Archive for the 'Discussion' Category

Top tips for a successful open source project

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on August 15, 2010 in Community and Discussion. 0 Comments

Damien Katz, whose Apache CouchDB recently hit 1.0, provides some excellent tips on creating a successful open source project in his blog Getting your open source project to 1.0. Drawn from five years’ experience, the tips include general advice interwoven with examples from the project. He begins with the fundamental question, Why?, explaining that a successful project needs a reason for being – a clear idea of what problem it solves – and you need to figure this out and explain it.

Almost as important as knowing what you are is knowing what you’re not: ‘Stating clearly what your project isn’t trying to do or be helps make it much easier to explain what you can’t implement or change …. and to focus on what you actually are.’ Next, he advises, ‘don’t expect to attract anyone to your project until you have a substantial amount of working code that isn’t a big ball of spaghetti’. Code comes first, but don’t try to do everything (well), as you’ll probably never actually release anything: ‘You’ll need to pick a few things that you do really well and execute on those things.’

On the subject of community, Katz encourages you to ‘make sure the people who show a strong desire to contribute aren’t ignored, and feel like their efforts will eventually amount to something’. But bear in mind, he warns, that community is often incompetent. You will sometimes need to hurt people’s feelings for the sake of the project because ‘the quality of the community is more important than its absolute size’. ‘Our committers,’ he stresses, ‘are our first line of defence against poor code and design.’

In the end, though, it’s up to you to use your brain and ‘figure out what’s actually important to you, your project and its community … Projects can’t follow cookie cutter rules.’

One tip that could be added to this list is to contact OSS Watch. We can help you create a successful open source project by providing advice every step of the way. In addition, our briefing documents offer invaluable information on everything a new project needs to consider, including governance models, sustainability, how to build an open source community and licensing.

The increasing importance of open source for the EU

Published by Sander van der Waal on July 22, 2010 in Community, Discussion and Strategy and Policy. 1 Comment

An interesting video message from Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, was published last week. The message was recorded in support for GNOME and its events, such as the upcoming GNOME Users’ And Developers’ European Conference.

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In this video, she reflects on times when open source was not considered in public organisations, because of issues that were perceived such as lacking technical support and worry about IP infringement issues. The consequence was that officials were discouraged from selecting software on merit. There may have been open source products out there sufficiently fulfilling the requirements, but this was not enough to be considered by public organisations.

But times are changing and it’s meaningful that Kroes, who is also the Vice-President of the European Commission, acknowledges this. She mentions a few developments to illustrate this point. For example, OSOR provides unbiased advice and guidance on the use, development, and licensing of free and open source software (sounds familiar?). It also contains a ‘forge’ providing a home to open source software projects.

Kroes also mentions the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) as an example. This is interesting because there is a lot of debate and lobbying going on regarding version 2.0 of EIF. A few months ago Glyn Moody analysed a leaked draft of EIF 2.0 highlighting the confusing and vague references to openness and open source software. More recently, the New York Times wrote how companies like Google, IBM and Red Hat are lobbying for inclusion of open source software in the document, which is perceived as a strategy to break Microsoft’s hold. It probably won’t be until the end of the year before the final version 2.0 of the EIF document is released. Although the closeness around the drafting process of this document does not look very promising, it may be a good sign that Kroes includes the framework in this speech.

Additionally, Kroes stresses the importance of strong communities and the role they play in shaping Europe’s digital future. And now the EU commission has the opportunity to put the money where their mouth is, as it recently announced to fund projects worth 1.2 billion Euros to be launched in 2011. This is a genuine opportunity to invest in open source software and in open source companies to make sure that the open source offering can compete better with companies that offer proprietary alternatives.

TransferSummit – Industry and the Open Source Community

Published by Alastair Harper on July 5, 2010 in Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

Buildings that last are always open

How is the open source model like Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre? Ross Gardler, in his introduction to the TransferSummit conference this June, put forth this theory: the Sheldonian, Christopher Wren’s greatest early work, required a huge range of transferred expertise and what was then the latest technology in its construction. A swath of different individuals’ skills were employed to produce a cutting-edge building that, finished in 1668, is still used today. The end result was not only a magnificent building but also new construction and architectural techniques shared with the craftsmen brought in. Ross’s point is that the University of Oxford looked outwards to leading figures in construction and architecture to fulfil their needs – and, with open source, this relationship between academic and business interest continues to flourish today.

