FLOSSmole - Collaborative collection and analysis of free/libre/open source project data

FLOSSmole is a meta-repository, created in 2014, of Free Libre Open Source Software projects data, which allows getting, using and/or donating Open Source project data with the next aims:

• freely provide data about free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) projects in multiple formats for anyone to download;
• integrate donated data & scripts from other research teams;
  
• provide a community for researchers to discuss public data about FLOSS development.

FLOSSmole itself collects also data from software development forges, although, as explained before, it also accepts data donations.

In order to get data available in FLOSSmole, three options exist:

1. Flat delimited files
   Available in link FLOSSdata. The files are named with the abbreviation of the forge or source (e.g. Sourceforge is "SF", GitHub is "GH", and so on and so forth).
2. SQL files (mysql creates and inserts, generated from mysqldump)
   Available in next link: FLOSSdata. These files all start with the word "datamart", then the forge abbreviation, then the date. 
3. Direct database access
   Request access by joining the FLOSSmole mailing list.

Regarding the usage of the data, some resources are available as well:

• Database schema documents to help on figure out data available.
  
• Data collection details. An additional source of documentation about each of the sources of data existing on FLOSSmole.
  
• Examples such as visualizations and queries demonstrate potential uses of the FLOSSmole data.
  
• Research publications related FLOSSmole.
  
• Mailing list is also a good help to start on data usage. 

Several data  covering the period 2004 to present are available for usage, and growing with data sets from over 1500 web-based collection operations, including data for millions of open source projects and their developers.

What are you waiting to start using them?

Bitergia - Software analytics for your peace of mind

In previous posts, MetricsGrimoire and FLOSSMetrics were presented to show how already existing Free/Open Source Software Projects already exist in order to obtain metrics and try to evaluate the Quality and State of the Art of software for a particular project, whether it is FLOSS or not.

However, these tools, that are focused on retrieval and storage of the projects on a Database in order to created structured data, do not focus on the analysis, presentation or exploitation of the data.
 For this reason, the company Bitergia, has created a set of tools that enable, on the one hand, an analysis framework, written in GNU-R, called VizGrimoireR, and, on the other hand, a Dashboard-like web presentation of the metrics analysed, through the VizGrimoireJS library. A demo can be observed on this link.

These tools, together with MetricsGrimoire, help on making the circle narrower in order to generate complete reports to help on diagnosing, analysing and improving software projects (Free/Open Source preferably, but not necessarily).

Examples of the kind of reports being generated are, for example:

Mediawiki: http://bitergia.com/public/previews/2012_11_mediawiki/
Webkit: http://bitergia.com/public/reports/webkit/2013_01/index.html
FusionForge: http://bitergia.com/public/previews/2012_11_fusionforge/
OpenStack (Havana Release): http://blog.bitergia.com/2013/10/17/the-openstack-havana-release/
LifeRay: http://blog.bitergia.com/2013/10/23/liferay-and-its-growth-during-the-last-years/

This company, which has still a long way to go, above all in the Private Companies environment, rather than Open Source Projects, is also a good example on how to provide services through Free/Open Source Software, justifying that business models around Open Source are possible to implement.

FLOSSmetrics

FLOSSmetrics (Free/Libre and Open Source Software Metrics) was a Project, funded by the European Commission, whose main objective was to retrieve and analyse a big database with information and metrics about Free/Open Source Software projects using already existing methodologies, and relying on already developed tools.

The project achieved the retrieval of more than 2800 FLOSS projects in Melquiades (lamentably down nowadays), by using existing Open Source tools such as CVSAnalY.

Among the most important broadcast activities, a talk in FOSSDEM 2009.

The main objectives of the project were:

- Identification and evaluation of sources of data.
- Creation of a comprehensive database from previous sources.
- Integration of already available tools to process data and create a complete platform for its availability.
- Maintenance of the empirical database by automation of extraction of data of thousands of Open Source projects with extraction tools.
- Develop of studies, (benchmarking, simulations and comparisons of FLOSS projects).
- Propagation and exploitation of the results.

