Morfeo

Today, I spent the day at the Morfeo General Assembly. It was held in Madrid, in the premises of Telefonica I+D. For me, it has been a very interesting day, with the usual networking and all that. But in addition, I’ve found several aspects that I enjoyed especially.

The first one has been a certain change in focus. Instead of an Assembly by Morfeo members for Morfeo members, it has been quite open, showing in fact how Morfeo is well related (and even mixed) with other organizations, initiatives and communities. From this point of view, the presentations about Tibi, ASOLIF and Open Telefonica were quite interesting. Also, presentations by people from Ministry of Industry and CDTI about R&D projects (Avanza, Iberoeka, etc.) were quite clarifying about how those programs work, the chances of preparing proposals for them (and being granted!), the role of libre software in them, etc.

People attending the Assembly were also quite interesting by themselves. I guess that a large fraction of the Spanish innovative companies in the area of software and services were here, which produced quite interesting discussions during the breaks. BTW, many friends and old acquaintances around: this was also a good place just for keeping touch with them.

The surrounding IT infrastructure was a good complement, both for those in place, and for those who participated in the distance. Twiter helped a lot to have a sense of what was happening. This idea of broadcasting twits live to attendants (two projectors were used for that), which is becoming customary in many conferences, helped a lot to have out-of-band chatting. The Assembly was also streamed, and a nice mashup, built using EzWeb service (a Morfeo project), showed twits, pictures, web pages, streaming, and all the rest in a convenient single place.

Last, but not least, we had our presentation of the CENATIC Report on free software in Spanish Universities and R&D Centers (in Spanish), in which GSyC/LibreSoft has participated.

The idea of having short talks about project proposals and ideas, as a first step to formalize the kind of informal interaction that has been so productive in the past was also encouraging.

[Update: recordings of the talks are already available]

About three weeks to the Workshop on Public Data about Software Development (WoPDaSD 2010) deadline. As usual, co-located with the OSS Conference, this year hosted by the University of Notre Dame (IN, USA). This year registration will be free for those registered to the whole OSS Conference, but those willing to attend only WoPDaSD will be able to register for a small fee. Some papers presented at the workshop will be invited to submit improved, extended versions to an special issue of IJOSSP. As usual, papers using FLOSSMole or FLOSSMetrics data are encouraged, but other papers on the subject will also be accepted.

The 3rd Morfeo General Assembly will be held on March 10th, in Madrid. The agenda is already out, and includes the usual “state of the Morfeo project”. There are three main “events”: one will be devoted to business. another one to the media (including a press conference), and finally one devoted to the community. This is going to be the 5th anniversary, which is a long time since we had the first discussions on how to structure and bootstrap the Morfeo community. Let’s wait and see what will happen during the next 5 years!

En marzo comienza el Master de Propiedad Intelectual de la Escuela de Organización Industrial, en el que participaremos varios libresofteros. A pesar de su título, tiene un enfoque bastante novedoso, con asignaturas como “Obras libres” o “Movimiento Open Acces”. En otras palabras, tamibén se tratan las situaciones donde los autores consideran que les conviene no reservarse todos sus “derechos”. A ver qué tal sale…

Esta tarde he estado en Cáceres, participando en el Congreso Internacional de Software Libre. La participación ha sido en una mesa redonda (o charla-coloquio, como la han clasificado), “El papel del software libre en la recuperación económica“, con Luis Casas (EOI) y Anabel Labarta (Penteo), con Paul Brown (Linux Magazine) de moderador. Interesante experiencia, aunque al final nos hemos ido un poco por las ramas, hablando más sobre la Universidad que sobre el software libre. Me llevé unas breves transpas que no usé (porque el formato no lo permitía). Mejor, ha quedado mucho más dinámico que si cada uno hacemos nuestra presentación…

