Archive for the 'Community' Category

Rave in Context

Published by Ross Gardler on May 21, 2011 in Community and Development. 1 Comment

At OSS Watch we recommend that software be split into reusable components wherever possible. Furthermore, we argue that projects should work to make their components attractive to third parties. This is good software engineering and open development practice that can lead to more sustainable software since it enables open innovation.

Unfortunately, software development teams often claim that the effort required to properly architect reusable components and to build community interest in those components requires resources beyond those available within a typical research project’s budget. It’s hard to argue against this view when the research team is only tasked with solving the immediate problem, and not tasked with the long-term sustainability of the software involved.

Since we were not having significant success in making this point, we set out to demonstrate through practice. We wanted to show that it is possible to solve the immediate problem as well as ensure the long- term sustainability of software outputs and, perhaps more importantly, the research team. All that is required is some forward planning and some new skills.

Our first step was to work with the University of Bolton, who had implemented a W3C Widget server as part of a much larger EU project. We helped the Bolton team, headed up by Scott Wilson, to take their code into the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator. Since Wookie’s entry into the Incubator we’ve been working to build a community around the project. Bolton alone has received in excess of £700k in further funding relating to Wookie and the project itself has received many code enhancements from the community.

Our work on Wookie led directly to the extraction of more code components from three separate projects, two in the US and one in the Netherlands. This created a second project in the Apache Incubator called Apache Rave, which provides a platform for the creation of web applications built with OpenSocial Gadgets (reusing Apache Shindig) and W3C Widgets (via Apache Wookie). This is a relatively new project, but already the collaboration of all partners is leading to yet more reuse and collaboration.

One example of this is a new project (funded by the JISC) called Rave in Context. This project uses both Wookie and Rave to provide a new user interface to the popular MyExperiment scientific workflows application. By leveraging the widget features of Rave and the API provided by MyExperiment we will be demonstrating how user interfaces can self-adapt to different hardware devices and user environments. We’ll also be building widgets for accessing Simal and OpenDOAR with the same interface.

Of course, this project is itself an open development project. We will be extracting a series of generic widget templates for common web application features. These templates will be donated back to the Apache Wookie and Rave projects (as appropriate), whilst feature-specific implementations will be offered to the MyExperiment, Simal and OpenDOAR projects.

It’s taken us nearly two years to reach this point. Along the way various sub-projects and related teams have secured funding. Each of these projects has highlighted the open development approach as a major component of its sustainability plans. We’ve also engaged commercial partners in these projects, providing further resources to ensure the ongoing support of the open source code and the research teams that depend on it.

We hope that this practical demonstration of openness as  a sustainable academic research practice will encourage you to budget for sustainability in future proposals. Of course OSS Watch is here to help you at bid-writing stage.

PS We’ve just had a third project relating to the Open Grid Computing Environment (OGCE) accepted into the Apache Incubator. Watch this space for more info on Apache Airavata.

The power of community – open source and otherwise

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on May 18, 2011 in Community and Discussion. 0 Comments

I broke my arm while ice-skating with the kids back in February half-term. For the first few days and weeks after the accident, life was turned upside-down. I couldn’t dress myself or butter a slice of toast – how was I going to look after two children, run a household and hold down a job?

I need not have worried. My circle of friends immediately took over, bringing round meals, taking care of the children and ferrying me to and from the hospital. They rearranged their lives to accommodate our activities, cheerfully dividing the swimming and ballet runs among themselves. I didn’t even have to ask. My employer also made life easier by being flexible and allowing me, once I was well enough, to work from home if necessary, and never putting any pressure on me.

Of course my husband carried the biggest load, but he calmly accepted the situation and just got on with it, almost always with patience and good humour. He did much of the childcare, all of the driving and made the packed lunches – though didn’t take to cooking in the way that I hoped he might! All this while doing his own job, renovating the house and planning a move to Australia – but that’s another story, perhaps for a future blog.

Mercifully, I wasn’t totally helpless for very long. Pretty quickly I managed to find a way of doing almost everything. My methods were unorthodox but they worked: I could open toothpaste with my good hand, while clamping the tube between my knees; I folded washing using one hand and my teeth; I anchored a loaf of bread with the elbow of my broken arm so that I could slice it. (It was either that or gnaw the end of the loaf.) I became quite proud of my ability to improvise and master the myriad practical challenges that daily life now presented. Like a toddler, I was fiercely independent about doing things for myself – though, thanks to the fact that I hadn’t broken my dominant arm, could feed myself less messily.

