Open Source Software Workshop OSEHC 2009 - A workshop “Open Source in European Health Care”.

Netherlands Open in Connection Congress - The First Netherlands Open in Connection (NOIV) Congress will take place on 5 March 2009 in the city of Utrecht. The conference aims to inform and advice the Dutch public sector about the possibilities of Open Source software.

OpenExpo 2009 - The sixth edition of Open Expo, the Swiss exhibition and conference for free and open source software,

BE: Open source adoption is often bottom-up, Ph.D study says - Kris Vein, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Management Information Systems of the University of Antwerp, says that the adoption of open source frequently seems to be a bottum-up process, but recommendations from IT firms and consultants are also important sources of information. Organisations should not base their open source policies on those of other institutions because each has its own contexts. Open source software selection has still to be taken seriously.

Eurostat considers to publish more open source tools using EUPL - Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Communities, published on OSORForge its Business Cycle Clock application under the European EUPL license. Eurostat now is considering to release three more applications, may be under the same license.

GR: Municipalities to get open source platform for electronic services - Sixteen different cities and municipalities are starting a collaborative software development to explore the potentialities of club good theory, aiming at sharing costs of production of an impure public good, In fact the application LGAF will be made available to all Greek municipalities at no cost, and they will be charged only for technical support.

ES: Saving on licences is a main advantage of open source, report says - Cenatic report on cost savings by Spanish Public Administrations. To know moew about what is going on in Spain read also this report about open source usage in Gipuzkoa, Spain’s smallest province in the autonomous Basque region.

The OpenOffice.org Italian Association announced that OpenOffice.org in Italy broke the five million mark this year, yet another record for the Italian release of the world’s leading free and open source productivity suite.

Davide Dozza, PLIO’s president commented the result:

Back in 2006, when we started counting OOo downloads, 800,000 downloads per year was an astonishing result to us. At that stage we couldn’t even imagine that the number would have grown to 1.780.000 in 2007, and beyond five millions in 2008.

Even if the number of downloads is not an accurate measure of the market share, it definitely shows the trend.

So said, there is still a lot to do, especially in the business arena. OpenOffice.org has recently started a Business Development Project, managed by Alexandro Colorado, who recently posed questions about how to set standards for OpenOffice.org professionals.

Migrating to OpenOffice.org has a tremendous business potential, but before finding answers we better pose all the good questions. The need for integration, sometimes addressed by Openoffice.org volunteers, is one of the areas where Sun Microsystems should lead the dance. Migration methodologies and toolkits, along with specific partners’ programs enabling OpenOffice.org professionals to deliver ‘productized services‘.

OpenOffice.org community can help a lot, but execution is in the Sun’s hands, though.

Technorati Tags: openoffice.org, openoffice, alexandrocolorado, davidedozza, PLIO, openoffice business

Dr. Dobb’s Journal has thrown its 19th Jolt Awards, the deadline for nominations was over about a month ago, now the finalists list is available.

Dr. Dobb’s Journal invited all vendors to participate, and I am glad to see that also this year many finalists come from the open source world. Among them EnterpriseDB, MindTouch, Rally and Zenoss.

Jolt Award judges - few of them are also fellow bloggers, like Jeff Atwood, Seth Grimes ,Chris Minnick, Larry O’Brien, Peter Westerman, MichaelYuan - will be working hard also this year to announce winners on the 11th of March.

Stay tuned!

DE: Böblingen considering migration to Open Source desktop - The city of Böblingen will be moving to a desktop based on the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, as anticipated during a workshop for Open Source communities, organised by the recently launched European Open Source Software Observatory and Repositor

This town is open source, with Openmind’s lab - An event dedicated to migrations paths to free software office suites and educational free software will be held on the 19 of December in San Giorgio a Cremano.

BE: Information Day on Call 3 of ICT PSP (Policy Support Programme) - Information Day on the third Call for Proposals of the ICT Policy Support Programme (part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme), have a look at the agenda. The draft ICT PSP WorkProgramme 2009 is available, interested innovative SMEs are recommended to register on line, call for proposals and guidelines will shortly be available.
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OpenOffice.org reached the ten millions downloads mark, a dramatic success that inspires friends and irritates enemies.