To achieve the objectives, delivery of next Work Packages (WP) was performed:

• WP1 - Data Sources
• WP2 - Retrieval System
• WP3 - Database
• WP4 - Analyses
• WP5 - High Level Studies
• WP6 - Visualization
• WP8 - SMEs
• WP9 - Industrial Exp./Val.
• WP10 - Exploitation
• WP11 - Productivity

Among the different documents resultant of the project, FLOSS Guide for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) is a very interesting one, advent to present a set of guidelines and suggestions for the adoption of open source software within SMEs

On 2010, elaboration of a Final Report  concluded this very interesting and fruitful collaboration project.

Developers Motivations - Why start contributing to Open Source Projects?

There is a huge amount of software developers who always have worked on privative software, basically, for companies that produce software .

However, as an additional task, it is interesting for them to understand why they should start contributing to Open Source projects.

On next video, Jessica McKellar, Open Source advocate, core developer of Python and member of the Python Software Foundation, and maintainer for Twisted and OpenHatch [1],  explains, among other stuff, some clear reasons about why someone should consider, at least, start contributing to an Open Source project [2]:

From Jessica's perspective, contribution to Open Source projects should be performed in order to:

1) Give back to the community. Above all, if you like a particular technology or project, you should consider start contributing to it as a way of restitution.

2) People. As far as she is concerned, smartest people she knows comes from Open Source project movement.

3) Education.  With a Master on Computer Engineering, Jessica recognizes not many lessons being taken on Software Engineering. Contributing to an Open Source project is a way of enforcing knowledge on Software Engineering, as well  as obtaining experience.

4) Work. Open Source contribution is a way of transparency and a "do-ocracy" way of showing someone's capabilities to people and companies hiring.

5) Enjoying. In the end, contributing to a community ends being an enjoyable thing.

The video also shows a complete bunch of topics on FLOSS contribution, as different ways to contribute. Apart from that, Jessica also explains on a very simple way the different technical aspects common to many projects, such as the Bug Issue tracker, the ways of performing changes in code and generating a patch, etc.

References:
[1] http://web.mit.edu/jesstess/www/
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXnNgLmd6BM

FLOSS Foundations

Linux Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Apache Foundation, Mozilla Foundation and Eclipse Foundation could be categorized as the "Top Foundations" in terms of popularity. Hosting projects as the Linux Kernel, GNU tools, the Apache Web Server, Mozilla Firefox or the Eclipse Editor.

However, there are more Foundations apart from the previous ones. In fact, there is a whole bunch of Foundations, associated to the most successful Open Source projects. A good place to check them is the Foundations directory of http://flossfoundations.org/, where other important foundations can be found. Among Foundations associated to Open Source Projects, it can be found [2]:

- The Blender Foundation
- Django Software Foundation
- FreeBSD Foundation
- Gentoo Foundation
- GNOME Foundation
- KDE e.V.
- NetBSD Foundation
- OpenBSD Foundation
- The Perl Foundation
- PostgreSQL.US
- Python Foundation
- X.org Foundation

Besides this, we find other very important associations, not associated to a particular project, but to accomplish Open Source and Open-knowledge advocating and promotion. Examples of them are [2]:

- Wikimedia Foundation
- OpenSource Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Tex Users Group
- Creative Commons
- OpenDoc Society
- Subversion Corporation

Another category of associations are the ones having to do with regional promotion of FLOSS.  Examples of them [2]:

- Associaçao SoftwareLivre.org (Brasil)
- El Centro de Software Libre (Chile)
- Fundación Via Libre (Argentina)
- Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa
- Software Libre Argentina
- Software Livre Brasil
- Software Libre Chile

Some other Foundations are dedicated to promotion of open standards across the Web and Internet. The most remarkable examples are  [2]:

- Internet Software Consortium
- XMPP Standards Foundation
- Xiph.org

Last, but not least, other Foundations have to do with heterogeneous activities, such as Open Health promotion, Digital Rights defence,  Public-Domain works promotion, Social Development, etc. Examples of this kind of Foundations are:

- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Shuttleworth Foundation
- OpenHealth Tools
- OpenHardware Foundation