So, the experience, while I wouldn’t wish to repeat it, has had its benefits. It has reminded me how lucky I am to have the friends and family I have: although I’m pretty resilient, I could not have managed without them. I’ve also realised that even in good times we all draw strength from each other. In short, it has underlined the value and power of the community I have around me.

Here at OSS Watch, we are interested in the communities surrounding open source projects, which are no less vital to the survival of those projects. For more information on the importance of the open source community, read our briefing documents How to build an open source community and A guide to participating in an open source community.

The PSN hack and open source

Published by Rowan Wilson on May 6, 2011 in Community. 0 Comments

I’m one of the people who has recently (perhaps in an excess of caution) cancelled their credit card because of the security breach of the Sony Playstation Network. Now you might wonder what this has to do with open source, but bear with me. Back in 2004 I went to a conference in The Hague about open source in the secondary software sector (meaning industrial sectors where software was a part of their product but not the core offering). One of the companies there was Sony Computer Entertainment. The presenter explained that Sony was a very open source-friendly company, and that within the development division in Japan Linux desktops were the norm. The presenter also pointed to the Linux installation kit that Sony had released for their then-current games console the Playstation 2 (PS2), and advised us to look out for more Linux-related tie-ins in future games consoles. True to their word, two years later the Playstation 3 launched with the facility to install Linux in the basic model. True, you could not access most of the console’s advanced hardware via this ‘Other OS’ option, but it was a nice gesture, and generally appreciated by the open source community.

Unfortunately, three years later, when Sony released the revised ’slim’ version of the console, they decided to remove the option to install Linux. Sony said that the change was necessary as they wished to focus on the gaming side of their console, and could no longer support the work necessary to create and test Linux drivers for the new hardware revision. Cynical observers commented that the removal was more likely due to the progress that hobbyist developers had made in unlocking access to the PS3’s more advanced hardware features via the ‘Other OS’ feature, thereby threatening the monopoly over the approval of advanced software that Sony then had. Indeed, shortly after the release of the PS3 slim, hobbyists succeeded in circumventing the PS3’s security features and progressively gained full control of the machine.

This brings us to the first open source-related lesson of this story – withdrawing freedom is hard. As the technical team who finally overcame the PS3’s security pointed out the removal of the ability to install Linux drew their attention to the console. Having sold the console as – in part at least – a venue for open development and hobbyist coding, Sony’s removal of this capability struck some as unjust, and motivated them to forcibly right what they saw as a wrong. Now I am not trying to equate the open source community with technologists who overcome third-party control mechanisms like the protection of the PS3; while there is some cross-over, the activities are essentially distinct. It can be said, though, that Sony used freedom to develop and open-source friendliness as marketing tools (particularly effective in a market where their chief gaming rival was perceived open source opponent Microsoft) and their decision to withdraw that freedom was (a) highly resented and (b) in the end ineffectual.

Moving to Sony’s more recent problems, their decision to take robust legal action against one of the technologists responsible for overcoming their console security angered many, and led to so-called DOS or Denial of Service attacks against the Playstation Network (PSN) – the service which enables online gaming and sales of downloadable content for Sony consoles. In the wake of these DOS attacks, Sony deactivated the PSN for a long period of maintenance. Many surmised that this was intended to allow changes to the system that mitigated the loss of control of the console platform itself that Sony had experienced. In fact, as the first link above shows, Sony’s PSN had been hacked and the personal details of approximately 100 million users such as myself had been accessed by unknown third parties. At the time of writing Sony has not given details of how the hack was effected, but rumours on the internet – many pre-dating the closure by several months – claimed that Sony may have been using outdated versions of popular open source software on their PSN servers. Professor Eugene Spafford of Purdue University gave some of the details of these rumours when testifying yesterday to the US House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade. Professor Spafford mentions outdated versions of the Apache httpd server as a potential attack vector in the hack, basing his remarks seemingly on unspecified postings to security-related mailing lists. While I have not been able to locate the postings he is talking about, it is certainly true that purported logs of the efnet IRC channel #ps3dev have been circulating that contain claims very similar to those Professor Spafford raises.

This brings us to our second open source-related lesson from this ugly situation – even the best- maintained open source is only as secure as its last release. Clearly we have no way of knowing what happened in the PSN hack, but no-one should rely on the security of open source – or indeed any software – who does not also commit to keeping their installations up to date.

