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Radical Open Source

I’m neither looking for a new label (ROSS or ROS, if you go beyond Open Source Software), nor proposing a new model (so far). Just to share some thoughts with you.

Premises

New business models and application models are growing (SaaS-based ones, Cloud, Mobility, Internet of Things). According to the  UK’s national innovation agency, the future internet is Converged Services “an evolving convergent internet of things and services that is available anywhere, anytime as part of an all-pervasive omnipresent socio-economic fabric, made up of converged services, shared data and an advanced wireless and fixed infrastructure linking people and machines to provide advanced services to business and citizens.”… Read the rest

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What’s the path to Open Source Application Success?

Few days ago, Derek Singleton of Software Advice has published a post on his blog on the failure of open source ERP applications in gaining mainstream acceptance.

I’m not dealing with OSS ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), but I know something about OSS application acceptance (the best known example is SpagoBI, in the Open Source Business Intelligence domain).

Derek raised many questions, starting with: what OSS is in OSS applications?… Read the rest

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Importance of women values in FLOSS

Time has gone since Open World Forum 2010, Paris, but this topic is on stage again. A recent paper appeared in Cepis Upgrade October 2010 issue, entitled “Information Technologies: A Profession for Men?” says: “women are currently under-represented in the technical areas of the IT”. Nothwithstanding they also say: “there is no reason why a profession should have to be balanced in gender terms”, their effort is in “provide the solutions, if any exists, to prevent female talent from being lost to a discipline and a profession which is destined to play a vital role in the progress of our society”.… Read the rest

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Women in IT and Open Source: a controversial topic

Some time has passed since the Open World Forum, Paris took place, where I participated in the Diversity Summit: Why women matter? think tank.

You can download my presentation on the “Importance of women values in IT” here. I’ll also post an article about it on this blog soon.

Now, I just would like to highlight my feeling about this topic, as a result of my participation in the forum.… Read the rest

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Education to foster the Open Source adoption

Time ago, I wrote something about the need for education in Computer Science and Free Open Source Software in this blog.

Now, I’m going to chair a panel about this topic at fOSSa 2010, at the end of an interesting education track open by a lightning talk by Roberto Di Cosmo.

In particular, the education track will deal with the role of academia in education, focusing on three main aspects: education of the teachers, education of all the university students, specific education of IT students teaching how to work in an environment that is more and more dominated by Free Open Source Software.… Read the rest