A shared future

Traditionally, universities have been seen as research institutions not unduly concerned with value. But Ross hoped that at TransferSummit, those working in academic institutions and non-profit communities, and those working in industry, could show, over the course of two days, how both can work together to their mutual benefit.

These are exciting times to be involved with open source. As many mentioned over the two days of TS, the average person encounters Linux ten times a day without even knowing it, all thanks to a quiet revolution in industrial attitudes to the open source community. Many talks recounted the difficult journeys taken by companies over the last ten years, learning how and why to use open source software to deliver the most innovative products to their consumers. If companies are to produce their own Sheldonians they must look to open source.

Why industry is becoming more open

Matthew Langham spoke of his own experience of combining two very different worlds – the corporate and the open source. He remembers back in 2000 the difficulties he had as a software developer in getting his boss to embrace a new, apparently insane business plan: ‘We give away our code for free?’ But Matthew, who now runs a company connecting the corporate and open source worlds, explained the benefits of going open source: the strength the company would derive from allowing other people to improve its code, the advances made in their software that they could never have come up with alone, and, ultimately, how much more use their software would enjoy by being offered in this way. Open source provided their company with hugely increased exposure, and allowed them to make a good profit by offering support for their freely available products. Having proved the commercial viability of going open source, Matthew started suggesting these benefits to other companies, inspiring them to have a go too. He has found it easy to persuade them to try it out, but perhaps one of the biggest challenges has been getting them to admit that they do so. Phone companies, big banks and other organisations all embraced open source at a developmental level but were wary of admitting it to their employers and certainly of being evangelical about its benefits.

Of course, this is set to change. Matthias Stuermer’s talk investigated the ways in which Nokia has been playing with open source and Linux for the last ten years and how since 2005, they have been openly working with the open source community. One benefit of that relationship came about when the Nokia 770 was hacked to allow the use of flash cards as RAM – something Nokia’s own developers thought couldn’t work. They were then able to adapt the design to allow the feature.

An army of R&D

This ability to innovate as a community is also something that Phil Andrews spoke about. If SourceForge were to pay, as R&D, the 50,000 people they have involved in their community, the annual wages bill would come to £4.5 billion. He also pointed out that the number of coding errors generated within an open source community is much smaller than those produced by a closed company.

This change in approach can be seen outside of coding, too, as Roland Harwood from 100%Open pointed out in his keynote speech. His organisation encourages businesses to look at sharing their skills with very different industries, investigating how technology can be deployed in new and unrelated contexts. This use of ‘open innovation’ has led to companies such as McLaren F1 having their software used in hospitals and in air traffic control towers. Roland pointed out other examples – organisations like Virgin Atlantic embracing an unofficial group of around 50,000 customers who started their own community analysing the quality of Virgin’s services, from the website to their planes’ seating. By reaching out to and working with this community, they improved their services at an estimated 10% of the cost of doing so in-house.

But why should the open source community get into bed with business?

If the benefits of open source are clear for business, another question was raised and dealt with during the two days of TS  – what’s in it for the open source community?

Certainly, Simon Phipps fears that unscrupulous business practices can often destroy what makes open source brilliant. Having worked with Java and Sun Microsystems before becoming a board member for the Open Source Initiative, Simon has seen both the good and the bad of open source companies. He believes that the nature of open source is being undermined by some companies taking the benefits of others’ innovation without giving anything up of their own – such companies declare themselves to be ‘open core’ , which he sees as a euphemism for traditional closed software.

To Simon, in fact, such businesses are reptiles without souls or ethics. They can’t embrace the principle of openness for any reason other than to benefit from the growing marketing power of the term ‘open source’. They use open source as a way of making short-term savings rather than to generate long-term freedoms.

Companies must be honest

Some of these issues were dealt with by Gerv Markham from the Mozilla Foundation, which focuses on ensuring that no one company has control of the internet. Mozilla has an unusual corporate structure – a charity that wholly owns a number of conventional companies. Gerv has many suggestions as to how companies can be ethically involved with the open source community – for instance, Mozilla makes no distinction in worth between their paid members and those who volunteer. Even one of their security managers was not allowed into the Mozilla security discussion group until eight weeks after he had been hired – he had to prove his worth to the whole community, not just those who paid his salary, before he made the grade. Markham is also deeply aware of the importance of having a clear and transparent licensing scheme. It took many years to refine, but now users of Mozilla’s code get the choice of three different licences.

