keeps posting on the subject, he simply can’t resist! 😉

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 2:36 pm on July 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source CMS: Open Source CMS Awards, by Packt 

    Open Source CMS Awards, second edition. This year the UK Publisher Packt has expanded the Award for 2007 with an increase in prize money and the addition of new categories.  Nominations for each category will be open until Friday August 31.
    Last year my friends at Joomla! won, while Drupal placed second, but they are already working to pull ahead this year!

    Technorati Tags: Open Source CMS, CMS Awards, Joomla, Drupal

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:19 am on July 16, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Models: OpenXchange Small Business offering 

    Today Open-Xchange – a company specialized in open source e-mail and collaboration solutions, based in USA with its R&D in Germany – is announcing the availability of Open-Xchange Express Edition, designed to address Small Businesses needs.

    Open-Xchange last February invited the small business community to participate in a public beta for the Open-Xchange Express Edition, and entered the hosting market in march, launching the 1u1 Mailxchange service together with 1&1 Internet.

    Juergen Geck, Open-Xchange CTO and formerly SUSE CTO at Novell, talking about the the today’s launch told me:

    It is a turnkey solution, that turns a baremetal server into a collaboration server based on Ubuntu Linux, running Postfix and Cyrus Imapd. The install image is freely downloadable, fully functional, no restrictions, no timebomb or suchlike, no requirements for Linux background to set it all up.

    One CD contains all. We are trying to do for collaboration in SMBs what Ubuntu is trying for Linux.

    So I asked Jurgen why should I buy it..

    Because of the maintenance and support, plus the “low touch” installation [through an extended Ubuntu Installer] and the outlook installer [a proprietary plug-in].

    ..and also what about Mobile extensions:

    Funambol coming up.

    From a Marketing perspective OpenXchange is addressing market needs with two different offer: Open-Xchange 5, a customizable on end, complex, for who needs integration through VARs, and Open-Xchange Express Edition: lock down, turn key, low touch, through Resellers and Distribution channels. Jurgen stated:

    Especially in US we had feedback that resellers wanted something easier. OX Express Edition [eval version] is for people who like our service offering, the hosted edition, but shy away from putting their data somewhere offsite.

    I eventually asked Jurgen how do they think to protect their business, considering that the competition could put in action predatory practices.

    We feel that with 10 years track record of architecting collaboration servers we have the capabilities to stay on top of our technology stack. Besides that consider that more than 50% of the performance are from the user interface [CC attribution, no commercial, share-alike], and we are going to evolve this code base quite a bit over time. We expect to drive evolution and stay in the lead, having a strong commitment to osgi, specifically eclipse equinox, and you will see our server coming up as a collection of osgi services, making it very flexible to customise. Last but not least the hoster infrastructure is normally very diverse, so integration becomes essential. At 1&1 they maintain their own smtpd and imapd, plus all the plumbing for billing and accounting, and the capability to efficiently integrate in such environments is a plus in our offering.

    Three interesting points, really. Thank you Jurgen, happy hacking!

    About Open-Xchange
    Open-Xchange is licensed under the GPL for the software program, and the Creative Commons, Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike for the digital content or Web Access Add-on.

    About Open-Xchange Server
    Open-Xchange Server delivers Smart Collaboration™ that simplifies everyday life, work and social interactions. It is based on AJAX, open source software and open standards and offers reliable and scalable messaging and advanced groupware solutions. Open-Xchange Server offers email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and knowledge management. Unique features of Open-Xchange Server include: Infostore, a common repository of documents, bookmarks and knowledge entries; Documail, the integration of email and document sharing/version control; Smart Links between all collaboration objects; Smart Privacy, that let’s users define read and write access to all collaboration objects; and Universal Access, the ability to access the server from the widest variety of browsers and clients. Organizations use the Open-Xchange Server’s GUI-based administration module featuring Tiered Entitlement to implement role-based user management.

    About Open-Xchange Inc.
    Open-Xchange Inc. is based in NY the innovator of scalable and integrated open source email and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities. Open-Xchange Hosting Edition enables web-hosting companies to provide an easy-to-use and feature-rich application delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). Internet service providers (ISPs) and hosting providers, led by 1&1 Internet, deliver advanced email and groupware features through Open-Xchange Hosting Edition to millions of users. Open-Xchange Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, with research, development, and operations in Olpe and Nuremberg, Germany. For more information, please visit http://www.open-xchange.com.

