El pasado 11-febrero tuvo lugar en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, ETSINF-UPV, la 2ª CONFERENCIA ETSINF-UPV, “Aplicación de las tecnologías Web 2.0 / Redes Sociales y Software Libre a la Estrategia Empresarial” con el lema “¿RETIENES O COMPARTES?. El objetivo de la charla era mostrar cómo aplicar las nuevas [...]

Continuando con el estudio relativo al gasto TIC en las administrationes públicas españolas [1] , el grupo de I+D OpenInnova ha analizado esta vez las partidas económicas destinadas por las administraciones locales en materia TIC.Las principales conclusiones derivadas del informe IRIA 2008 son: Hasta la fecha se estima que las AAPP locales han incurrido en un gasto [...]

In the context of an editorial against the European Commission decision on questioning the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, the Wall Street Journal writes:

Open-source software has achieved fetish status in certain precincts in Europe [...]

This has to do with Sun controlling MySQL since the MySQL AB acquisition. Apparently, the fact that Oracle, which is already holding a really large share of the database market (about a half of it), would also control MySQL, is one of the objections considered by the European Comission.

The WSJ correctly explains that libre software can be modified and distributed by anyone, but fails to explain the control that the leader developers can have on the product, specially in the case of MySQL, which has carefully avoided including external developers in the core team. Another point is how the market for MySQL is estimated in dollars… In several cases I’ve been talking with colleagues about how to do fair comparations in market share between proprietary and libre software products, but certainly using the cost of licenses and maintenance contracts doesn’t seem to fair to me. Number of installations could be a better number (although can also be skewed, of course).

In any case, it is interesting to learn that WSJ considers that libre software has “fetish status” in any place, even if that place is Europe. Next time you visit a customer, trying to sell some libre software solutions, you can claim: “this is what WSJ considers as having fetish status”

El Ministerio de Tecnología de Korea tiene en marcha un concurso sobre desarrollo de software libre (el Open Source Challenge 2009). En la categoría internacional pueden presentarse desarrollos de casi cualquier tipo. Aún hay cancha para apuntarse: hasta final de agosto. Al apuntarse se especifica un plan de desarrollo, y luego el programa tiene que estar listo a finales de octubre. El primer premio son 5 millones de wons.

Dicho así parece muchísimo, pero al cambio deben ser unos 2.800 euros (que tampoco está mal, para algún caprichito ya da). De todas formas, creo que lo más interesante no es la cantidad que se ofrece como premio, sino el hecho de que se haya convocado el concurso. Si tenías por ahí un proyecto para los próximos meses, quizás merezca la pena registrarse…

The new issue of Upgrade (the CEPIS magazine) is devoted to “Libre Software for Enterprises“. It includes a nice paper about the Morfeo exprience, “The Morfeo Project: an Open Source Approach towards Open Innovation“, by Cristina Breña and Andrés-Leonardo Martínez. The whole issue is open access, so you can directly read the paper.

For those who are not familiar with the Morfeo community, its history, its goals and motivations, and its current status, this can be a brief, but good, summary. A version of the paper in Spanish has already been published by Novatica (in its paper version), and will be available online shortly.

In any case, maybe you’ll also enjoy reading the other papers in the issue.

[Disclamer: I'm one of the guest editors of the special issue, so I'm not going to talk bad things about it ]

© 2009 Andrés Leonardo Martínez Ortiz. Some rights are reserved. This document is distributed under the ”Attributions-ShareAlike 3.0” Creative Commons License available here. The complexity of (software) systems used in complex organization such as Universities, SME’s, Public Administration and Enterprises are rising over and over. For the next twenty years these system are going [...]

Herald T. Lane, IBM’s Standards and Open source Director writes at “Best Practices for Standard Communities” de IEEE Computer: “The technical standards world is in danger of being broken, hijacked, and exploited by partisan legal and political maneuvering”… … “Vendors have been known to propose standardization for specifications of dubious quality, or have secretly ensured that their [...]

