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Fri Jan 20 09:03:46 2006 News:
Making a dent - somewhere
The conference hasn't even started yet (it's next week), but already I'm getting a distinct impression of what it's going to be like. Yesterday the attendees received an email with "instructions". Here a sampling:"Evening reception: Dress-code: business""Full WiFi coverage over the whole conference - cost will be 2,80 € for 15 minutes or 8,80 € for an hour""We kindly request you be punctual as we have a strict agenda to get through"I'm pretty amazed that a conference like this has to charge that amount to WiFi. Heise obviously isn't interested in anyone covering the conference in blog-space. Any other bloggers going?
Martin points me to the fact that my Lufthansa flight from Munich to San Francisco on the 10th of February probably has Wifi. Should be fun.
Dave Rosenberg writes about how SpikeSource may be changing their business model "on the fly" to a channel approach. He is also doubtful about whether that will work - because system integrators can in the end either build and distribute their own stack or get a stack from somewhere else.Perhaps he's right in that products lead to services and not vice-versa but I think the problem lies more in "differentiation". A company that is able to combine Open Source with vertical/industry know-how is in a far better position to provide that one-stop offering of stack and services to a corporation than companies like SpikeSource or SourceLabs can. Their current stack offerings are too easy to copy. Where's the barrier to competition? Wait a few more months and there will be oodles of LAMP stacks out there.Companies like MySQL, Alfresco, Funambol or JBoss have Open Source products with which they can differentiate themselves - both in terms of software and the corresponding services.So what can companies like SpikeSource do to differentiate themselves? That will be key question in the coming months when it comes to their offering - not their sales model.Technorati Tags: opensource
I think it's worth bringing this up again. Next week, I'll be down in Nürnberg attending the "Open Source meets Business" conference. I first heard about the conference in September and was impressed that the focus was to be on corporations talking about their experiences with Open Source. Take a look at the sessions for next Thursday for example. It should be pretty interesting to hear some of the leading names in German financial institutions like Deutsche Bank, Noris Bank, Sparkassen-Informatik and Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank in back to back presentations on what they are doing with Open Source. And that's only one track in the conference. Other companies lined up to talk are Vodafone, Bayer, Linde Gas, Audi and Volkswagen.I just hope the whole thing lives up to its promise.
O'Reilly's EuroOSCON will be opening its doors for the second time from the 18th-21st of September in Brussels, Belgium. The Call for Participation is now open.
Maybe it's too early in the morning for me, but I've just read this article (via Dave) and I'm scratching my head wondering just exactly what HP is planning to do. The first paragraph of the article seems interesting:Hewlett-Packard is considering selling services designed to ease customer participation in the open-source programming community, the company's new open-source boss said.Although I sort of wonder just what exactly those "services" could be, I guess it will be explained in the next part of the article. But things get more confusing:"Across HP, there are thousands of people who contribute to open source. We have a number of processes and tools we've developed to allow different folks in HP to interact with the open-source community that protects our intellectual property and is done in a community-friendly way," said Christine Martino, who became vice president of HP's Open Source and Linux Organization in November. "We needed to get some pretty crack procedures together. The team doing that has developed some interesting tools."Well, our customers have been interacting with the Open Source community for nearly as long as we've been in the Open Source business (5 years). The tools they use - subversion, mailing-lists, wiki and community-gettogethers. No rocket science there.Some education at the beginning to get them to see the value of getting involved - but apart from that. Sure, licensing issues and IP legalities have to be thought through - but normally every company is already purchasing and using software from somewhere and has already got the necessary legal stuff in place. Giving back to the community is new to most organizations - but my experience hasn't really shown that special tools and/or services are needed. Sometime we act as a proxy between corporations and the Open Source communities, but most often, they are visible themselves and active participants.The rest of the article then basically loses me as it focusses on how Christine Martino wants to do more in the Linux and JBoss space - which sounds more like HP than the beginning of the - what seemed - promising article.Hopefully there will be some discussions about this sort of thing at OSBC, as I'm certainly interested in hearing other angles.Technorati Tags: opensource
My annual trip to the West Coast is now set. I'll be flying Paderborn / Munich / San Francisco on the 10th of February (arriving in the evening) and leaving a week later (on the 17th). I'll be at OSBC on the 14th and 15th.So, if you're in that area and want to meet up then feel free to drop me a line and we can work something out. One thing I would really love to do is go out for Sushi. I've never tried it and I guess San Francisco is a good place to start. Any suggestions?
