Radical Openness

Next Ted Global 2012 is going to address Radical Openness. They say: “The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and open. Radically open — manifesting itself in open borders, open culture, open-source, open data, open science, open world, open minds. With the loss of privacy that it implies, openness carries its own dangers. But it breeds transparency, authenticity, creativity and collaboration.”

I think that now it’s the right time to collect some ideas, effective suggestions and to move a step forward!… Read the rest

Which relationship between enterprises and the free software community?

Finally, the paper supporting my speech at the 5th Italian Conference on Free Software, June 2011,  is available.

It includes many quotes coming from the Community track of fOSSa Conference 2010 – by the way, stay tuned with fOSSa 2011: registration will open soon! – and from the Open World Forum Paris, 2010 – come to Paris this week to hear the novelties at OWF 2011

The paper goes further on with some reflections about communities that I made in a previous post.… Read the rest

Communities, networks and open source

Let’s see the difference between the concepts of community and network.

This text is partially included in a paper that I wrote on the relationship between enterprises and the free software community.

Both communities and networks have to do with the identification process aiming to give everybody a place in the society. However, they work in two completely different ways: communities follow individuals, while networks are ever-evolving aggregation entities rising from people’s continuous connections and disconnections to/from the network itself.… Read the rest

What’s the path to Open Source Application Success?

Few days ago, Derek Singleton of Software Advice has published a post on his blog on the failure of open source ERP applications in gaining mainstream acceptance.

I’m not dealing with OSS ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), but I know something about OSS application acceptance (the best known example is SpagoBI, in the Open Source Business Intelligence domain).

Derek raised many questions, starting with: what OSS is in OSS applications?… Read the rest

About OSS adoption in Europe – An Italian point of view

Some days ago, Geoffrey Mobisson posted his blog with Open Source Notes from the Left Bank: OSS Adoption in Europe. In particular, he said: “Europe has so clearly established itself as the most dominating “consumer” of open source enterprise applications”.

Looking at his own reasons, I mostly agree with reason n.1 (i.e.: “The combination of cost sensitivity, government policy, and mistrust has led European government agencies to supremely value “control of their destinies”…perhaps more so than their US counterparts.… Read the rest