Enmarcado dentro del Programa AVANZA FORMACIÓN del Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio, nace el proyecto “MORFEO FORMACION”: Formación y Certificación en Tecnología Libres (http://www.morfeo-formacion.org) como una acción encaminada a formar en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (TIC) relativas a la aplicación del software libre en las empresas y Administraciones Públicas, dirigida especialmente [...]

Richard Stallman has just published a smart analysis ([1]) on the proposal of the “Pirate Party” to reduce copyright restriction. The first reading of the proposal could suggest that it will improve the free software movement (shortening of copyright for commercial use to a five-year period). However, a more detailed reading suggest that it is  a [...]

   ©2009 Cristina Breña Breña. Algunos derechos reservados. Esta obra se distribuye bajo licencia Creative Commons “Reconocimiento-Compartir Igual 3.0″ disponible en http://creativecommons/licences/by-sa/3.0/es The II Meeting Morfeo in Latin America was the best possible scenario to expand the network of contacts and collaborations that now bind the Latin American Morfeo offices in the country and ours. Also, it [...]

Today it’s Friday, this should be Barcelona After several years not coming, I’m back in the Jornades de Programari Lliure, the largest (and finest!) event in Catalonia related to free software. I have a talk shared with Pedro Coca (also working at GSyC/LibreSoft), presenting the Morfeo Competence Center on Libre Software. If you want some more detail, have a look at the slides we’re using for the presentation.

This evening, at EOI (Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain), our GSyC/LibreSoft group is helping to organize a short seminar on free software for enterprises. Talks will be delivered by Stéphane Ribas (INRIA) and Arnaud Laprévote (Mandriva), two of our Qualipso partners.

©2009 Andrés Leonardo Martínez Ortiz and Cristina Breña Breña.Algunos derechos reservados. Esta obra se distribuye bajo licencia Creative Commons “Reconocimiento-Compartir Igual 3.0″ disponible en http://creativecommons/licences/by-sa/3.0/es “No estoy implicado en la experiencia humana y no tengo cualidades redentoras como hombre”.Gabe Fenton en El ángel más tonto del mundo.Christopher Moore. El reciente estudio realizado por Red Hat[1] revela la [...]

Open Innovation in Global Networks seems to be an interesting report, by the OECD, on open innovation and how it is now emerging as a global trend. Global here means both that it is found everywhere, but also that networks for open innovation are becoming more and more global. One interesting impact of this fact is that local R&D poles are less important than they were in the past. Since open innovation networks can now expand through many centers in several countries, using in many cases non-formal relationships, being (geographically) close to the sources of innovation could be less important than in the past. Is this signaling a new direction towards “virtual” R&D poles, for which geographical proximity of actors is no longer relevant?

Hoy estoy en la ETSI de Montes de la UPM, participando en la jornada “Experiencias de las Universidades Públicas madrileñas: La Transferencia de Tecnología y Conocimiento a la Empresa” (triptico), organizada por los Consejos Sociales de las Universidades de Madrid.

El título de mi ponencia es “El software libre como modelo de transferencia tecnológica“. Comento el modelo de transferencia tecnológica basado en usar software libre y crear comunidades de transferencia alrededor de el. Y es que, en mi opinión, el software libre tiene un gran potencial para acceder a tecnología, y para que las innovaciones pasen de los centros de I+D a la industria y a la sociedad. A ver qué sale

 “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” (Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, 1963 ) Members of I+D OpenInnova Group have written a research called “El coste de oportunidad derivado de las trayectorias tecnológicas” [1] “El verdadero coste de la elección tecnológica: ¡Cómo emplear (sabiamente) el dinero del contribuyente!” [...]

© 2009 Andrés Leonardo Martínez Ortiz. Some rights are reserved. This document is distributed under the ”Attributions-ShareAlike 3.0” Creative Commons License available here.  This post is not available in English yet. Please try with the Spanish version.