As mentioned in the previous post, I was at Open World Forum in Paris these past couple of days. Previous notes covered today’s FOSSBazaar workshop, here’s a veritable panaply of miscellany from the other sessions.

Opening Keynotes

Risk of balkanisation in communities govt (mil.forge) commercial (gcode) ?developer (eclipse)

Worldwide IT spend 3.48T 18% of apps abandoned 55% “challenged”

Poprietary software quality 20-30 defects/kloc Open source 1-2 defects/kloc

Redhat vp (tieman) “free” means the product “ceases to exist” … It’s all about services

OSOR - Exit costs as or more important. If the cost to enter is free, exit costs become very important. Vendor lockin=no exit.

James Besson - Whiter Open Source

Open source isn’t new. e.g. Steam Engines - exchanged detailed information about their engines and what kind of efficiency. Personal exchanges, visits, publications, industry/engineering institutions.

Great inventors - had great PR. [similar comments in recent BBC IOT podcast on Leibnitz vs Newton]. We have “hero” status partly because of proprietary conditions. [Also it’s human nature].

The great innovations were limited in locale and time. e.g. steam workers in Cornwall. Shows examples of industries lasting 10-30 years.

Applies to open source?

  • Consolidation

  • User-friendliness? not a great concern; 2/3 of demand doesn’t require UI

  • Coexistence (commercial software, patent trolls) Uneasy, but institutions are forming to deal with patents and they’re not fatal threats. Also, there’s a “proprietary burden”; MS one of the most sued companies.

… FLOSS will be sticking around

SourceForge

Sourceforge talks stats (by mahemoff)

ohlo stats - language choice in open source repos (by mahemoff)

ohlo stats - jquery vs prototype in open source repos (by mahemoff)

Recently acquired ohlo - massive open source study

Git 25% / Subversion 63% / CVS 7%

Growing language - “it galls me to call Javascript a language, but

Fastest growing: Javascript Python C*

Most popular: Java Python PHP

W. Europe 48%, EE 11%, speaker points out AUSTRALIA is vastly over-represented as a contributor.

Communities Session

This was three talks from people running open source communities - Apace, Eclipse, Linux Foundations.

Apache talk

Covers how to get involved in the community, even simple things like submit a bug are a good start.

Know who you talk to - don’t lecture Roy fielding on the http spec

Eclipse

Was never intended to be just an IDE, the IDE was supposed to be the killer app for the platform, which was supposed to be tools around java.

After launching eclipse foundation in 2004, completely independent, unlike jcp you can’t find any small prit about IBM vetoing, and membership is set so IBM can’t control the vote.

Eclipse guy: If you’re in a commercially led ecosystem a la Microsoft, your only exit strategy is they eat you or they kill you. In an open source ecosystem, you’re working with a trusted partner.

Eidystem for innovation needs:

  • Licensing model
  • Project model
  • Governance model
  • Tech architecture • open source organisations like Linu, apache, eclipse give you these out of the box…so it’s crazy when people start their own - end up paying legal fees etc. Wastage.

Eclipse projects hidhlighted - the browser, modelling, CDT.

Jim Zemlin - Linux foundation (the best speaker of the conference IMO)

Different to apache with its alkos all volunteer staff. Budget of around $3M and 16 full time staff. Monthly conf calls, f2f once a quarter.

“everyone want linus’s autograph. I count myself as the only autograph Linus wants, he wants it every 2 weeks”. CEO, Linux foundation.

Runs big legal defence projects - patent commons, linux911 …

Linux roadmap - growing in every segment from embedded to supercomputers. Becoming de faci standar and supporting cross frtilisation eg a mobile manufacturer opted for Linux, contributed coed to reduce battery usage which went into the kernel, and saved power and cooling costs for supercomputers.

The Tweets

  • Brazil olympic victory overshadowed by today's #OpenWorldForum #owf victory for most open sourcey government. The games relegated to page 7. Fri Oct 02 22:31:48 +0000 2009
  • Fossbazaar Conference — OpenWorldForum, October 2, 2009 http://post.ly/76If Fri Oct 02 21:48:56 +0000 2009
  • Enlightened self-interest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://post.ly/73y3 Fri Oct 02 15:42:16 +0000 2009
  • Australia is vastly over-represented as an open-source contributor :)) W Europe biggest region at 48%. #ohloh #owf #openworldforum Fri Oct 02 15:11:28 +0000 2009
  • no prizes for guessing fastest growing language. "it galls me to call javascript a language, but ..." #owf #openworldforum #ohloh Fri Oct 02 15:08:15 +0000 2009
  • SourceForge speaker talking Ohloh stats: GIT now has 25% of commits! SVN 63%. CVS 7%. #owf #openworldforum Fri Oct 02 15:05:46 +0000 2009
  • report of open source used as an internal battle - product open sourced in a failed attempt to become the corporate standard #owf Fri Oct 02 13:58:12 +0000 2009
  • captchas drop conversions by 7.3% (and presumably bug the remaining 92.7%) http://is.gd/3SnfJ (tx @usa2day)#fowa #ux Fri Oct 02 13:55:07 +0000 2009
  • removing barriers to access is key to a successful open source project - e.g. encouraging localisers, docs, feedback. #owf #openworldforum Fri Oct 02 13:49:58 +0000 2009
  • RT @wadje12: Q: How about countries or contributors who are not allowed to contribute? Such as Cuba vs US, or a 14 year old contribute #owf Fri Oct 02 13:43:23 +0000 2009
  • open source "community management" does not exist because you never manage people, you commit to them #owf Fri Oct 02 13:37:36 +0000 2009
  • @SiriusCorp i confirm #owf wifi is definitely of dubious stability. Fri Oct 02 08:55:26 +0000 2009
  • Shuttleworth on #ubuntu UI: want buddhist medidation style of attention: focus in one place, but aware of surroundings (=="ambient"?) #OWF Fri Oct 02 08:53:19 +0000 2009

    Mark Shuttleworth interviewed (by mahemoff)
    (getting interviewed, not his keynote from which the above tweet came)

  • Ingres CEO: not that all customers contribute code, but for those who do, that's a strong vote for the feature they've built Thu Oct 01 10:27:58 +0000 2009
  • "Is Oracle an open source company?" if there was ever a moment to "pull a kanye" ... l:safe-distance-from-the-stage #OWF #OpenWorldForum Thu Oct 01 09:57:27 +0000 2009
  • cloud speaker talking up http://bit.ly/2NqL9C and http://bit.ly/1wEhxH #OWF Thu Oct 01 09:41:17 +0000 2009
  • Lots of "gratis" and "libre" from our keynote speaker. Appears to be talking about beer. #owf #OpenWorldForum Thu Oct 01 08:55:58 +0000 2009
  • Keynoter announces he's still in Paris, admonishes previous speakers for English usage, and proceeds with keynote en francais #owf Thu Oct 01 08:48:51 +0000 2009
  • no big surprise, but government IT is the big deal in the businessy end of the open source community #OWF #OpenWorldForum #NoOfficialHashTag Wed Sep 30 22:42:47 +0000 2009
  • back from #OpenWorldForum mingling in the fine setting of l'hôtel de ville, paris ("town hall" just doesn't...well it just doesn't.) #OWF Wed Sep 30 22:38:24 +0000 2009

    IMG_0024 (by mahemoff)

(via List Of Tweets)

IMG_0106 (by mahemoff)

(We thought the entire audience was going to be invited on stage, but they stopped short at surnames beginning with "K-N".)