He also understands the ethical difficulties inherent in persuading volunteers to sign over copyright to an organisation, though, as Rowan Wilson pointed out, in his talk, that assignment of copyright is not the only way to manage IP in open source. Still, many companies have betrayed their volunteers’ trust by deciding that their ‘open source experiment’ has failed and absorbing the work of outsiders as they turn back into closed companies. Companies must avoid abusing open sourcers’ trust if they are to succeed in the open source world.

How companies are learning

The issue of earning and preserving trust is familiar to many previously closed developers attempting to make the transition to open source. Matthew Langham mentioned that it took about a year for his company to become welcome in the open source community, and that many large companies just don’t get how it works, expecting it to be an online pool of free employees. David Woollard, a senior software engineer at NASA, encountered similar difficulties. Only in 2005, where NASA used the skills of two big open source developers already on their staff (Sean Kelly and Chris Mattaham), did the necessary cultural shift begin within their section of NASA – and it took five years until they were finally able to enter the Apache Incubator in January 2010. The largest problem they faced during this time was persuading their own lawyers that, as publically funded organisations, they should be giving away their resources (i.e. their code) for free. The next problem was persuading contributors to mix in. They dealt with this by creating a clear framework to define how to get involved, what is expected of contributors and what they can expect in return. Finally, this transparency is reaping its reward – their community is starting to take off.

Open source communities – the future of society?

But the future of open source, as discussed at TransferSummit, should soar far beyond its relationship to industry. As Simon Phipps argued, in inspiring terms, it could well be the future of society. In the past, we have been accustomed to a societal model involving a group of individuals centred around one powerful ruler, or, after the Industrial Revolution, one large organisation, whether a company or a parliament. Open source removes the need for this central figure, allowing all members of a society to contribute in different ways. But if the idea is potentially so revolutionary, how should the open source community ensure that it is strong enough to achieve its ends?

As Steven Pemberton’s keynote on the first morning of the summit made clear, a good open source community will involve everyone, not just coders. After good content, what users want most from the websites they visit is good usability. Programmers, typically, cannot achieve good usability alone – they need designers, writers and testers to create a new structural way of ensuring that open software addresses the needs of the general public. Like the Sheldonian, any successful open source project will need to draw on a broad spectrum of expertise.

Led by none, led by all

Bertrand Delacretaz acknowledged this in his own talk, explaining the studies he has made as to who is most involved in various open source projects. Showing visual maps of people’s involvement, he demonstrated that it was rarely the originator of a project who was the most influential – as the project grew, so did the community’s input and influence, drawing it away from the originating individual.

Mark Johnson looked in detail at the process of how an open source community comes together and develops in the talk he gave about his involvement with the Moodle project. Beginning with his initial experiences of working on simple bug fixes, he told his audience how the satisfaction of working within a community and getting recognition for his work got him hooked on using their issue tracks and forums to contribute more and more.

Becoming part of a bigger world

Excited, valued community involvement was also a preoccupation for Noirin Shirley, employed by Google but talking about her work with Apache. Given a good community of forums, bug trackers and credit always being given where it’s due, a project will inevitably be stronger. Noirin argued that to get people involved in your project, the best rules of open source communities are actually much like those of kindergarten – share your toys, don’t be selfish and always be generous with praise. Also, don’t expect people to dive into the complexities straight away. She pointed out that it’s wise not to bother fixing the simplest bugs in your code, but to leave them for the community, so that – as was the case with Mark and Moodle – someone else will fix them, derive confidence and satisfaction from doing so, and get to grips with understanding the more challenging aspects of your project.

From military tech to the schoolyard

Given a strong, multi-skilled community, there is very little to which an open source project cannot turn its hand. Miles Berry hinted at the breadth of the spectrum by arguing the usefulness of greater open source involvement in schools, not just in dedicated ICT lessons. Berry made a commanding case for the positive impact open source could have in all classrooms, from geography lessons using open source gps software, to language work using Moodle. His case was greatly strengthened by the fact that he had masterminded such a broad, school-wide adoption of open source software at the St Ives Prep School, where he was formerly headmaster.