Aprovechando el viaje, charla con mucha gente, como siempre en estos saraos Y esta vez, asistí a una charla y todo: la de Andrés Martínez (TID) y Manuel Velarde (CENATIC) sobre Morfeo Formación y los planes de formación de CENATIC. Interesante… Tenemos que estudiar cómo encajar nuestro master en esto…

Hoy en Palma de Mallorca, en la jornada “El Software Libre en el Sector Turístico” (organizada por la Fundació iBit), estaré en un ratito hablando sobre “Posibilidades de negocio en el campo del software libre” (transpas). Trataré de explicar cómo una empresa puede desarrollar su negocio en el campo del software libre, sobre todo como productor, mantenedor o integrador de software. Pero también tocaré, si hay tiempo e interés, las ventajas para las empresas que son usuarios de software.

Mientras me toca salir a la palestra, escucho (y veo) una interesante charla de Marco Táboas, donde entre otras cosas nos está contando cómo usar WordPress para realizar marketing en Internet.

Muchas gracias a Benjamí Viloslada, que me invitó.

Next Wednesday (that is, tomorrow) we’re organizing a small seminar. Two nice talks are scheduled: “Open source game software: landscape and opportunities”, by Jim Whitehead (University of California, USA), who is in a sabbatical with us, and “Being Open about lock-in effects in the Swedish public sector: Taking Open Source and Open Document formats seriously”, by Björn Lundell (University of Skövde, Sweden), who is visiting our group while in a project visit in Madrid. Come and join us!

Acaba de ser liberado el contenido íntegro del número especial de Novática “Software libre para empresas“, en el que participé como editor. A ver qué le parece al mundo en general

Este número corresponde con el que el publicó en inglés en Upgrade, y del que ya hablé en otra ocasión con motivo del artículo que incluye sobre Morfeo. Ahora, lo mismo, en español.

Para hacer boca, el índice:

• Software libre para empresas: ¡crea tu producto, alimenta tu comunidad y disfruta tu parte!
• El software libre en el mundo corporativo
• Buenas prácticas para la adopción del software libre
• Construir y mantener una comunidad de práctica: método aplicado a proyectos de software libre
• Dinamización de comunidades en proyectos de software libre
• La Comunidad Morfeo: estrategias Open Source para la Open Innovation
• Aplicación de los principios del software libre en líneas de producto
• Abordar las necesidades de la industria en Software Libre
• SpagoWorld, la iniciativa de software libre de Engineering
• Una oportunidad para las empresas de software libre: mercado emergente en los países en vías de desarrollo

¡Que aproveche!

Today I was in Paris, attending the FLOSS Competence Centers Summit at the Open World Forum 2009.

I delivered a talk there, Competence Centers: at the core of tomorrow’s FLOSS education, and enjoyed very much the discussions about what a FLOSS competence center should be, about the benefits of networking them, about their different facets. We also had brief presentations of the different FLOSS CCs present (about 10 different, worldwide). We also agreed on a manifesto, to be published soon, and on setting up initial facilities for collaboration.

In the context of an editorial against the European Commission decision on questioning the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, the Wall Street Journal writes:

Open-source software has achieved fetish status in certain precincts in Europe [...]

This has to do with Sun controlling MySQL since the MySQL AB acquisition. Apparently, the fact that Oracle, which is already holding a really large share of the database market (about a half of it), would also control MySQL, is one of the objections considered by the European Comission.

The WSJ correctly explains that libre software can be modified and distributed by anyone, but fails to explain the control that the leader developers can have on the product, specially in the case of MySQL, which has carefully avoided including external developers in the core team. Another point is how the market for MySQL is estimated in dollars… In several cases I’ve been talking with colleagues about how to do fair comparations in market share between proprietary and libre software products, but certainly using the cost of licenses and maintenance contracts doesn’t seem to fair to me. Number of installations could be a better number (although can also be skewed, of course).

In any case, it is interesting to learn that WSJ considers that libre software has “fetish status” in any place, even if that place is Europe. Next time you visit a customer, trying to sell some libre software solutions, you can claim: “this is what WSJ considers as having fetish status”