PS. Professor Spafford’s prepared remarks for the subcommittee (pdf)) are also interesting in that they recommend a system of consumer data protection that closely mirrors the UK’s own Data Protection Act.

Open Source Junction 1: cross-platform mobile apps – the extras

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on April 13, 2011 in Business, Community, Development, Discussion, Event and Mobile technology. 2 Comments

Following the publication of Michelle Pauli’s blog report on our recent event, we are pleased to bring you a series of mini-interviews with speakers and attendees from both industry and academia. The interviews give a flavour of the range of interests represented at the event, and an insight into why people came and whether their expectations were met. Enjoy.

Abi James wants to learn more about how open source could bring assistive technology tools to mobile platforms.
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EA Draffan has learned more and networked more at this event than has been possible in weeks of desk work.
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Gabriel Hanganu tells us why OSS Watch decided to run this
event.
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Julian Harty is curious about open source communities and is enjoying networking with key people who can help him in his work at eBay.
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Iris Lapinski tells us about Apps for Good, a technology charity that helps young people to create apps that change their world.
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Mark Johnson is exploring mobile development and has already met people he could collaborate with.
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Mike Jones describes Mobile Campus Assistant, which provides useful information for students.
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Nick Allott describes the challenge of creating web apps that can talk to each other securely.
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Ross Gardler explains that one of the main aims behind this event is to get a dialogue going between the academic and commercial sectors.
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Roland Harwood demonstrates how the principles of open innovation are being applied to business.
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Tim Fernando tells us about the Molly mobile web apps project and invites more people to get involved.
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Stephen Walli explains that as open source projects get more mature, they need to manage their intellectual property more professionally.
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OSS Watch Open Source Junction, Oxford, 28–29 March 2011

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on April 12, 2011 in Business, Community, Discussion, Event, Guest and Mobile technology. 2 Comments

This guest post was written by Michelle Pauli, who also wrote the live blog at Open Source Junction.

‘More people pooling more resources in new ways is the history of civilisation’
Howard Rheingold

Open source software features, in some form, in just about every mobile device. This has created huge opportunities for innovation, communication and collaboration, and there is wide interest in mobile apps in the developer, consumer and business world. Yet, so far, there have been few attempts to bring together commercial and academic developers working on mobile apps in order to build partnerships based on lessons learned from open source development.

Open Source Junction, with its goal of building a sustainable community of stakeholders interested in mobile technologies, did just that. The first in a series of planned events, this two-day meeting focusing on cross-platform mobile apps gathered participants from all sectors to not only discuss innovation and collaboration but also take the first steps towards making it happen.

Open innovation

The 21st-century model of an organisation is ‘default to open’, declared Roland Harwood of 100% Open, citing Wikileaks as a topical example. Setting the scene for the networking elements of the event, he explained that open innovation is less about the ‘what’ than the ‘who’. It recognises that not all the smartest people work for us, so we need to move from the conceptual position that value lies in what we hold in our heads to the understanding that value lies in who we have around us. Or, as 100% Open put it, ‘innovating with partners by sharing the risks and rewards’.

Quoting the writer JG Ballard, Roland suggested that ‘the future reveals itself through the peripheral’ and said that we all need to be better at spotting what’s coming from outside our own sector. ‘Talk to lots of people and don’t stay in your own bubbles,’ he urged.

He had some powerful examples of companies that had opened up and reaped the rewards. These ranged from Lego’s inspired tolerance of copyright infringement that has made its Mindstorms range such a success, to Local Motors, a car sales company where customers have a hand in building the cars (think ‘beer and welding evenings’). He also namechecked Mozilla and Android to demonstrate that open source is mainstream business now.

A slight note of cynicism entered the discussion when Roland was asked if, with some of the ‘customer-led innovation projects’ he described, there was an element of companies trying to get customers to do their marketing work for them. ‘It’s a fine line,’ he admitted. ‘But it is also possible to have a more two-way relationship with customers so that it is not just a one-way street based on selling.’

In any case, with open innovation, coming up with ideas is rarely the problem. The hard work lies in making them happen and the challenge is to not only recognise a good idea (which is crucial at the start of the process) but also to recognise the effort involved in taking it forward.

Culture clash?