Despite converting users into customers seems still difficult for Sun, IBM started to recruit partners and raising PR interest. Savio Rodrigues, famous open source blogger and IBM employee, seems to prefer Microsoft Office 2007, just as Luis Villa does.

Microsoft beware of OpenOffice.org 3.0, softdistrict.com

I am an OpenOffice.org advocate, but I believe that Sun should either to empower its wide community - and its partners’ network - and to finally consider to create a separate foundation, reducing risks and sharing R&D costs. Sun retains almost full control of decision making and IP ownership. Tension between control and openness are a minor problem now that the OpenOffice.org modular architecture enables the creation of extensions.

OpenOffice.org: I want to believe!

2009 Yearly Calendar Collection - Perpetual yearly calendar templates in a variety of formats (windows).

OpenOffice.org Templates - Have a look at these templates, and upload your own if you want to share them.

Beginning OpenOffice 3: From Novice to Professional - Apress published a book on OpenOffice.org 3.0 written by Andy Chanelle.

OOoCon videos (temporary folder) - Few videos of the OooCon 2008 are on line, check them out.

OpenLogic Launches Training Services for Open Source Software - OpenLogic added some new open source training services. Training Delivery Formats ranging from Seminars to Workshops.

Results from IsoMetrics-S usability evaluation survey of Writer, Calc and Impress - have a look at these results.

Microsoft scratches itch, ends up with open-source blogging platform - Matt Asay reports Microsoft has released Oxite.

The Open Solution Alliance - an advocacy group that debuted about two years ago - recently appointed a new President and a new Leadership team.

Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager of open source business at Unisys, recently joined Bluenog’s board of directors, brought Bluenog’s co-founder Scott Barnett with him as OSA’s marketing chair.

I asked Anthony more about the Common Customer View project, apparently one of the OSA’s most significant achievement.

The Common Customer View is our greatest achievement so far. It is an example of what can be built when the members work together and commit the time and resources necessary. And the benefits are starting to show. From a business perspective, the CCV gives the OSA members a tool for adding value above and beyond their individual solutions so that customers have a seamless experience using a variety of open solutions in any given environment. The CCV is a business and community collaboration, and we’re happy with its progress.

What are your plans for Europe?

The OSA established its Europe chapter in January of this year. A lot of those efforts have been spearheaded by Talend and Openbravo, and we’re looking forward to more activity from them in 2009. Europe is a hotbed for open source adoption and the OSA can add immediate value by helping open solutions work together in enterprises across the region. I’m bullish about OSA Europe and what it has within its ability in the year ahead.

Europe is different, Larry Augustin is right saying it over and over. Let’s see how will OSA cope with this issue, keep us updated.

How will you be funding OSA?

The OSA is funded by member dues, plain and simple. Our member dues are modest compared to larger consortia so that we remain inclusive but of course the challenges are those that come with limited resources. I’m encouraged that after a year and half, we’re a 26- member organization, which is almost triple the size of OSA when it was founded in February 2007. The more members we have, the more collaboration takes place. Everyone gets return on their investment.

Thank you Anthony, I hope to hear back from you in six months from now.

OpenLogic keeps contributing open source knowledge through webinars as well as launching a website named Wazi - a word that means “open” in Swahili - an extension of OpenLogic Exchange comparing open source packages and licenses, sharing best practices and tips.

Open Source Software Selection is getting more and more important, choosing among application servers like Geronimo, JBoss, SpringSource dm Server and Tomcat requires functional evaluations and technology decisions.

The webinar “A Comparison of Open Source Application Servers for the Enterprise,” will be held on Thursday, December 11 will be presented by Rod Cope, OpenLogic CTO, and Veljko Krunic.

This webinar will compare JBoss, Glassfish, Geronimo, Tomcat, and the new SpringSource dm Server. In addition to core features and reliability, Rod and Veljko will discuss:

• EJB3 vs. Spring
• Spring on a dm Server vs. J2EE/JEE server
• OSGi
• EJB 2 compatibility

If you’re currently evaluating application servers, plan to begin an evaluation in the near future, or simply want to stay abreast of new trends in open source application servers, please be sure to join us on December 11 at 11:00 Pacific / 2:00 Eastern.