Code speaks louder than words


What the two days of TransferSummit made abundantly clear is that with a strong community, a mixture of disciplines and a willingness to embrace and pursue innovation, open source can do just about anything. But as Bertrand Delacretaz argued, its potential best displayed not in the giving of talks but in the writing of code. So the most exciting glimpse at what the future might hold for open source happened during the Birds of a Feather meetings – informal, community-led gatherings at which attendees and speakers exchanged ideas, learned from each other and arranged to pool their projects. From visual communication tools for those who don’t speak the same language, to ideas as to how universities can better reach out to industry, the groups’ advice to each other showed conclusively that for open source communities, the sky’s the limit.

Transfer Summit – Innovation Track

Published by Sam Jordison on July 2, 2010 in Discussion and Event. 1 Comment

I’ve just returned home after a fascinating two days writing the live blog for the Innovation Track, one of three tracks at the TransferSummit, a conference sponsored and organised by OSS Watch. This track was billed as a ‘top-level immersion into the world of open source’. It delivered comprehensively.

Far too much ground was covered to hope to include every detail in a piece like this one. Hopefully, the live blog should demonstrate how informative the discussions were. You can also get a good feel for the breadth of the talks if you click through the links on the TransferSummit programme to look at the speakers’ slides. Here I’ll just aim  to provide a few general impressions.

Keble in the sunshine

The first thing to note is how pleasant the whole event was. Even though I was working hard to keep up with the blog, I enjoyed myself. True, when I had to pull down a blind to stop the strong sun shining on the screen of my laptop, it gave me a slightly sad feeling – but being at the conference still beat being in the office. It was certainly far more interesting than the average day’s work. Indeed, bathed in that sunshine, in the beautiful Victorian Gothic enclosures of Keble College, there was a feeling of respite from the problems of the world.

That’s not to say that delegates didn’t have such troubles in mind, however. The budget cuts faced by projects across the education, public and commercial sectors were clearly causing serious concern.  Even so, the overall atmosphere was optimistic. There was a a definite sense that progress was being made in the arguments for open innovation – and indeed that in a time of financial hardship that case becomes even stronger.

As Steven Pemberton said in his keynote speech, Open Source Is Not Enough!, ‘we are through the first stage’ in getting open innovation technology accepted and now the main task is to make it better.

Of course, there are still difficulties and complexities relating to the use of open innovation. Martin Michlmayr in his talk on The State Of Open Source Licensing and How To Improve It and Mark Taylor in his talk on FOSS Business Models ably demonstrated the tangled wood of licences and legal complexity faced by anyone hoping to launch an open source project – as well as providing a good route through.

It should also be noted that delegates again and again returned to the point that although open innovation may reduce some costs to close to zero, it shouldn’t be seen as a free for all. Andrew Savory, the open source manager for Limo Foundation, stressed in his talk about the Economics Of Innovation In Mobile Technologies, that open source is not an ‘all you can eat buffet’. It works best when the companies that use it give something back. It’s then that it does offer real cost savings, as well as access to reservoirs of talent that couldn’t otherwise be tapped, and an economy of scale begins to build up.

On that note, Steven Pemberton gave the famous example of wikipedia compared to the  hugely expensive Encyclopaedia Britannica of old and how ‘little things’ (such as the many individual wiki contributions) can join together ’to make a big thing better and better’.

The savings that open source software (OSS) can deliver in all sectors were also widely referred to, but one of the most striking examples of its benefits came from the fiercely commercial mobile technology sector. Andrew Savory pointed to the smartphone market, where consumers are demanding ever more features for ever less money, meaning that we have now reached a point where companies are having to invest more than they get back from their technology. So those companies have now started to look more seriously at open source software. They have discovered that it brings not only reduced costs to the acquisition of software, but also reduced costs of access to innovation and - crucially – reduced costs of software ownership (since there is a greatly reduced maintenance burden for true OSS). So it is that HTC has leapfrogged the competition thanks to its use of open innovation.

Clearly there is going to have to be a big cultural shift among companies who are generally secretive, and who are unused to the meritocracy that exists within OSS development, but evidence that OSS is the way forward is beginning to stack up. Andrew also highlighted the Mobile Open Source Economic Analysis white paper, showing that it’s even cheaper for companies to merge early and contribute early to OSS development streams – rather than ‘forking’ off and trying to keep their own innovations with regard to the software to themselves for as long as possible.