In the end, a lot of Foundations appearing on the list.
However, which are the most active? Which of them have greater supporters? Who of them have strong companies behind?
A good parameter for evaluation has to do with revenues. No doubt the most successful project, the Linux kernel, has behind the Foundation with the higher revenues. A good article from Brian Proffitt for ITWorld, showed the revenues of the most important Foundations in the USA [3]:

The Linux Foundation: 2010 Exercise:  Revenues: 9,618,043$
Mozilla Foundation: 2010 Exercise: Revenues: 1,934,659$
Free Software Foundation Inc.: 2009/2010 Exercise: Revenues: 889,400$
Python Software Foundation: 2010 Exercise: Revenues: 706,136$
Gnome Foundation Inc.: 2009/2010 Exercise: Revenues: 636,648$
Apache Software Foundation: 2010/2011 Exercise: Revenues: 539,410$

In the end, the Linux Foundation, surely because of the great companies behind it.

To conclude, just highlighting that, although the numbers of Computer, Technology and Internet industry are huge, no significant amount of money is handled by the most important Foundations (Linux Foundation as exception), taking into account the importance of the projects behind them, as well as the important labour they accomplish.

Reference:
[1] http://flossfoundations.org
[2]  http://flossfoundations.org/foundation-directory
[3] http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/260688/nonprofit-open-source-organizations-booming

Forgotten Names in Open Source - 2013 update

It is not the first time I write about forgotten names in Open Source world. However, I pretend to rewrite the list of forgotten names as time goes by, in order to include more names that I could have previously forgotten, or even that appear in the scene due to the increasing popularity in the actual Open Source scene.

For this reason, this post is not about Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Miguel de Icaza, ... These are  recognized names in Open Source Software environment.

In the "Open Source Hall of Fame", the most known names would be, from my perspective:
- Linus Torvalds: Linux/Git
- Richard Stallman: GNU

Period. These two names are the most known names in the scene., and continue to be, up to date. With a little bit less importance, but still very known, there is a bunch of name including:

- Miguel de Icaza: Gnome/Mono
- Mattias Ettrich: Kde
- Bruce Perens: OSI/Debian
- Eric S. Raymond: OSI/fetchmail
- Donald E. Knuth: Latex
- Theo de Raadt: OpenBSD/OpenSSH
- Mark Shuttleworth: Ubuntu

Meanwhile, on the other hand, there is a much bigger bunch of names that are not as recognized as they should. The aim of this entry is to bring to foreground some of these names, in order to recognize their contribution to the Open Source Community, and also allow readers of this blog to make their opinions of other names that should be included.
Below are, IMHO, the usually names that are not recognized as they should in the Open Source scene:

Robert McCool:
Original author of the NCSA HTTP server, which later turned into the Apache Web Server.

Jamie Zawinski:

American Computer programmer responsible for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser. He also maintained the XScreenSaver project

Ian Murdock:
Founder of the Debian distribution, wrote the Debian Manifesto in 1993 while a student at Purdue University.

Brian J. Fox:
Active developer of the FSF. Author of GNU Bash, GNU Makeinfo, GNU Info, GNU Finger, and readline libraries.

Alan Cox:
One of the first Linux kernel testers, Cox discovered and fixed many of existing bugs and went on to rewrite much of the networking subsystem.
He then became one of the main developers and maintainers of the whole kernel.
He has also been involved in the GNOME and X.Org projects.
He left Linux kernel development in January 2013, supposedly due to familiar issues.

Greg Kroah-Hartman:
Linux kernel developer, maintainer of the stable branch, as well as various subsystems such as USB, driver core, debugfs, userspace I/O and TTY layer. It is surely the number 2 in Linux kernel project after Alan Cox has quit from the project.

Larry Wall:
Creator of Perl Programming Language, also known for beeing the developer of the "patch" tool or "rn", the Usenet client.

Guido Van Rossum:
Dutch computer programmer, author of the Python programming language.

Yukihiro Matsumoto:
Japanese computer scientist and software programmer, best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language.

Brendan Eich:
Computer programmer and creator of the JavaScript scripting language. He is the chief technology officer at the Mozilla Corporation.