My article published in German PHP Magazine is now available online: Vermarktung von PHP-Software - Kunden gewinnen auf die offene Art.

InitMarketing helped Magnolia launch the new Magnolia On Air at Gilbane Boston Conference 2008. Magnolia On Air is a content management solution for the broadcast media built on top of Magnolia Enterprise Edition.

Boris Kraft, CTO Magnolia, talking to a conference participant in front of the Magnolia booth.

I am also here in Boston, enjoying the conference and meeting lots of people from the OSS CMS space.

A video interview with Terrence Barr is now available online on InitMarketing.tv where he provides some valuable insights in community building and he points the finger at a dilemma that every OSS business faces related to its community efforts:

We hardly ever can make the case “give us $10,000, we’ll be able to generate X revenue”. That’s just a very difficult equation to make.

Watch the interview with Terrence Barr about building Open Source communities at InitMarketing.tv.

Next week, Thursday, I will present in Istanbul, Turkey on “Does Open Source Software Needs Marketing? Why and How”.

Here’s further information from the invitation letter:

We would like to see you among us for the Open Source Marketing seminar
jointly organized by TUBITAK UEKAE and IBM-Bilgi Center for Advanced Studies,
to take place on November 27th at 13:00 in Istanbul Bilgi University
Dolapdere Campus.

The seminar will be delivered by Sandro Groganz, the founder of and consultant
for the open source marketing firm InitMarketing. Detailed info regarding the
seminar is provided below.

Date: November 27, 2008 Thursday
Time: 13:00
Plave: Istanbul Bilgi University Dolapdere Campus

Thank you in advance.
Best regards
Pardus Project // TÜBİTAK UEKAE

Does Open Source Software Needs Marketing? Why and How

The market share of Open Source software will double within the next four
years. More and more new companies provide Open Source products right from
the start and established players release their source code under an OSS
license.

These days, everyone knows that Open Source is a viable business model - but
how does one successfully market an Open Source product? A download link
alone will not suffice. It rather needs a strategy combinin traditional
marketing with community relations and social media marketing.

This presentation will showcase examples from the Open Source domain and
provide hands-on advice about how to unfold a vital Open Source ecosystem
where geeks and customers alike contribute to value creation.

Looking forward to seeing you there! Thanks to Erkan Tekman of Pardus fame for organizing it.

I very much enjoyed the video interview conducted with Andrew Rodaway, Director of Marketing, Canonical at OSiM.

In that interview, Andrew says:

“A lot of money will come into the open-source movement over the next few years and that drives the marketing agenda.”

He is certainly very right, because at InitMarketing, we experience steady and growing demand for our Open Source marketing services. Although the global economy isn’t in good shape, our customers invest in marketing their Open Source products more than ever.

It really seems that Open Source is doing good in a time of recession and every marketing dollar invested by Open Source vendors in a time where proprietary vendors struggle during an economic downturn is wisely spent because it gets them ahead of proprietary competition.

Watch the interview with Andrew Rodaway about marketing Canonical and Ubuntu at InitMarketing.tv.

Today is election day in America. As we go to the polls we have been drowned in rhetoric from both sides for this past two years. (As a Canadian, I still don't see why it can't be reasonably put to bed in 45 days, but there you have it.) I came across this brilliant Stephen Fry essay on the sheer joy of language and its diversity and evolution in my feeds this morning. The close was perfectly political enough to warrant blogging on Election Day, despite being off topic for this blog's norm. Much has been made about the slow erosion of rights and freedoms in this country under Bush Republicans. Fry tackles it from a linguistic and British perspective:

The entire essay is full of such gems as it dances about from thought to thought. A little dense in it's beginning due to typographical convention, it's worth the effort. Please get out and vote!

I just published a video interview with Stormy which I recorded at OSiM in Berlin.

Stormy is Executive Director, GNOME Foundation, since July 2008. Working with the Board of Directors, Advisory Board, and the GNOME Foundation members, she helps strengthening the Foundation by attracting new industry members and community contributors.

In this interview she talks about reaching consensus on marketing-related decisions with a community-driven project such as GNOME, how she plans to position GNOME, how to attract more donators, and more.