One of the reasons why implementing a good idea can be hard work comes down to clashes of cultures. There can be inertia and distrust between innovators and corporate bodies and collaboration can be perceived as risky. Roland described the ‘airlock solution’ that his organisation has pioneered to reassure both parties that ideas can be discussed in a confidential and ‘safe’ space.

Gabriel Hanganu, community development manager at OSS Watch, brought the issue home to the particular audience at Open Source Junction by focusing in on academic/business partnerships. He cited some fascinating surveys, including one conducted among UK academics by the Advanced Institute of Management Research, which found that academics are five times more likely to be entrepreneurial than the general public.

Another, a 2010 survey by UK Innovation Research Centre, found that most academics engage with industry to further their research. They are also interested in the impact of their research – its practical applications. Few academics engage with industry for purely financial gain and, increasingly, they are looking to build research networks.

On the industry side, there is a general distrust of academic business ability: it is felt that academics cannot, and do not want to, conduct outsourced research delivered in short timeframes. But, said Gabriel, industry needs to accept universities as equal partners, valued for their strengths.

For Gabriel, the key is practice-led transformation: it is not enough just to change perception of each other’s sector or have policies to work towards a common goal – you need open development to create the change from within.

An example of this kind of creative partnership in action came from the University of Oxford’s John Lyle, with his presentation on Webinos. This is a European Union project to produce a cross-device runtime environment for web applications. The idea is that fragmentation increases when you move from mobile to TV, laptops, navigation devices, etc. – at the moment, you can’t play a game on your mobile, walk into your house and seamlessly transfer your playing experience to your TV, for example. Webinos aims to resolve this by delivering an open web platform to allow apps to run across mobile, home media, PC and in-car devices.

Some hard questions were asked about how similar Webinos is to other projects around open web apps and the feasibility of trying to generalise a user interface, but the really exciting thing about Webinos is its success in bringing together a wide, pan-European, cross-sector consortium. It consists of 22 founding members from nine countries and the industrial partners include Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Deutsche Telecom and BMW.

As well as Webinos’s founding partnership, John said that the project is committed to creating ‘a worldwide open source community driving and using the results’.

How will that be achieved? Although 15% of Webinos’s funding has been earmarked for community-building, John was warned by Gabriel that ‘in our experience people talk a lot about building community but not a lot happens until the end, when funding has run out and it’s all unsustainable. At OSS Watch we advise people to think about sustainability right from the start.’

Community-building

So, given that the aim of Open Source Junction is to build a community, what does that mean and how can it be done?

Ross Gardler, manager of OSS Watch and vice-president of community development at the Apache Software Foundation, tackled the topic head on and pinpointed the importance of a governance model: it is the structure that underpins how decisions are made, who makes them and how; conflict resolution and sustainability.

There are two extremes of open source governance: benevolent dictatorship and meritocracy, with the main difference showing up in how conflicts are resolved. Benevolent dictatorship requires ‘genius’, including very strong interpersonal skills; meritocracies do not have that problem, but they can stagnate if not managed well.

But, whichever you go for, said Ross, ‘it is extremely hard to build a community. So get on with building it and stop agonising about it!’

According to Stephen Walli, technical director of the Outercurve Foundation, the ‘campfire rule’ is that we’ve understood communities ‘since you had a campfire and I wanted to sit beside it’ and so open source communities are nothing new. But, again, the governance system needs to be resolved early on.

It is also crucial to make it as simple as possible for people to get involved: ‘The magic can happen on day one but you have to tell people what you want and how they can do it – you have to make it easy for them,’ he said.

Businesses often look to foundations as IP packagers and liability firewalls so they can grow their community more easily. The nine biggest open source projects in the world are based in foundations, Stephen added.

Sander van der Waal of OSS Watch offered some guidance on easing the open development process and advised that there are two essential collaboration tools: information and communication. A good issue-tracker system is crucial to both of these, along with a functioning mailing list.

The positive impact that successful community-building can offer was amply demonstrated by Scott Wilson from CETIS at the University of Bolton. He described how the Wookie widget project started out as a tiny deliverable worked on by a small number of people from one organisation funded from one source for a fixed time. Thanks to its entry into the Apache Incubator, it is now a viable, sustainable piece of open source software and the result is better software than they could have created alone, more interesting research opportunities, far greater impact and a wealth of new partnerships. It has even made money, and did so quickly.