Rasmus Lerdorf:
Danish programmer, creator of the PHP language.

John Chambers - Ross Ihakaand/Robert Gentleman:
Creators of S (Chambers) and R (Ihakaand/Gentleman) statistical computing programming languages.

Mart Otto/Jacob Thornton:
Creators of the Twitter Bootsrap framework, one of the most web frameworks used nowadays for creation of Responsive Web pages and Web applications.

James Strachan/Graeme Rocher:
For Groovy and Grails respectively.

Mark Spencer:

Computer engineer, original author of the GTK instant messaging client Gaim (renamed to Pidgin).
He is also the creator of Asterisk, a Linux-based open-sourced PBX in software, as well as l2tpd and the Cheops Network User Interface.

Michael Tiemann:
Contributor to free software include authorship of the GNU C++ compiler and work on the GNU C compiler and the GNU Debugger.

Daniel Robbins:
Founder and former chief architect of the Gentoo Linux project.

Rob Young:
Robert "Bob" Young is a serial entrepreneur whose biggest success has been Red Hat Inc, the open source software company.

Gaël Duval:
Graduate of the Caen University in France. In July 1998, he created Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva Linux), a Linux distribution originally based on Red Hat Linux and KDE.

Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis:
They both started development of Gimp in 1995 on Berkeley University, California.

Bill Joy / Chuck Haley:
The original code for vi was written by Bill Joy in 1976, as the visual mode for a line editor called ex that Joy had written with Chuck Haley.

Theodore Y. "Ted" Ts'o:
Is a software developer mainly known for his contributions to the Linux kernel, in particular his contributions to file systems (e2fsprogs, the userspace utilities for the ext2 and ext3 filesystems, and maintainer for the ext4 file system).

Harald Welte:
German programmer, well known as a hacker of the Linux kernel, enforcer of the GNU General Public License (GPL).  Also involved in a number of free software projects, such as Openmoko, (a version of Linux for completely open, low-cost, high-volume phones) and the netfilter/iptables project.

Jörg Schilling:
Computer programmer who has worked extensively on compact disc burning software "cdrtools", the Solaris Operating System and the OpenSolaris project. He has also been involved on BerliOS Linux distribution.

Rob Savoye:
Primary developer of Gnash, he is developer of the GNU Project. He has also worked on Red Hat, Debian, and other libre software projects.
Some of the projects he has worked on include GCC, GDB,[3] DejaGnu, Cygwin, eCos and CTAS.

Árpád Gereöffy:
He started development of MPlayer in 2000.

Fabrice Beillard:
Computer programmer who is best known as the creator of the FFmpeg and QEMU software projects.

Dries Buytaert:
Open-source software programmer notable as founder and lead developer of the Drupal CMS.

Ton Roosendaal:
Dutch software developer, known as the original creator of the open-source 3D creation suite Blender.

Andrew Tridgell:
Australian computer programmer Author of the Samba file server and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm.

Brian E. Paul:
Computer programmer who originally wrote and continues to maintain the source code for the open source Mesa graphics library.

John Gilmore:
Worked on several GNU projects, including maintaining the GNU Debugger in the early 90s, initiating GNU Radio in 1998, starting Gnash in December 2005 to create a free software player for Flash movies, and writing the pdtar program which became GNU tar.

Wietse Zweitze Venema:
Dutch programmer and physicist best known for writing the Postfix email system.

Marco Pesenti:
Main developer of Galeon, Gnome's Browser.

Guenter Bartsch:
Creator of Xine Media Player.

Mark Kretschmann:
Creator of the Amarok audio player.

Roger Dannemberg / Dominic Mazzoni:
Creators of the Audacity free digital audio editor.

Olivier Fourdan:
Creator and main developer of the XFCE desktop.

As conclusion, Free Software / Open Source / Libre Software as general concept, is a wide concept contributed by dozens and dozens of thousands of not only software developers, but also software distribution packagers, activists, translators, documentary people and other roles, that have cooperated to establish one of the most important advances on the last fifty years.

Which names are, from your perspective, missing from the list ?
Do you think there should be attributions to other people ?
Which are, in your opinion, the "forgotten names" ?

