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Communities, networks and open source

Let’s see the difference between the concepts of community and network.

This text is partially included in a paper that I wrote on the relationship between enterprises and the free software community.

Both communities and networks have to do with the identification process aiming to give everybody a place in the society. However, they work in two completely different ways: communities follow individuals, while networks are ever-evolving aggregation entities rising from people’s continuous connections and disconnections to/from the network itself.… Read the rest

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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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SOS Open Source: Save Our Souls from Open Source assessments

The inclusion of open source solutions and developments into software qualification and selection methodologies is not a new research topic. For many years different approaches have existed, including QSOS by Atos Origin, OSMM by B.Golden, OSMM by Cap Gemini, EOS by Optaros, OpenBRR, OSS Watch, IRCA by David Wheeler, ohloh recently acquired by Black Duck Software, and others. Some of them are well structured methods, others provide tools for quality evaluation or a list of metrics to be considered in an open source assessment.… Read the rest