But what can also damage a community beyond repair? Filthy lucre, said Ross. ‘Money ruins everything! Do not have money inside your community! It does not have any place there. It has to be an even playing field. If someone can buy influence then your community is broken,’ he emphasised.

Business sense

While money may cause problems within the governance of a community, it’s also the reason that open source communities need a business model to be sustainable.

Nick Allott, founder of NquiringMinds, raised some eyebrows in the audience with his claim that ‘code is a liability not an asset’, because, as Ross concurred, maintaining software costs money. ‘You have to account for that even if it is open source,’ he said. ‘Someone has to fix the bugs and get the servers back up and all sorts of things and that costs money. You have to generate some money and so someone somewhere has to have a business model. It might be to make money or it might be to reduce costs. If you do not do that then you will fail.’

What kinds of business models are out there? Quite a few, it seems. Potential business models include advertising, dual licensing and packaging for hardware and services (such as warranties, support or customisations). In the mobile app space, people are making money from app sales, upgrades and in-app sales, advertising and server-side revenue. However, the mobile app market is too young for anyone to really know the future – we don’t know what will be commoditised and what the healthy revenue streams will be in five years.

Nick took a look at some of the murkier methods used by bigger business in the open source space, based on growing the ecosystem, controlling the ecosystem and devaluing competitors’ assets. ‘Open source is not always nice and friendly,’ he warned. ‘There are ways to make revenue from open source, but the big players play a different game – to reduce costs and take out competition. Open source can have profound ecosystem effects: you can kill business overnight.’

Of course, there can also be partnerships that are not based on profit. Iris Lapinski of the educational charity Apps for Good offered an inspiring take on collaborative mobile app development with Transit. It’s a Bengali translation app that came out of a course run in Tower Hamlets with a group of girls who realised that there was a problem with communication between their English-speaking teachers and Bengali-speaking parents. Apps for Good brings in experts, from business executives to designers and developers, to work with the young mobile entrepreneurs on a voluntary basis.

Native v web…

Transit will be a native app, unlike most of the apps featured in case studies during the event. The native app v web app dilemma was a thread running through many discussions.

According to Tim Fernando from Oxford University Computing Services, who spoke about the very neat Mobile Oxford app and its associated Molly open source project, ‘If you are working in education, native apps are quite a dangerous route to go down because of renewing code each year, app store commitments and so on.’

App store terms and conditions are certainly an issue for open source developers. However, when asked ‘Are app stores evil?’, Rowan Wilson of OSS Watch took a measured line.

‘They are not evil by default – arguably Maemo repositories were the first app stores,’ he said. ‘The concept itself is not necessarily undermining to open source. Where they are not the sole channel of distribution the problems are significantly reduced. But they do introduce a new form of fragmentation and it can mean that you do not necessarily look outside the one marketplace you see when you get your device.’

Despite the appeal for developers of the web app over the native app, it was also recognised that apps for the iPhone appeal as a ‘shiny new thing’ to vice-chancellors.

Mike Jones from the University of Bristol, whose MyMobileBristol web app provides time- and location-sensitive information for students (such as the nearest available computer terminal and the next bus to the halls of residence), commented that ‘people ask “is it on the app store?”’ and it doesn’t need to be but they think that to access something it has to be on the app store. There are also people in the university who worry that the university does not have a brand presence on the app store.’

Where next?

One of the most important elements of the event was the ‘speed dating’ session, in which participants introduced themselves to each other and sought synergies between skills and needs and projects. It was the first step in developing the nascent Open Source Junction community and a number of potential partnerships were identified immediately.

In the closing session, OSS Watch’s Gabriel Hanganu identified three key areas for the future of Open Source Junction – open development, sustainability and marketing – and said that ‘depending on how these are addressed, the community will live or die’. Given the enthusiastic response to the event and the firm prospect of future collaboration, the community’s life force is already looking strong.

If you enjoyed reading this report, you may also like to see Michelle’s mini-interviews with some of the attendees.

Further reading

Links:

Open Source Junction blog (including live blog, slides and photos)
Programme and speaker bios

100% Open
Apps for Good
Mobile Oxford
MyMobileBristol
NquiringMinds
Outercurve Foundation
Webinos

Further information from OSS Watch:

App stores and openness
Free and open source software in mobile devices
Open innovation in software
How to build an open source community
Roles in open source projects
Wookie: a case study in sustainability

Freedom through a clear governance model

Published by stevelee on April 4, 2011 in Community and Development. 1 Comment

A while back, Mark Webb of the Met Office Hadley Centre for climate change described in a guest post, how his Cloud model project COSP introduced a governance model, based on one of our templates. This was a result of a few informal chats over beers and his exploration of OSS Watch public resources. Mark also described some of the immediate benefits they experienced.