Find the interview Stormy Peters about Marketing GNOME at InitMarketing.tv.

It seems Sun Microsystems is continuing to support Drizzle. Drizzle is the MySQL fork that was announced at OSCON this past Summer. That said, Sun has been continuing to move developers to work on it internally (Jay Pipes, Monty Taylor). This is all good news. Based on the strength of the MySQL brand and history, drizzle stands to evolve into the next interesting database and Sun has a front row seat to best capture the upside.

Drizzle can be found on LaunchPad and has an active discussion community.

[Update 11:20, 22 Oct 2008: Brian Aker just posted his assumptions on possible directions for Drizzle.]

"A PHP interface to a web services layer that allows users to federate and orchestrate functionality from other services, applications, and data stores." That's how Damien Howley, Mindtouch evangelist, described the current DekiWiki release. I was spending a couple days on the show floor at ZendConf helping Bitrock who had a pedestal in the Microsoft booth. Mindtouch had the pedestal next to us in the booth, and during one of the slow periods on the floor Damien gave me a demo of their latest technology.

I wasn't going for it. It's an open source wiki, developed by MindTouch who then provides enterprise support. I'd seen the demo a few years ago, and it was essentially some nice touches on a wiki for the enterprise user like a good WYSIWYG editor. Then Damien gave me the new demo. Mindtouch has added Dekiscript as a programming language within Dekiwiki. Think Javascript added to HTML pages and dynamic content development only applied to wiki pages. Now I'm NOT a wiki sort of guy but I couldn't help to be amazed by what I saw.

I wanted to explore the idea of what this might mean for enterprise applications development a little more. I signed up for a free account on their Deki On Demand hosted service. It took me a few minutes to get going with the user guide, and I thought I'd try something simple like pulling together a dynamic "bio" page. I grabbed content from my existing bio, and then using the WYSIWYG extensions environment, I quickly added the embedded DekiScript extensions for photos from Flickr, the last few blog posts from my feed, and a Twitter widget.

So the following fragment from the page:

Recent Photos: {{ flickr.Badge{tags: "Stephen Walli"} }} Recent Blog Posts: {{ feed.List{feed: "http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnceMoreUntoTheBreach", max: "6"} }} Recent Tweets: {{ twitter.current{name: "stephenrwalli"} }}

Produces the following:

There's a complete security model embedded in the wiki as one would expect. There's support for writing your own templates, and site wide CSS, etc. There's support for writing your own extensions (and sharing them in the developer community). There are also large scale adaptors (e.g. SugarCRM, Microsoft SQLserver). So this is where it gets interesting. How fast could an enterprise IT developer with a little Dekiscript knowledge and the toolkit of extensions and adaptors start to build interesting applications. I don't mean a more interesting content management system. I'm thinking of complex content-centric multi-departmental work-flow environments like patient or legal case management systems. Is it still enterprise IT development if they install DekiWiki and develop dashboards with some simple scripting and drag-and-drop goodness? How soon before enterprise business people step around the IT department to do their own "development"?

A video interview with Boris Kraft, CTO Magnolia, the Simple Open Source Content Management System, just got published on InitMarketing.tv. Boris discusses various aspects of marketing Magnolia.

Here’s an excerpt of the part I find most interesting:

Question: You’re building up the Magnolia office in New York. Is there a difference you realized between how to market your open source product in Europe compared to the US?

Boris Kraft: I think there are many differences. The expectations are different in the US, there are all these images we have in our heads about how the US economy works, about how the consumers are, and a lot of that is actually true. It’s much more hype, marketing is very very important, and the whole process is very fast, so it’s much more hype than substance - that’s my experience so far. So, coming from an European country - like Magnolia International sitting in Switzerland - this is a part where we typically have a very thoughtful way of doing things. We like to produce quality, and it takes longer, this is very difficult for us to deal with: To have this “Swiss mind set” and come to the US and basically clash with the “US mind set”. I kind of have to be there and say “we are the best, we are the greatest, we have everything tomorrow” whereas here we would say “yes, well, actually we can do this, yes” - you know, it’s a very different perception…

You can watch the interview highlights (4:44), the full interview (12:38), or read the transcript of the full interview.