Coming back to the question raised by Steven Pemberton, about how to make open innovation work better, there were a number of well-attended talks about how to build up and value communities. Paul Walk of UKOLN stressed the simple importance of giving recognition to the work that developers do and helping them better explain their ideas and projects to the world away from the keyboard. Gianugo Rabellino, the former CEO of Sourcesense told us that if we recognise communities as places ‘where individuals come together to reap a reward …  we come to understand why collaboration works so well – and why people are producing open source software’. Gill Rysiecki gave excellent practical examples of how the Technology Strategies Board initiative, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, can help academic developers reach out to the business community – and vica versa. Scott Wilson, the Assistant director of CETIS also made the important point that ‘inclusion and openness depend on collective responsibility’. open source works when people feel they have a stake in it.

In his keynote speech on day two Roland Harwood also gave powerful arguments about the importance of community  - and how effective exchanging ideas with different companies can be – a particularly striking example being how the McLaren Formula 1 team were able to help improve processes in A&E at Great Ormond Street Hospital. To emphasise his point he quoted the proverb: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, got together.’

Happily, this latter theme was well demonstrated by the conference itself. The buzz was all about open innovation and how best to achieve it. All the delegates I spoke to were deeply involved in the subject and determined to use the conference to learn as much as they could. They were also eager to make those vital connections with people heading in the same direction. There was just as much debate at lunchtime as there was in the formal talks and plenaries.

Naturally, since this was a gathering of technologists, there was also a lot of interest in the ipads, smartphones and various pieces of kit that people had brought with them. Samuel Klein, speaking as a a volunteer Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation (who had been re-routed into the Innovation Track after being delayed in Boston),  provided a great firsthand account of the history and development of wikipedia and many of its related projects – and how MediaWiki has scaled up using open source methods.  However, he caused the biggest stir with a demonstration of one of the first new OLPC XOs that also run Gnome, which he had with him as he is also the director of outreach for One Laptop per Child.

Samuel Klein and the new OLPC XO

Yet even when it came to gadgets, the conversation kept coming back to licensing and the openness of various software platforms. My own HTC phone was several times singled out for approval (gratifying for a technological layman such as myself). But it was the arguments rather than the compliments that left the strongest impression. The innovation track had generated a real feeling that open source is only going to become more important in the next few years.

BarcampOxford – making our own conference

Published by stevelee on June 10, 2010 in Community, Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

This year I’m tasked with being the lead for the BarcampOxford. Given the great success of the previous BarcampApacheOxford and my newbie status this is a little daunting. Fortunately Barcamps have the mentoring sorted and we have a team consisting of the someone local, someone experienced, someone new and everyone else who volunteers to do something. That way the experience gets passed on and we have more great BarCamp events.

Ross assures me that as Barcamps are self organising on the day the key is to make sure folks turn up and the resources are in place to make the day run smoothly. Mind you, there’s plenty to do, and leaving so much to be decided on the day is a little scary. However having been to a few BarCamps and similar events I know they provide attendees with  a much more valuable experience than a traditional ‘passive’ conference. However you do need attendees who want to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Well at least, attendees who want to discuss topics that matter to them. That’s not often a problem with those with open source or geek leanings, as are our target ‘barcampers’ .  The reward is a feeling of something achieved through new connections made, new ideas formed or new projects started.

If you’ve never experienced a BarCamp then I highly recommend you go to one the very first chance you get. Why not join us as a taster? To whet your appetite here’s an introductory email that was sent out recently.

Building on the great success of last year’s BarCampApacheOxford, OSS Watch and Torchbox are again running the popular BarCampOxford unconference at the Oxford University Club on the 26 June. Expect many great conversations, including topics such as open source, open development, open innovation and web 2.0 mashups. Full details are on the BarcampOxford wiki page [1]

If you’re not sure what a BarCamp is, fear not. It’s a friendly, flexible and informal event where everyone who attends has a say in what happens on the day. The idea is to come with a topic you’d like to present, discuss or even hack-on. We figure out exactly what happens in the morning, and then get on with it.