Video: one of the keys for project success

As the time goes by, video is with no doubt achieving a very important place as media used for promotion, advertising, teaching and many other stuff. Free software is not an exception.
Video plays an important role in these kind of projects, above all as powerful tool for Video Tutorial creation.
And the best example of how important Video is considered from project management view is the 100 Linux Video Tutorial started some months ago, in particular in November 2012, in order to build a complete video knowledge base around the most important Open source project, the Linux Operating System.

But Linux is not the only project who is empowering its community building by means of Video media.
A very important and active project, the Wordpress CMS, provides a unique web, wordpress.tv in order to host not only Video tutorials, but also Video media having to do with news, broadcasting WordCamp events, etc.

To summarize, Video is key for promotion and advertisement, and the extra-effort investment is a guarantee to help on your project promotion. Are you a project manager ? Take this into consideration: Video is one of the keys for success. It is not the only one for your project to be successful, but without Video being successful will be almost impossible.

References:
https://video.linux.com/100-linux-tutorials
http://wordpress.tv

The importance of release announcements

In an FLOSS project development, where the main goal is to provide the best functionality to a certain project or product, it is key important to advise the releases that are taking place.

Taking Calligra as example, who released less than one month ago its version 2.6, it can be observed the different statements that come together with the announcement, such as:

- New Applications / New Functionality
- Improvements on existing applications (in terms of productivity, capabilities, etc.)
- New Supported Formats (also applicable to standards, protocols, etc).

In terms of advertising, it is also mandatory, above all, to announce the new releases on a visible and/or easy reachable part of the main project web. The case of Calligra is a good example, where the released version number, 2.6, appears on the main title of the project:

Together with this state of their intentions, Calligra also focuses on wide spreading the new released versions in different manners, such as, for example, on a highlighted place of their "Announcements" section.

Apart from previous considerations, a deep SEO (Search Engine Optimization) task is also welcomed. In the case of Calligra Open Source Project, the search of "Calligra 2.6 released" key words on Google throws more than 118000 results, which is a considerable search index return.

Are you planning to release software?
Let everybody know !!!

Producing OSS 2nd version: Mission Accomplished

  It happens that, when someone smart ask for money to continue with a project, gets support and funds from "the community". It does not have to be related to Open Source, although it is the case.
  Karl Fogel started a KickStarter initiative to try to obtain 10000$ in order to write the second version of its brilliant book, "Producing Open Source Software".
  11 hours before initiative deadline, Fogel had reached more than 15000$ to accomplish the book second version update.
  Great news for the Open Source community!

Why migrating from Subversion to GIT?

Many FLOSS projects are being migrated to GIT version control system. But .. why GIT?

Basically, due to a bunch of characteristics GIT provides basically against Subversion, its precursor on version control system, widely used in FLOSS projects [1]:

- Distributed Nature: Meaning multiple redundant repositories are available, but, above all, that full functionality when disconnected from the network is available.

- Access Control: No commit access to other people must be provided. Distribution means merging what you want from what you want.

- Branch Handling: Every developer's working directory is a branch. GIT  provides advanced branching operations such as:

  * Tracking the project revision the branch started from.

  * Record branch merge events (author, time, date, changes, etc.)

  * Start the next merge at the last merge.

  * Easy conflict resource between branches while merging.

  In general, GIT behaves on a more efficient way compared to subversion when branches are involved

- Performance: In terms of speed operation, GIT design ensures extreme speed with operations such as:

  * Viewing file history

  * Committing changes

  * Performing diffs 

  * Merging and switching branches

  * Obtaining other revision of a file

- Smaller Space Requirements: Git's repository are extremely small compared to Subversion, above all if a huge number of files is being handled. Basically, GIT needs less size due to the fact that Subversion always work with two copies of the file, the one being modified by the user, together with the one in ".svn" directory where the original repository file is kept.

But, does Subversion have advantages against GIT? Of course it has:
- User Interfaces Maturity: due to Subversion being a more mature technology.

- Single repository: that makes easier to keep under control where something is stored.

- Access Controls: meaning possibility to specify read / write access controls in single location.