    Technorati Tags: Open-Xchange, JurgenGeck, Funambol, Commercial Open Source

     

    • James 8:09 pm on July 18, 2007 Permalink

      I was reading an article (Can Ubuntu Linux Really Run My Small Business?) about the huge savings that companies are realizing by running Ubuntu over M$ or OS X. Why do you think that more companies have not made the switch? Our company has never been afraid of making us change our behavior to save a buck before. My IT guy is scared to death of letting me install it on my box at work.

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:24 pm on July 15, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 15-07-2007 

    By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09 – Guy Kawasaki explains how easy has been to set up Truemors thanks (also) to Open Source.

    Government agencies embracing open source: AGIMO – Australian Federal government agencies are adopting open source software, according to a study undertaken by the Australian Government Information Management Office.

    Two in three (68 percent) of respondents to an AGIMO survey of federal government agencies said they are actively using FOSS.Geek Road Rules: Joining the Adobe Bus – Dion Almaer joined the “Adobe Bus“. I am sorry I missed the opportunity to listen to his talk about Google Gears(PDF).

    Open Source And IT Outsourcers – Prashanth Rai sees a battle between (open source) outsourcers and Open Source firms, and imagines a win-win finale, with an alliance between the two sets (and a lose/lose for proprietary software firms).

    OpenCoffee club for entrepreneurs, developers and investors – Thanks Nick, I didn’t know about the OpenCoffee initiative, I suggest Amanda to start a local meet-up for Italian start-ups!

    Autoreferentiality: me in the press! – The Italian Business Free Press “7th floor” interviewed me. Also the Italian newspaper “Il Manifesto“, interviewed me, by Raffaele Mastrolonardo. Last but not least the SUN Microsystems Italy magazine Java Open Business (JOB) interviewed me for the second time, podcasts (in Italian as well) are also available.

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 8:35 am on July 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Book: The Family Guide to Digital Freedom 

    “The Family Guide to Digital Freedom,” June 2007 edition is now available for purchase at Lulu.com, have a look at the website to know more.

    Marco Fioretti, the aythor, is a freelance writer living in Italy, he did write also “File Format: Hidden traps in OpenDocument (or any other open standard) and how to avoid them“, an interesting article about problems and issues related to every open standard.

    Below some information about the book and also an excerpt of the book. (More …)

     

    • patrizia paoletti 10:51 am on September 13, 2007 Permalink

      It’s very interesting and useful to have such a book to read but i think parents and teachers can’t sleep quietly because some tools(i.e smart-phone)let them use individually without any adults’help or presence.
      The following quote:”This book is here to…allow you to protect yourself and the future of your children.”
      is very relaxing but you cannot lower the danger level, because kids aren’t aware or responsible yet.So the solution to solve the problem is Media Education,better the New ME,to give them the chance to be digital citizens

    • mfioretti 8:51 pm on September 27, 2007 Permalink

      It’s very interesting and useful to have such a book to read but i think parents and teachers can’t sleep quietly because some tools(i.e smart-phone)let them use individually without any adults’ help or presence.

      Patrizia,

      Thanks for your comment. Now, while what you say is certainly true, it is not the focus of my book at all, for a couple of reasons. I do mention the fact that constantly keeping a watchful eye on what children do even in the digital space is essential, but this would have never be a reason to take up such a challenge: first of all because there already are plenty of books and blogs giving practical advice at this level, and then because this is an issue that most parents are naturally able to see by themselves, without any external support. “It is important to monitor your children while they are online and explain the risks of being there” is not so different conceptually from “it is important to monitor your children while they are playing in the street, or at school, and explain etc etc…”, even if the knowledge to handle the former case is much less widespread.

      What the Guide is about is showing to parents and teacher the dangers for the future of their children of which they don’t even realize the existence:

      what are the environmental impacts of the software you install on your home computer?

      why is the very concept of e-voting seriously limited?

      what is the real, practical reason why it is bad that you should pay hundreds of dollars to use a Disney soundtrack in your home movies, even if it is almost impossible that they find and fine you?

      how much is the average family already paying or will pay, in the most different and unexpected ways (from destruction of cultural heritage to already paying fines, many times, for crimes they never committed or the reduction of truly creative and satisfying jobs for adults of tomorrow) thanks to arcane acronums like DRM, IP, ECMA-376 or
      ISO 26300?

      These and many others are all bad things that are already happening and would continue to happen in the same way even if all parents had the ability to never make their children use smart-phones or computers without supervision, or if all children of the world were wise enough to never misuse these tools.

