Feb
11
2010
Some of the things that Mike Tienman said in this interview with InternetNews.com I could have said myself.
I have come to believe that a license alone is neither a secret to success nor an absolution of sin.
Exactly: choosing a free license is a moral choice but that alone won’t secure neither commercial success nor any [...]
Tags: business, community, free software, licensing, open source
Dec
03
2009
I was very concerned when DG Competition announced that they needed to take more time to investigate the merger of Oracle and Sun because of MySQL. The deal for me seemed not only natural for business reasons, but also naturally neutral towards consumers. MySQL is safe also in Oracle’s hands because the project, with so [...]
Tags: acquisition, business, deal, free software business, funambo., merger, open source, oracle, sun
Nov
23
2009
Back from Italian Agile Day where Stefano Fornari of Funambol with Marco Abis of Sourcesense animated a debate about mixing Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Agile development methods. I used to think that there was no issue because, after all, free software is a way to release software and it’s not a development method [...]
Tags: agile, codesniper, community, development, floss, free software, funambol, iad, incentives, open source, scrum
Nov
14
2009
There are many companies making money with Free/Open Source Software and it’s still not easy to identify a free software company. I’ve always advocated to put respect of customers’ needs and ethics in digital society as one of the crucial elements to identify a free software business.
Simon Phipps has put together a scorecard, a set [...]
Tags: ethics, free software buisiness, open source, phipps, scorecard
Apr
09
2009
Gianugo Rabellino has given me more food for thoughts about my research on Free/Libre Open Source software development and Agile/Scrum methods. His latest post contains a sentence that summarizes my key finding so far:
At the end of the day, this means that the customer is there – it just happens to coincide with the community [...]
Tags: agile, community, development, floss, funambol, open source, openscrum, scrum
Mar
20
2009
Funambol engineering team uses the SCRUM methodology to develop software. It’s a very interesting method that seems highly compatible with free/libre open source software development habits. It mandates fast release cycles (like the release early/release often mantra), teams that can self-organize. SCRUM also mandates fixed time (2 to 6 weeks) to complete a development cycle [...]
Tags: agile, community, development, floss, funambol, open source, openscrum, scrum
Jan
22
2009
Scott Mc Nealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been asked by the new Obama administration to prepare a paper about ‘open source’. From what I read on the BBC report, though, he is using a tired losing proposition:
The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.
To me [...]
Tags: fsf, mcnealy, obama, open source, osi
Nov
20
2007
Ieri ho partecipato alla tavola rotonda dopo il convegno Open Source come modello di business da cui sono rientrato poco impressionato: mi sembrava tutto troppo 1.0, già visto. Non mi hanno impressionato le ricerche presentate da un dottorando di ingegneria, I modelli manageriali dei progetti Open Source e Qualità e costi del software Open [...]
Tags: business, conferenza, floss, free software business, open source