- Partial Checkout: with Subversion, the possibility to download just a sub directory of a repository is possible, but not with Git. This can mean a problem for large projects in case not a good bandwidth Internet connection is available.

- Shorter and Predictable Revision Numbers: As Subversion assigns sequential revision numbers (starting from 1), it is easier to identify revision states, changes and time locating.

- Ability to Represent Richer Histories: as Subversion allows branch/tag to be created from arbitrary combinations of source revision, while GIT does not.

So, to summarize, lot of large projects are migrating from Subversion to GIT, as the benefits by this last one seems to be more important than disadvantages, with performance and space requirements being enough reason to give GIT an opportunity. 

References:

[1] https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitSvnComparison

Charles Leadbeater on Open Innovation

    This talk by C.Leadbeater issues about "Creative Collaboration" [1].
    To start with, C.Leadbeater introduces the next topic: Who created the "Mountain Bike" (MTB)?
    C.Leadbeater clarifies about how different are the classic economic theories from the reality. And MTB is a real example, as MTB was born in California, due to the fact that some classic bikes users were not comfortable with the traditional bikes. It was after some time when companies discovered the business around MTB, although nowadays MTB means 58 billion $ (65% of the total Bike Market).
    Leadbeater introduce the term of passionate "pro-am" consumers, to this kind of consumers that perform innovation by means of creative collaborations, rather than by means of traditional business organizations. This aspect, new kind of organization, without organizations, is were the huge challenge resides.
    Associated to this idea, Leadbeater talk about "radical innovation". He issues how telephone was invented for a very different mission compared to how users ended using it. This example allows him to address the fact that many times, an invention is performed with great uncertainty, without knowing the final usage that the particular invention will face. From my perspective, FLOSS is a good breeding ground for this kind of innovation, as FLOSS nature favors different software components to be mixed and mingled in order to innovate.

    The second main thread is around "Disruptive Innovations". Leadbeater exposes how many times Big Companies are not the best channel to hold a disruptive innovation, as it is difficult to plan how successful it can be. Companies want to hear about continuing innovation, to existing users, with existing channels, as they have an "in-built tendency to reinforce past success".
    This is why Emerging Markets are the breeding ground for passionate users. Hip-Hop/Rap music is exposed as the best example. It started on the streets, with "pro-am" people that created it, distributed it, and made it how it is. The style was so "aggressively different", that it would have never been invented in Big Companies. Nowadays, it is the most important cultural music and has a powerful industry.
    Related to this issue, FLOSS many times is the only option to develop a competition against a software product which has a dominance in the market. No company will fund a mail client based on privative software even if it is much better, as Outlook is so dominant that it is not possible to compete against it.

    To continue with the talk, Leadbeater addresses how the two type of phylosophies and organizations, meaning traditional companies versus open innovation, Microsoft vs. Linux, Privative versus FLOSS, professional journalists versus bloggers. The main aspect around this issue is to foreground the different places between the two opposite attitudes, and how Microsoft is proceeding to release Free Software, how FLOSS projects are not only altruism and need funding and organization on a more structured way, or which is the role to play by BBC with the new types of journalism.

    Last but not least, Leadbeater talks about "users as producers". Leadbeater traveled to Shangai to interview with Timothy Chan, creator of Shanda, the largest computer game company in China, with 250 million subscribers. Shanda employees only 500 people, to provide the gaming platform basically. Meanwhile, users create their characters and are the real producers for the games, apart from being consumers. This kind of companies, built on communities, is very powerful, although they are not created on top of FLOSS.
    However, this kind of behavior is dominant in many FLOSS projects, as normally, some users, cooperate with the project in different ways:
    - By testing the software and reporting issues.
    - By contributing software, to perform new functionalities or fix existing bugs.
    - By creating or fixing the documentation.
    - By solving other user's issues via Forums.
    - And so forth, and so on ...

