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Announcing the Experts of Open Innovation Discussion Panel

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Announcing the Experts of Open Innovation Discussion Panel

These are the experts I will welcome at the Open Innovation discussion panel which I moderate at OSCOM 4 conference:

BÃ¥rd Farstad

BÃ¥rd Farstad is the Software Development Manager of eZ systems [http://www.ez.no]. He has been working professionally with CMS development since 1999 and have written many general purpose libraries like XML parser, SOAP library (client/server), XML-RPC library (client/server). He is also one of the main developers in the eZ publish CMS. In his spare time he likes to play with his daughter, play the guitar and is also into aquascaping.

Roy T. Fielding

Roy T. Fielding is chief scientist at Day Software [http://www.day.com/], a leading provider of enterprise content management software. Dr. Fielding is best known for his work in developing and defining the modern World Wide Web infrastructure. He is the primary architect of the current Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1), co-author of the Internet standards for HTTP and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI), and a founder of several open-source software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server Project that produces the software for over 64% of public Internet web sites. Dr. Fielding received his Ph.D. degree in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.

David Heath

David Heath is Web Application Developer at OneWorld International [http://www.oneworld.net] in London. The portal oneworld.net brings together the latest news and views from over 1,600 organizations promoting human rights awareness and fighting poverty worldwide.

Chalu Kim

Chalu Kim began his career as a research engineer â?? starting with real-time coding of the Evans and Sutherland PS300 and mission rehearsal to nuclear imaging. For the next decade, Chalu Kim was responsible for developing new technology and took executive roles at companies such as IBM and a number of start-ups. In 2000, Chalu Kim founded eGenius [http://www.egenius.com], a technology cooperative to help organizations benefit from the use of technology, especially open-source. He is actively involved in Zope and Lenya and Squid and other open-source projects. Mr. Kim lives in New York with his wife and a house cat from Chinatown.

Eric Pugh

Eric Pugh [http://www.opensourceconnections.com/] is a member of the Turbine and Maven development teams and an experienced Java enterprise developer specializing in leveraging open source software. Eric has built several Java based websites using Jetspeed, Turbine, and WebWork MVC frameworks. In addition to coding, Eric has written for OnJava and contributed to an upcoming book on Hibernate.

Informatik 2004: Managing Internet platforms with predominant P2P traffic

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Conference Minutes

Conference: Informatik 2004
Workshop: Algorithms and Protocols for Efficient Peer-to-Peer Applications
Talk: Managing Internet platforms wit predominant P2P traffic
Presenter: Gerhard HaÃ?linger, Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems, Darmstadt/Germany

– 50-80% of traffic is caused by peer-to-peer data exchange, 5-20% account to HTTP access (peek values occure during day, low values during night).
– On Slyck, statistics about file-sharing protocols in use can be found.
– eDonkey protocol is dominating in Germany (>80%), U.S.: FastTrack (>70%)
– Caches for P2P traffic are problematic due to techical reasons, but also due to copyright problems with data in the cache. A participant pointed out that actually every cachy can potentially contain illegal data, it’s just that concerning p2p, the assumption is always that it transfers illegal data per se.
– Portions of P2P traffic in the access regions are larger then in the backbones and even smaller on international links
– P2P traffic characteristics over time is favourable for ISPs due to the smoothing effect on the daily traffic profile (e.g. video transfer of several Gbyte may last for days). But those characteristics make the increase in traffic volumen hardly predictable with high risk for planning & extension process in internet provider networks

Wanted: Experts for "Open Innovation" Discussion Panel

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

For OSCOM 4, I am organizing the discussion panel “Open Innovation” which takes place Sept 30, 16:00 – 17:45 (more information below). If you feel like you could contribute to the discussion as an expert, please write to me in private and let me know your field of expertise. Actually, everyone is an expert on something – so please do not hesitate to contact me!

The discussion will be a kind of brainstorming session that could well end in chaos or deep enlightement – depending on the moderator (me) and the attendees. If you come as an expert, I might ask you some specific questions on your field of knowledge and the other participants might do the same as well. Experts do not need to prepare any presentation, just be there, have an open mind and enjoy the experiment.

So, let me know: sandro dot zic at zzoss dot com

Cheers!
Sandro
—-
Discussion Panel
Open Innovation: Learning from Open Source

The fundamental strength of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) community is how it allows collections of very different groups and individuals to cooperate, develop, innovate and share.

This discussion panel seeks to bring together the forward thinkers attending OSCOM to discuss the specific characteristics of innovation in the FLOSS community and how they could be adopted by business leaders, educators, scientists and politicians.

The panel will discuss:
* the cultural norms, economic factors and technical mechanisms that the FLOSS community relies on
* the broad cultural norms and economic dynamics of various major non-FLOSS communities
* how and why these norms and mechanism are different
* where and how the strength of the FLOSS movement can be shared with other cultures and organizations, from companies and universities to activist groups and non-profit organizations.
—-

Informatik 2004 & KI 2004

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Now that summer’s over, the second half of this year’s conference season starts. For me, conference hopping resumes in Ulm/Germany, which is just around the corner of my new home town Biberach. Actually, it’s two conferences in one from September 20-24: Informatik 2004 and the other on artificial intelligence.