We already have people who like to get together on topics as diverse as; open source, cloud computing, semantic web, mobile tech, agile development, UIX and accessibility, Python, Dojo and Javascript. If something else takes your fancy, then just a look at the wiki [1] and add your interests in the attendees list or come up with an idea on the day.

We’ll have food and drink to keep you energised. This year the TV goes on and club bar opens at 3 for those who just can’t bear to miss the World Cup football. Those who want to carry on a great conversation or hack session can do so in the upstairs spaces.

So why not join us – just add you details to the wiki page [1] or email us [2]

This year the Barcamp follows on from the TransferSummit [3] open innovation conference being held at Keble College, and a number of attendees will stay on for the Barcamp. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about after the Summit which promises to be exceptional given the programme [4]. Note: there are still spaces at the Summit, you can register on the website [3].

1: http://barcamp.org/BarCampOxford
2: info@oss-watch.ac.uk
3: http://www.transfersummit.com
4: http://www.transfersummit.com/programme

We hope to see you on the 26 June.

Is UK research ‘wired for innovation’?

Published by Gabriel Hanganu on June 4, 2010 in Business, Community, Development, Discussion, Event and Strategy and Policy. 0 Comments

Apparently French research is not ‘wired for innovation’. The reason, according to Presans who reports from a recent Lyon round table, is the low levels French public research score on the Technology Readiness scale. Technology Readiness is a model used in the aerospace and defence sectors to evaluate the maturity level of a new technology. According to this model, levels 1-2 correspond to basic research, 3-6 indicate intermediary stages as the project moves from demonstrator to prototype, and 9 is assigned to a technology ready to be released on the market. According to Florin Paun, Deputy Director for Industrial Innovation at ONERA, technologies produced by public research should reach at least level 4 on the Readiness scale in order to attract industry partners, but most French research units, with some notable exceptions, tend to score below this mark. Research and industry do not speak the same language, the author of the post concludes, therefore there is a need for translation and  reformulation of the needs of businesses and of the solutions provided by research laboratories.

The lack of a common language for all categories of research stakeholders was also identified in studies of UK research infrastructure, as OSS Watch pointed out. Despite an impressive array of online systems and services aimed at helping researchers carry out their research, these technologies are often employed below their full potential. One way to improve this situation is to take stock of some key lessons from open source development, which include providing an open space for expressing the needs and concerns of researchers, software developers, service providers, and indeed all external partners, including businesses, who may wish to join the community.

OSS Watch conceived TransferSummit precisely to address this lack of mutual understanding between the academic and business research stakeholders interested in open development and open innovation. Two of the academic projects we advised recently have started to benefit from collaborating with non-academic partners. TexGen’s decision to make their research software freely available resulted in attracting supplementary grants and facilitating industry collaboration, while Wookie’s choice to join the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator attracted interest from both the academic and commercial sectors. Both these and other academic projects will feature at TransferSummit, along with key representatives from open source businesses and software foundations, including in no particular order, Red Hat, Sourcesense, Sirius, WSO2, Indiginox, Day, HP, Amazon, Gnome, Apache, Codeplex, Mozilla, LiMo, Wikimedia, who will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with academic-industry partnerships.

French research may not be ‘wired for innovation’, but is UK ready to reap the benefits of open innovation emerging from the dialogue of the academic and business sectors? Join us at TransferSummit to find out.

Free academic passes for TransferSummit/UK

Published by Ross Gardler on May 4, 2010 in Business, Community, Development, Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

We’ve been posting about the importance of open development in sustianble open source projects for a long time. We’ve been running well attended workshops on the topic for almost as long. Now we are stepping up a gear and bringing you a three track, two day conference with a barcamp thrown in.

What’s more, if you are an academic we’re even giving you free tickets (mail us for a discount code).

Showcasing an array of presentations, the two-day conference comprises three content tracks – innovation; development and collaboration – each containing six sessions a day. The Innovation track, aimed at executive-level attendees, provides a top-level immersion into the world of Open Source. Topics cover foundations, infrastructure, licensing, governance, community-building and more.

