September, 2011

The research we’re doing at GSyC/LibreSoft on Wikipedia has been mentioned in the last Wikimedia Research Newsletter issue. And it was mentioned twice :

• The paper “Temporal characterization of the requests to Wikipedia“, which is in part a result of Antonio J. Reinoso’s PhD thesis, is mentioned with respect to its analysis of the use of Wikipedia during weekends, which is a part of a more complete analysis on temporal patterns of users and editors.
• The book “The Digital Potlatch“, by Felipe Ortega and Joaquín Rodríguez is referenced in the section.

This comes perfectly on time for introducing Antonio’s PhD dissertation, which will hapen tomorrow (30th Sept 2011), 12:30, at the Fuenlabrada Campus of the URJC.

Last year, in the context of some meetings related to the FP7 Research Program, I started to write a document on Good practices for R&D projects producing FLOSS, as a request for comments. The abstract says probably it all:

Many R&D projects are producing FLOSS (free, libre, open source software) in different domains. This document provides details on the practices that could be considered as “good” from the point of view of maximizing the impact of using FLOSS as a distribution model. It is targeted mainly at projects funded by the European Commission, but could be of interest for others as well.

Tomorrow I’m presenting it at the FLOSS Working Group meeting, scheduled in the Collaboration meeting for FP7 projects (Internet of Services). The talk is called “Dos and Donts: FLOSS in FP7 projects”, and I’ll be using some slides, which somewhat summarize the document.

If you have any feedback on these ideas, please, let me know! I’m now working in a new revision, having into account some comments that I had during the last year, and some new ideas. Stay tuned for its release!

This evening I’m participating in a panel on licensing in the Open Source Hardware Conference, in Madrid (Spain). I’ll have like 5 mins. for a very short presentation on the matter. So, I’ve prepared a couple (literally) of slides, commenting about the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition 1.0, and about some of the licenses most commonly used for OSHW. The most important concept I will try to stress is that these licenses in fact cover the design (and more specifically, the expression of the design, that is, the plans), and not the hardware itself. This may cause some difficulties in enforcing copyleft clauses, for example. Some side aspects (but also important!): relationship with patents, and relationship with software licenses. Too much for 5 minutes, but well…

Next week I’m participating in the Information Day on Call 8 of FP7: Cloud Computing, Internet of Services and Advanced Software Engineering (Objective ICT-2011.1.2) (hey this is really a long name for a one-day event). I’m contributing with a presentation which includes some ideas for FP7 projects that explore some possibilities related to the transfer of research results that could help to improve libre (free, open source) software development.

Comments are welcome! (For convenience, I’m also attaching the slides for the presentation).

In some hours I’m participating as a challenger in one of the Online Consultations on ‘Internet of Services’ (Well the whole name is actually a bit longer: ‘Internet of Services Towards Horizon 2020 – The Framework Programme for Research and Innovation’). It is a series of webinars about several aspects (themes) of the future of the European Union R&D Framework Programme. I participate in the theme “Improving the impact – standardization, open source, open innovation models“, which I will really present as “open standardization, open source, open innovation models”, with an emphasis in the first two. Participation is open to anyone, so you’re welcome to join us (maybe a registration in the Hola! portal is needed, you can try).

If you want you can also just browse the slides I will be using with the presentation.

Of course, comments, suggestions, ideas and any other feedback is welcome.