I will definitely attend the following two workshops (because I am interested in the topic, but as well because I help out the organisers):

Algorithms and Protocols for Efficient Peer-to-Peer Applications

Open Source Software in an Industrial Environment

Haven’t decided yet which other sessions to attend, there are just too many interesting things going on…

Thanks to Alexander Kaiser who made me aware of this fantastic event and who helped me get the ticket 😉

The Secretary to the Cathedral's Friends Resigned

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

If the company MySQL is the cathedral in the bazaar, then Zak Greant was the secretary to the cathedral’s friends – he recently resigned.

His official title was “Community Advocate”. Once, he described his work to me like this: “Imagine MySQL AB as a person that acts in a social environment, then me and David Axmark take care that this person behaves properly in the Open Source community and is accepted within the group.” The last 2 years, Zak was mostly concerned with the licensing issues that arouse when the MySQL client library became GPLed.

Zak’s two main concerns were – not only concerning the licensing issues – to fully understand the Open Source community, not only that of the MySQL database, and to make the community understand the company MySQL, the reasoning behind their actions. I have attended several of Zak’s talks at conferences and it always amazed me, how well he tried to balance out the interests of the company and the community. I write “tried”, because not all interests could be satisfied, as some of them have a conflicting nature.

It was Zak’s respectful behaviour towards anyone contacting him that made him a person as well respected by the community. His respect for others is deeply rooted in his professional approach and work ethics as well as his believe in the principles of the Open Source community and good social behaviour in general.

I am very much looking forward to see what he will be doing in the future and who will hire him. For MySQL, it must be hard to find someone as committed to the job as Zak was, also someone as eloquently acting within the community. MySQL is loosing a skilled and experienced secretary for the cathedral’s friends – but I am pretty sure, that Zak will stay with the friends of the cathedral.

Session at PHP Conference: Build and Installation Tools

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

With the advent of PHP 5 and the push to the enterprise market, professional build and installation environments for PHP applications become more and more important. My session at this year’s International PHP Conference discusses pros and cons of such a build system and compares existing solutions like PEAR Installer, Phing, ZZ/OSS Installer. Furthermore, I will take a look at the Java world and identify missing tools that would be nice to have in the PHP world.

MySQL FLOSS License Exception Discussed at OSI plus Community Crisis Management Analysed

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

A substantial thread discussing the MySQL FLOSS License Exception has evolved on the mailinglist of the Open Source Initiative.

Some quotes:

Essentially, they’re trying to retrofit via a licence exception some of the licence semantics of LGPL. (Rick Moen)

As for the MySQL License Exception, I believe its interpretation of the effects of the GPL, and its description of what happens when you create *collective works* with MySQL and other open source software, is accurate. I also happen to believe that this “Exception” doesn’t need to be an exception at all, because that’s how the GPL should be interpreted anyway. “Independent and separate works” can never be forced under the GPL if they are not *derivative works* of GPL programs. The MySQL folks have tried to eliminate confusion about their licenses by stating in their own words what the GPL and LGPL really do anyway. (Lawrence Rosen, OSI)

In way of a brief update, the exception is currently being reviewed by our lawyers and then should be going through to our CEO for approval. (Zak Greant, MySQL)

Actually, v0.2 of the exception will apply to both client and server. (Zak Greant, MySQL)

It is interesting to see how MySQL has made its way out of the PHP community when switching the client code to GPL by introducing and openly discussing the license exception. I think it would be appropriate to label it “community crisis management”, a new discipline for future business consultants in the FLOSS market 🙂

Essentially, the trick that did it is common-place: once there is a conflict, only a pro-active strategy can re-ensure trust between the involved parties. No doubts, that MySQL has been late to actively seek for a solution with the PHP devs in the beginning. I guess that the delay is correlated with the experiences that MySQL made in the lawsuite with NuSphere, because MySQL had to thoroughly think through all the potential implications of a license exception to never let happen the NuSphere problem again. Given that in the future even bigger players (only an oracle can tell who…) could use wholes in the license exception to damage MySQL, one can understand the still very careful proceeding.

OSCOM Germany to be founded at LinuxTag

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

OSCOM Germany [1] will be founded at LinuxTag [2], on June 26th 2004. The not-for-profit organisation brings together developers and users of Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS). LinuxTag is Europe’s largest Open Source event.

OSCOM organizes events, promotes standards and undertakes projects to further the state of the art of Open Source Content Management. OSCOM promotes Open Source Content Management solutions as powerful, affordable and flexible replacements for proprietary products. With the founding of OSCOM Germany, the first national sub-organisation of OSCOM International [3] will come to life.

The birth of OSCOM Germany will happen at a session of the free congress, Saturday June 26th, 10:00 [4], where some OSCOM members will present the organization.

Please subscribe to the OSCOM Germany general mailinglist [5] to keep up-to-date or to contact the members.

[1] http://de.oscom.org
[2] http://www.linuxtag.org
[3] http://www.oscom.org
[4] http://www.linuxtag.org/2004/talk.do?id=e121
[5] http://oscom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general-de

4th Conference on Open Source CMS – Request for Papers

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

There are many PHP CMS out there and the next conference on Open Source CMS is ahead, organized by OSCOM with assistance from the Apache Software Foundation.

Take a look at the OSCOM.4 Request for Papers and feel free to propose a session. Of course, anyone is invited to attend at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich, Switzerland, Wednesday, Sept 29 – Friday, October 1, 2004.

Let me know if you come: please ping- or trackback this entry, or write a comment. See you there!