Sessions on the Innovation track include:

  • Dissemination beyond academic circles: Scott Wilson, Assistant Director, JISC CETIS,looks at how open source has taken work from the University of Bolton well beyond the usual academic circles
  • Are developers important?: Paul Walk, Deputy Director, UKOLN, discusses the important of developers in the innovation cycle
  • Is my community too small for success?: Gianugo Rabellino, CEO Sourcesense, dissects a typical large community and considers the assumption that projects need to be large in order to succeed
  • FOSS business models: Mark Taylor, CEO Sirius IT, examines common strategies for sustaining FOSS and the licensing and community models that support them
  • The economics of innovation in mobile technolgies: Andrew Savory, Open Source Manager LiMO Foundation, evaluates FOSS in the mobile ecosystem

Register now on the conference website (don’t forget to ask for your discount code if you’re working on academic projects)

The growing popularity of open source assistive technology: Interview with Will Walker

Published by stevelee on April 1, 2010 in Community, Development and Discussion. 0 Comments

The day before I discussed the importance of open source screen readers with Joanie I interviewed Will Walker about open source accessibility and development of assistive technology. At the time of the interview Will was still module maintainer of the Orca screen reader, a role Joanie has since taken on after Will had to step down. Will also vacated the position of GNOME accessibility lead, a post that is still open. Will gave some of his insights gained through many years working in open accessibility software development and serving user needs.

We cover the recent growth of interest in open source assistive technology and its relevance to users (01:20), how GNOME accessibility features help developers (04:25), the ease of developing when open collaboration is possible between projects (06:05) and simple ways to encourage users to become, and stay, involved (08:15).

Listen to the audio below or download it in mp3 format.

[audio:http://fullmeasure.co.uk/Stuff/Will.mp3]
Running time: 13 min

Note: If you’re wondering why I checked that Will was not going to sing a song then this post by Eitan Isaacson will explain all.

Life is wonderful

Published by Ross Gardler on March 10, 2010 in Discussion. 9 Comments

Whilst this blog allows OSS Watch members and guest posters to express personal opinion we don’t usually use this blog for personal items. However, I’m making an exception today to remind myself, and hopefully some others, that whilst life can sometimes be horrible it is more often than not wonderful

.Loving brotherDad and newborn Saskia Proud MumSaskia Frances Gardler

On Sunday at 17:17 (GMT) March 7th my wife gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl, Saskia Frances Gardler at 7lb 10.5 oz. Mum and baby are doing very well and are now home with a proud Dad.

I’d like to publicly acknowledge the superb  care that my wife and I received during this pregnancy. We only truly appreciate the National Health Service when we really need it, and Heidi and I have  needed it on far too many occasions over the last few years. The care we have received has been exceptional when compared to what I have seen in other countries.

I should also mention Oxford University Computing Services. I could not have hoped for a more understanding employer, it was clear from the first day that as long as I worked hard when I was able OUCS would respond by giving me as much space and time as I needed to support my family during this difficult period. I’m truly grateful to my boss Lou Burnard and to my exceptional team here at OSS Watch.

As for extended family and our friends – we hope they already understand how appreciative we are of their combined efforts in recent years.

Like I said in the intro, sometimes life is horrible, but more often than not life and the people around us are wonderful. We should never forget that in the difficult times.

Software Developers for Haiti

Published by Ross Gardler on January 22, 2010 in Community, Development, Discussion and Software. 1 Comment

Some time ago I posted “Does it take a disaster to understand the power of open development?” Unfortunately it is now time to revisit that post with a call for software developers to help Haiti.

The Sahana Software Foundation are looking for additional developers to help with Sahana, a disaster management tool. They need to continue to build an information portal that is seeing increased interest and usage to assist organisations responding to events in Haiti. Information on the work underway can be found on the Sahana Haiti response Overview page.

The skills they are primarily looking for are (you don’t need them all, any will do):

  •  Python – the main development for SahanaPy is Python (we’re not using PHP for this instance)
  •  web2py – Sahana uses the web2py enterprise framework for SahanaPy (I’m told it is fairly easy to learn if you’re used to Django)
  •  OpenLayers
  •  jQuery

To find out more and offer your help please jump onto #sahana on freenode. Please give as much or as little as you want.Some of the core devs have been working really long hours the past 5-6 days, and any additional resource would assist us greatly, particularly as the effort is really starting to get some interest, traction and coverage, which leads to more and more feature requests.

Thanks for reading this far – please consider giving a few hours of your time to help out, if you can.