Well recently I met up with Mark over skittles and beers (this time some excellent Otter Ale on stillage), and he described how the project has become more animated as a result of introducing a meritocratic governance model. Mark explained that having a clear decision-making process is allowing them to move forward as a project. For example they are starting to explore release processes in more detail. So the COSP is clearly maturing through having the governance model in place.

But the observation that I found most telling was that the governance model has actually freed up blockages in the decision-making processes. This is despite initial concerns expressed by some project members that a governance model could be unnecessary bureaucracy. For example, the project lead has been able to point to the model document to clearly state policy when there has been debate or a decision needs to be made.

In particular it appears that lazy consensus has already sped up progress by allowing action to occur when it could previously get bogged down in fruitless discussion. For example, one team member has set up a Google code project. While this is excellent, I would add a cautionary comment that clear discussion about such decisions needs to occur on the public mailing list or there is a risk of introducing decision by fait accompli, rather than lazy consensus.

This ‘unblocking’ reminds me of an analogy I once heard for the benefits of moral/spiritual frameworks that seems to apply well here. If you watch kids playing a game like football, they enjoy it more if there are rules in place and an authority to reference (the ref). Having no ‘governance model’ to define the roles and rules in place can result in frustration and long discussions, rather than getting on with the game. Many kids will quickly self-organise some basic rules and process so they can enjoy the game while quickly resolving debates.

So the take-home here is that if you don’t yet have a governance model in place, it’s time you did. Otherwise you could be holding your project back unnecessarily. You can even use one of our templates to speed up your adoption.

Widget Bashing

Published by Ross Gardler on March 27, 2011 in Community, Development, Software, Standards and e-Learning. 2 Comments

Last week JISC CETIS put on a WidgetBash event. OSS Watch pitched in since W3C Widgets are an area we are particularly interested in having taken some code from the University of Bolton into the Apache Software Foundations incubator as Apache Wookie (incubating).

This two day event focused on getting people up to speed on building widgets. Our approach was to give some very light touch training and then get our hands dirty on code. Overall the two days were extremely successful.

in the run up to the event I had committed a few new widget templates to Wookie in order to make it easy for people to get started. This turned out to be a great tactic. Some attendees used these templates as a base for their work, looking to enhance them, one attendee even submitted a patch to fix an error in my work (which I have now committed to the project, thanks Sam Rowley). Another attendee reported that one of the tutorials was misleading (another issue I have now addressed, thanks Simon Booth).

A team from the Manchester Metropolitan University enhanced a widget they had already created to tell students which labs had available PCs in them. Now it’s a fully geo-locating widget that sorts the results by proximity to the users position (interestingly using the tutorial Simon helped us improve). Another team from Strathclyde enhanced the Moodle Plugin for Wookie; now widgets are able to get a little more context from Moodle and thus provide more targeted information to the user. We hope to see patches and contributions from both these teams.

Many other participants who had never build widgets before reported that they’d learned a great deal. There were plenty of “almost working” enhancements to our templates as well as completely new widgets. Again, I look forward to applying their patches.

Why not come and join us on the Wookie project and find out what it’s all about.

You can read more about the two days on Sheila’s blog.

Can’t make it to Open Source Junction? We are live-blogging

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on March 23, 2011 in Community, Development, Event, Mobile technology and Software. 0 Comments

Open Source Junction: Cross-platform mobile apps (Trinity College, Oxford, 29-30 March 2011) is almost upon us. There’s still time to register (registration closes on 24 March), but if you can’t make it, keep up with all the action by following us on the #osjmob11 twitter tag. We will also be live-blogging proceedings throughout both days of the event, at:

Live blog day 1

Live blog day 2

All social media activity, including live-blogging, will be available via the Open Source Junction blog.