      This is what the Guide is about: explaining in the simplest possible language what these dangers are, why and how they are actually hurting all of us (“your civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how software is used around you”), and how to fight them. And it does this without ever assuming, as several radical FOSS supporters do, that in order to act one should become a software professional or love programming.

      The following quote: “This book is here to “allow you to protect yourself and the future of your children.” is very relaxing but you cannot lower the danger level

      This depends on which danger(s) you are looking at, or on how many dangers today’s average parent and teacher are already able to see. This is what really worries me, this is why I wrote the book. There are many Digital Dangers that can be neutered, and the moment to do it is now: but only if enough people start seeing them.

      kids aren’t aware or responsible yet.So the solution to solve the problem is Media Education,better the New ME,to give them the chance to be digital citizens.

      Of course. But in this specific time and age, it is absolutely
      necessary that parents and teachers have the right information take the matter in their own hands, that they make by themselves the right choices and vote accordingly. Because it’s not a technical decision, it is an ethic one. Otherwise that New Media Education will be one that only benefits a few corporations.

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:34 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source License: welcome SaaS, good-bye Free Software! 

    The Free Software Foundation few days ago released the GNU General Public License version 3, as earlier draft versions it doesn’t “fix” the SaaS Loophole, leaving unhappy some entrepreneurs.

    Freedom A Substantial hole, by Rich.w

    While I have already expressed my concerns commenting others’ posts, I believe it is time to tell it straight and loud. In my opinion GPLv3 got on stage too late, now there are simply too many stakeholders to take a decision like closing the GPL Loophole and SaaS could seriously prevent Free Software take over, more than anything else.

    I am not alone, Bryan Richard at linux-mag wrote:

    More than the patent protection, more than the digital restrictions, this one change to the GPL could have the biggest impact on the license’s importance in the future.

    Also Tim O’Reilly took a clear position, stating:

    There are both popular and unpopular ways of circumventing the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License. A very unpopular method, we’ve come to find out, is via promises of patent protection for users of specific software. However, if you’re looking to leverage Free Software without completely fulfilling the requirements of the license, a better method would be to exploit the software as a service (SaaS) loophole, which the latest draft of the GPL3 just legalized.

    The Joomla! community has been discussing a lot business model based on the GPL recently. The FSF is cracking “open” door to the SaaS, leaving them – and not only them- a chance to de facto ignore the license.

    A number of people is are happy with the GPLv3, but I am not. This has not been a strategical decision, neither a tactic one, but the only available now. And I blame Richard to postpone it until too late.

    I am really sorry about that.

    Technorati Tags: GPLv3, SaaS, Free Software

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 10:31 pm on July 14, 2007 Permalink

      Hey Roberto, I can totally understand your point of view.

      I’d suggest that any license that attempts to close the SaaS Loophole is going to have an uphill battle. There’s too much code under GPLv2 (and maybe GPLv3 in the future) in use at large SaaS vendors and they’re not going to stand by while the loophole closes. *Or*, if they don’t get in the way of such a license, then these vendors will want the option of paying for the privilege of keeping their modifications private. Sun allows customers to do so with their openJDK project which is under GPLv2. This seems to be the only alternative that large SaaS vendors will accept…at least in my view.

      I ask again, why do OSS proponents love SaaS? 😉

    • Roberto Galoppini 3:55 pm on July 15, 2007 Permalink

      Ciao Savio,

      my point of view comes from my past experience with the FSF community. I have been spending years as FSFE’s friend, and I firmly believe that GPLv3 in 2002 had much more chances to get closer to the Affero. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Richard is a GREAT man, but he did a big mistake, indeed.

      Enterprises, or many of them, do love GPLv2 and now GPLv3. Even some OSS proponents as you pointed it out: OS business models based on SaaS make a lot of sense, as far as we can see. Right?! 😉

    • Chris 9:13 pm on February 2, 2012 Permalink

      “A number of people is happy with the GPLv3, but I am not.”

      Should read

      “A number of people ARE happy with the GPLv3, but I am not.”

      Grammar mistakes anywhere in an article destroy confidence in the rest of it.

    • Roberto Galoppini 6:07 pm on February 5, 2012 Permalink

      Thanks for the note, I updated the article.

  • Roberto Galoppini 6:27 pm on July 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Conference: Gartner Open Source Conference 

    Few months ago IDC Italy, responsible for organizing the local Linux World OpenSolutions Summit, canceled the Italian event, and I commented it with Seth Grimes, who in turn wrote me about Gartner Open Source Summit.