On something of a conference roll at the moment. Sebastian sent me an email to say that the Call for Papers for FrOSCon has opened. Here's some background information on the conference.The first Free and Open Source Conference "FrOSCon" takes place on 24thand 25th June 2006 in St. Augustin, near Bonn, Germany, Organized by acommited team, it aims to become a significant event for free softwarein the Rhineland. The conference is hosted by the faculty of computerscience of the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg incollaboration with the student body and the Linux/Unix User Group St.Augustin.There is a business track - so I'll be submitting something.Technorati Tags: conference, opensource
Speaking of conferences, OSBC will be happening in a few weeks in San Francisco. Matt and the rest of the OSBC team have put together another fantastic program for this year. Attending last year was a real eye (and ear) opener for me. Although having spent several years moving Open Source into the enterprise via many projects in some really high-profile companies, I think OSBC was the first time I actually heard senior management level people speak openly about their use of Open Source. Open Source companies such as SpikeSource and Optaros came out of "hiding" at OSBC. Companies that were betting their complete business model on Open Source. I'm sure there will be more of the same at this year's event.The conference is still unique in the fact that it manages to combine both the business perspective with the community, development and licensing aspects of Open Source without compromising on any of the individual subjects.Something that I didn't really expect was lack of influence OSBC has had in Europe. Of course OSBC is a very US-centric conference (still no sign of an OSBC Europe anytime soon), but the subjects discussed there are certainly global in nature. And yet, Europe still seems some way behind the US when it comes to enterprise Open Source. Maybe I'm wrong on that - and it would be interesting to hear what companies like the above have to say on how their business models are perceived in European organizations.Unfortunately it doesn't seem like I'm going to make it over to San Francisco this year (I'm really going to miss going bridge-watching again). My wife thinks we have other things higher on our budget-priority list at the moment - and she's probably right.Update: Looks like I may get to go after all. Stay tuned.
LinuxTag takes place from the 3rd to 6th of May in Wiesbaden, Germany. The Call for Papers for the "Free" (ahem) and "Practical Linux" tracks closes this weekend. There is also a parallel congress for the "Business and Public Sector" but you don't seem to be able to "just" submit a session for that as the details read that "sessions are mainly invitation-only". What does "mainly" mean and how do I get invited to do a session like this one?
Open Source and standards are a natural fit. We have been spending a lot of time over the past years establishing the Cocoon portal as a standard (JSR 168, WSRP) compliant portal engine. Of course, Carsten has been doing most of the work and has made a bit of a name for himself in this area.Recently (and he is too modest to blog this himself), Carsten was asked if he wanted to participate in the expert group of the upcoming Portlet Specification 2.0 (JSR 286). We joined the JCP last year and as such are really pleased that Carsten will soon be helping to drive the standardization in the portal space!Hopefully this will increase the visibility for the Cocoon portal even more and we can show just how powerful it is.Technorati Tags: Cocoon, JSR 286
I've always been a fan of flight simulators and Microsoft's Flight Simulator was often a "must have" back in the days... So, now we have a shiny new XBox 360. I'm wondering if Microsoft will be bringing the new Flight Simulator X (check out the visuals) out for that platform too. Anyone know?
Lawrence Lessig has released an MP4 version of his presentation on Google's Book Search - "Is Google Book Search Fair Use". The presentation combines his slides with a synchronized talk. Extremely interesting especially when he details the consequences that go far beyond "just" books.And I decide to call this: Slidecasting.Technorati Tags: Google, Lessig, Slidecasting
Quote of the day.That's the way it is now. They don't ask you if you'll do it - they just ask if you can remember it.Jackson Browne - Solo Acoustic, Vol. 1 - Intro to "The Bird of St. Marks".A lengthy drive to Berlin and back today gave me plenty of time to listen to this great CD. Thanks Frank.Technorati Tags: jackson browne
Steve Jobs announces a whole bunch of stuff at MacWorld. Check out Engadget's report for details. Main news I guess are the new iMac and MacBook Pro as the first new Intel based computers. The MacBook Pro is quoted as being 4-5x faster than the "old" Powerbook G54. Especially for Gianugo.Technorati Tags: Apple, MacBook
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