Open Source Junction: cross-platform mobile apps

Published by Gabriel Hanganu on March 1, 2011 in Community, Development, Event, Mobile technology and Software. 1 Comment
The open source mobile app space is getting increasingly crowded. The recent opportunities for developers to produce and distribute mobile apps through a range of app stores is taking the developer world by storm. If, as the saying goes, all people dream of writing a poem at least once in a lifetime, then perhaps there aren’t many developers out there either who haven’t dreamed of building a great mobile app themselves.
I don’t have any stats on the percent of open source developers producing apps for app stores. However, a number of concerns reported in the past by open source developers contributing to the Mac App Store suggest that alternative solutions, such as the rising Android Market, may stand better chances to attract contributors used to work in an open development fashion.
The popularity of the mobile apps in the developer world is reflected by the significant number of events organized on related topics. A quick search on Eventbrite listed 283 mobile-related UK events within the next few months. As expected, most of these events target business audiences. Some of them, such as OSIM, specifically explore solutions for developing and distributing mobile open source software.
As the education sector tries to keep pace with the recent developments in the mobile world, a number of academic projects have looked at how mobile solutions may help educational institutions fulfil their teaching and research remits. Most of these projects address issues specific to their teams’ teaching or research interests. As mandated by JISC’s software collaboration policy, more than one institutions took part in these projects and the software produced was released under an open source licence. However, as far as I am aware, no long term mobile partnerships between the academic and industry sectors emerged as a result of these initiatives so far.
This is precisely the type of event missing from the crowded mobile software space. There are virtually no events bringing together business and academic developers working on open source mobile apps aimed at building sustainable partnerships using lessons learned from open source development.
OSS Watch has identified this opportunity, and in collaboration with 100% Open has put together a series of two-day workshops in order to fill this gap. Open Source Junction aims to connect industry and academic innovation emerging in open source mobile technologies. The first event in the series focuses on open source cross-platform mobile apps, and will take place on 29-30 March in Oxford. More information about the programme, speakers and sessions is available on the registration page.
If business and academic teams working together on open source mobile apps is something that appeals to you, whether you are a developer, a researcher, a project manager, a mobile open source strategist, or a funder interested in industry-academic partnerships, then you can’t miss this workshop. There are no other UK events where open source and mobile apps join forces and academic and business developers rub shoulders together in one of the most atmospheric historical venues in Oxford.
I hope to see some of you there.

Rave proposal brings together US and European partners

Published by Ross Gardler on February 22, 2011 in Community. 2 Comments

There are currently three separate open source implementations of extensible and lightweight Java platforms for the hosting, serving and aggregation of Open Social Gadgets and services. These platforms are the engines for internet and intranet portals and form the building blocks to provide context-aware personalization and collaboration features. Each of these three implementations has its strengths and weaknesses.

At ApacheCon 2010 Ate Douma and I discussed the possibility of bringing these engines together under a unified project banner. Taking the best from each and producing a single engine that all parties could work together on. This was never going to be easy, but we felt the effort would be worth it.

Yesterday Ate, after a great deal of hard work, posted the Rave Proposal to the Apache Incubator. This proposal is a joint effort between:

  • Hippo – Netherlands, CMS provider
  • MITRE Corporation – US, manages federally funded research and develelopment centres
  • Open Gateway Computing Environments project - NSF-funded collaboration between Indiana University, San Diego University, San Diego Supercomputer Center and Texas Advances Computing Center
  • SURFnet SURFConext Portal project – Netherlands, next generation collaboration infrastructure
  • OSS Watch – UK, Open Source Software advisory service
  • and several other individuals.

We are starting with three code bases from MITRE, SURFnet and OGCE and aim to have a single product within six months. This prevents the unnecessary duplication of effort across each of these organisations and ensures a viable shared infrastrcuture product for each participant.

In addition to these initial codebases the project plans to utilise code from Apache Wookie (Incubating). Some time ago OSS Watch helped the University of Bolton take their implementation of the W3C Widget specfication into the Apache Incubator. In the Incubator the project is able to focus on building community around its code and prove to the world that it is a viable open source project upon which people can build real systems. It’s been slow going for Wookie, the original Bolton team are ploughing forwards and have generated plenty of funding revenue from the project, but there still is no vibrant community around Wookie. This is due in part to the fact that the W3C Widget standards it implements are still not recomendations, but the project continues to develop and attract interest.

At OSS Watch we are really excited about this proposal. Not only will it provide signficant opportunity for the Wookie team to make their code more accessible for new use cases but it also brings together a signficant number of commercial and academic interests from across Europe and the US. The outputs of this project will be of significant value to our sector as we seek to produce userc configurable and context aware interfaces to new systems.