    Before reading Seth’s post, I had a look at their agenda, and I found it quite different from the Italian event. Like the North-American IDC conference held in February (program , PDF), also Gartner decided to address vertical issues, but they didn’t choose to address industries neither specific technical tracks like “Linux on the Desktop” or “Virtualization”.

    The brochure (PDF) reports two different track: track A sounds designed for enterprises who are working on implementing an Open Source Strategy, while track B looks more to the future.

    Despite I am definitely not a Gartner’s fan, and considering that people like Bruce Perens would have been much better than Gartner researchers, I guess that there is a Gartner’s audience, and they will probably go to listen to the Open Source Vendor Scorecard for 2007, may be even the next year, and the next next one.

    Game (almost) Over Game (almost) Over by si3illa

    The one-size-fit-all approach is not here to stay, the internet is heavily changing the way companies reach customers, and the way customers look for advices. Seth wrote:

    True to form, all summit presenters are Gartner analysts. Outside participation is limited to a couple of keynotes. Gartner is sticking with their usual all-knowing, ex cathedra approach. Absent is the community spirit that lends open source its power and vibrancy.

    Does Gartner get open source? While I’m sure that individual Gartner analysts do, I wonder that an open-source event without meaningful practitioner and community participation can adequately suggest real-world implementation strategies.

    I am looking forward to see RedMonk’s unconferences, Lugradio, replacing quadrant games, a pretty annoying and biased game played by pretending to be open source analysts.

    Technorati Tags: Gartner, Open Source Conference, RedMonk, Grimes

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 3:45 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink

      Hey Roberto,

      There is a need for the Gartner’s of the world, as there is for the RedMonk’s.

      I would say that a large majority of IT customers and decision makers don’t have the time to keep up with the rate & pace of software innovation. This is likely even more true for IT managers! The Gartner magic quadrants & reports help these decision makers get caught up to speed on relevant criteria before making a purchase decision.

      We can’t expect folks to learn about & play with technology all day long – someone’s got to do real work! 🙂

    • Nicholas Butler 5:49 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink

      Thanks for the link and because of It I have discovered your article. I should point out though that I am in no way affiliated with Lugradio, its podcast or the “core lugradio community” . I attended because it was a community event and because of my own involvement with Ubuntu UK. If you would not mind disassociating the link I would be very much happier.

    • Roberto Galoppini 10:16 pm on July 14, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Savio,

      you are definitely right, the Gartner magic quadrants & reports help decision makers, I am concerned because of the way Gartner decides who is in and who is out of the quadrant.

      I expect IT managers and CIOs getting more and more get acquainted with Internet and the blogosphere, may be using ad hoc tools like Kipcast.

      Anyway, I believe that for years the Gartners will still be playing their role, though. CIOs basing their decisions on Gartners’ scorecards won’t take full advantage of the huge amount of OSS available.

  • Roberto Galoppini 9:41 am on July 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 11-07-2007 

    OSCON Thu 26.7.2007: “The MySQL Architecture of Participation – Kay Arnö is going to talk about how MySQL will try to lower the threshold for external developers to contribute to MySQL.

    Gobuntu is… go – The freedom-focused flavour of Ubuntu, named “Gobuntu” is live.

    Can SourceForge style the self-support of open source? – Alex Fletcher sees SourceForge Marketplace as a viable development tool for the enterprise. Both the open source community and the company could benefit of it, he says. I totally agree.

    Returns on open source VC investments – Savio tells us more about VCs investments.

    LanguageTool: Open Source Language Checker – open-source, rule-based language checker, it can be imported into OpenOffice.org via the extensions manager.

    Ubuntu receives Readers’ Choice Award for the “Best Linux Distribution – (PRWEB)

    A history of transparency – Patrick Mueller, Senior Technical Staff member at IBM, talks about his experience with “transparency” over IBM’s product development process.

    OpenMoko’s open source mobile phone an iPhone alternative? – Ben Balbo writes about OpenMoko Neo 1973, just released to the public.

     

    • Savio Rodrigues 4:18 pm on July 11, 2007 Permalink

      Thanks for the pointer to Patrick’s post – very interesting (since I’m an IBMer). As Patrick suggests, we’re evolving our development practices and the story isn’t finished yet! 🙂

    • Roberto Galoppini 6:40 pm on July 11, 2007 Permalink

      I am happy you enjoyed the post, Savio, it was brought to me by google alert, by the way.

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