Open Innovation

Well, I know PhD thesis are in many cases good pieces of work, where people put really a lot of effort, and which usually are well written, and are quite insightful and all that. However after writing one, supervising some, reviewing some more, and reading even some more, I still wonder really how many people (in addition to the author, supervisor and reviewers) do actually read even a good thesis.

Of course I’m not talking here about the really exceptional thesis, which is a must in all citations in the field, which opens new avenues for research and all the pack. It’s clear that a lot of attention is obtained in some, exceptional cases. But how many people read the even best-than-average thesis? I guess that in the days prior to the Internet, that was really a small buch of people. Do you remember those days? You had to come down to the library and ask them to get you a copy of the thesis (in paper, or course), or contact and convince the author to mail (I mean, snail-mail) you a copy, or maybe get the Department where it was presented mail you that copy. Even if the thesis seemed interesting, well, not that many people would follow that process. And certainly no one outside research institutions would do that.

Internet has changed this process completely.

And not only because now you can get the PDF in a matter of seconds, but also because now it is possible to spread the word about an interesting work, and let it be known not only to academics, but to anyone interested in the field.

I knew all this… in theory. But thanks to Felipe Ortega, I’ve seen it working in practice.

I had a lot of fun advising Felipe on his thesis, Wikipedia: A Quantiative Analysis. For both of us, this was a new field, which let me explore new opportunities for some of the methodologies we were using to study FLOSS development. And as I said, was the opportunity to have a lot of fun. Once the thesis was complete, I knew Felipe had produced a big pile of good stuff. But I had no idea about what was about to happen.

And what happened was that people really started to read the thesis. Thanks to Felipe’s presentations in some conferences, but over all thanks to the availability of the PDF text, people could appreciate what he had written, and started to talk about it. You know, talking these days include (or maybe means) blogging and web-based information. And of course also more traditional presentations in workshops and congresses, and even good old press releases. A first wave of attention was caused by those, in two different groups: researchers studying Wikipedia (as could be expected), and Spanish media (thanks to press releases). Well, you know, both Felipe and me happen to be located in Madrid, Spain.

But the buzz about the results on how Wikipedia was performing attracted the attention of the regular media, via an article in WSJ. And the press coverage worldwide was enormous.

I guess everything would have stopped here, if people could not read the thesis after knowing about it. But they could. And therefore, they could get to the facts, and not only to the summaries journalists and bloggers were preparing. And the thesis started to have readers… A lot of them. Some, even write about it in some detail, such as WikiXRay and Statistics on Wikipedia. And some, meta-discuss what happens with thesis are easily available, as The importance of the PhD thesis in a connected world. Of course, you have also reactions from Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikipedia itself provides related data, and discussions on some specific results, and all that. To some point, the studied object has entered the discussion, which is quite interesting. Which is an interesting by-product of what happens when the thesis is online…

Well, all in all, now I have the proof that people (in fact, many people) actually do read thesis nowadays. Or at least some thesis

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]

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…

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!

The new issue of Upgrade (the CEPIS magazine) is devoted to “Libre Software for Enterprises“. It includes a nice paper about the Morfeo exprience, “The Morfeo Project: an Open Source Approach towards Open Innovation“, by Cristina Breña and Andrés-Leonardo Martínez. The whole issue is open access, so you can directly read the paper.

For those who are not familiar with the Morfeo community, its history, its goals and motivations, and its current status, this can be a brief, but good, summary. A version of the paper in Spanish has already been published by Novatica (in its paper version), and will be available online shortly.

In any case, maybe you’ll also enjoy reading the other papers in the issue.

[Disclamer: I'm one of the guest editors of the special issue, so I'm not going to talk bad things about it ]

Desde hace algún tiempo llevo siguiendo desde la distancia el desarrollo de fabbers (fábricadores digitales o algo así, ¿cómo traducir el término?). Cada vez más pequeños, cada vez más potentes, cada vez más cerca de permitir que podamos construir cualquier artilugio en casa, pasándonos información sobre cómo hacerlos como hoy nos pasamos programas de ordenador. Pero aún lejos de conseguirlo del todo…

Últimamente he visto varios proyectos relacionados con software libre. Los que me han parecido más interesantes: Fab@Home (ver artículo en New Scientist), que está construyendo (y publicando) diseños de desktop fabbers y software relacionado, RepRap, que está tratando de construir fabbers autoreplicantes, y MakerBot, que tiene modelos cuyo kit “montatelo tú mismo” sólo cuestan unos 600 euros (CupCake CNC Basic Kit).

En todos estos casos, las implicaciones son muy interesantes. Si algún día podemos tener fabbers tan baratos como los ordenadores personales, que puedan producir artilugios complejos con poco coste en materiales y energía (y ya parece que será así no tardando mucho), el elemento más importante que quedará es el diseño en si. ¿Podrá el modelo del software libre ser aplicado ahí, hasta el punto de que el “conocimiento” de cómo hacer cosas, y por tanto hasta cierto punto las cosas en sí puedan seguir los mismos modelos de producción que los programas de software libre?

A este respecto, es importante reconocer que los fabbers pueden considerarse máquinas de replicar cosas (al menos hasta cierto punto), como los ordenadores son máquinas de replicar información. Las implicaciones de “convertir en conocimiento” el problema de producir cosas relativamente complejas son muchas, y muy interesantes. ¿Estamos ante una nueva economía de las cosas, como ya la tenemos de la información? ¿Dónde queda la importancia de la fabricación de estas cosas, si las podemos fabricar fácilmente en casa? ¿No os suena esto a lo que ha ocurrido con la importancia de duplicar información, cuando lo podemos hacer fácilmente en casa.

En otro nivel, la posibilidad de que un fabber pueda producir otro fabber igual es también realmente interesante. No sólo como una forma de abaratarlos y popularizarlos, sino que también plantea interesantes cuestiones con respecto a su evolución, y el punto disruptivo cuando se pueda conseguir que un fabber pueda producir un fabber mejor que si mismo. Hoy, los diseños de Faber@Home pueden comprarse ya por unos 2.500 euros (y hay fabbers mucho más baratos, como el ya mencionado de MakerBot). Aún son limitaros en funcionalidad, pero, ¿no sería un buen precio si puede a su vez construir otros como él, que se podrían redistribuir a precios sensiblemente menores?

En fin, todavía tengo que decidir si tengo suficiente tiempo como para jugar con uno de estos trastos. Si tú lo tienes, y te gustra trastear, yo no lo dudaría… Lo veo como la construcción de diseños eléctricos que hacíamos hace 20 o 30 años, pero mucho más interesante. Si no sabes qué hacer este verano, y tienes quien te financie el juguete…

This evening, at EOI (Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain), our GSyC/LibreSoft group is helping to organize a short seminar on free software for enterprises. Talks will be delivered by Stéphane Ribas (INRIA) and Arnaud Laprévote (Mandriva), two of our Qualipso partners.

Open Innovation in Global Networks seems to be an interesting report, by the OECD, on open innovation and how it is now emerging as a global trend. Global here means both that it is found everywhere, but also that networks for open innovation are becoming more and more global. One interesting impact of this fact is that local R&D poles are less important than they were in the past. Since open innovation networks can now expand through many centers in several countries, using in many cases non-formal relationships, being (geographically) close to the sources of innovation could be less important than in the past. Is this signaling a new direction towards “virtual” R&D poles, for which geographical proximity of actors is no longer relevant?