   Among previous different issues, I will focus on the fact of professional "pro-am" consumers, and how they can lead innovation around a certain product.
    I completely agree with Leadbeater on the key factor around this issue, which is how initially, what are assumed to be "amateur" users around a certain product, get into a high level of understanding of the product due to simply how interested this kind of consumers are on it.
    If someone loves doing something, let say kite surfing, will always be more involved in trying to innovate around products around this sport, compared to those who work for a company which manufactures kite surfing products, despite the fact that they are experts on the materials used to build this kind of products.
    One illustrative example of "pro-am" consumers innovation is "The Sims" [2].
    In the Sims computer game, player can create their own family and home on a computer, as well as watch the inhabitants doing different daily issues such as sleeping, eating, argueing, etc. Before the on-line version was shipped, the designers released tools that allowed players to create their own content for the game as, in example, furniture or architectural styles for houses. Within a year of the game’s initial release there were hundreds of independent content creators, more than 200 fan websites displaying more than half a million collectable items available to the game’s millions of players. More than 90 per cent of the content in the Sims game is now created by a Pro-am sector of the Sims playing community, with an estimation that there are 30,000 Pro-Am modifications to the Sims game that can be downloaded from the Internet.
    The Sims community is a good example of distributed and self-organizing body of Pro-Am knowledge, where gamers are constantly innovating.

References:
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html
[2] http://www.demos.co.uk/files/proamrevolutionfinal.pdf

Barclays saves up to 90% in costs after moving to Open Source Drive

Barclays reported to V3 a reduction of its IT spending for the development of new software and applications by 90 percent. The reason for this high amount of savings is moving to an internal private cloud solution based on open source Linux software.

A spokeperson for Barclays told V3 about the advantages of incorporating alternative IT systems to improve efficiencies and save costs across its business:

"It means we can write new applications once and then develop them using an open source model, rather than re-writing them again for legacy systems."

Main tasks have been driven by Shaygan Kheradpir, Chief Operating Officer of Barclays Retail, who has also pushed the development of key toos, such as Pingit, a mobile payment service, as well as Banking application. He asserted:

"Because information is hosted on our secure internal cloud information that provides access to our legacy systems, whether you are a mortgage or credit customer for example, it can still be accessed. This was not possible beforehand".

The move appear to be successful, as application has been downloaded 1.3 million times each across UK.

References:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2234593/barclays-slashes-software-spend-by-90-percent-with-open-source-drive

5 FLOSS Business Models

The scope of this post is to analyse 5 companies Business Models according to  will be inspected in order to identify their business models among the the different FLOSS Business Models according to Daffara's Taxonomy:
- Liferay
- Eucalyptus
- BlackDuck
- Acquia
- Funambol

- Liferay: Liferay is an Open Source CMS (Content Management System), oriented to Enterprise. Among its main customers, some important Companies from very different business, such as Cisco, T-Mobile or Barclays.

  According to Daffara's Taxonomy on FLOSS Business Models, Liferay's business is oriented to being "Product Specialists".
  In particular, Liferay Inc. main revenues streams come from its superior knowledge on the Liferay CMS. According to their web, Liferay Inc. sells an Enterprise Edition of the product, which basically grants additional services to the customer, such as [1]:
  * Guaranteed SLA (Service Level Agreement), in two manners: Gold / Platinum [2], what means 9/5 or 24/7 support respectively.
  * Regular Service Packs
  * 5 Year End of Service Policy
  * Customer Portal
  * Optional Indemnification
  So, taking into account previous consideration, Liferay Inc. revenues streams come basically from additional services, such as [3]:
  * Enterprise Support
  * Training
  * Consulting

- Eucalyptus: Eucalyptus Systems Inc. is a company that sells AWS(Amazon Web Services)-compatible private and hybrid cloud services, by levering existing virtualized infrastructure to create on-demand cloud resource pools. These highly elastic pools can be dynamically scaled up or down as customers application workloads change [4]. Among its main customers, enterprises from very disparate environments such as Puma, Electronic Arts, Fujifilm or Nasa [5].

  According to Daffara's FLOSS Business Model Taxonomy, Eucalyptus Business Model is based on being "Platform provider". Eucalyptus Systems Inc. integrates services around a set of FLOSS projects, such as KVM or Xen Hypervisors,integrated in a single, tested and verified product, in particular, Eucalyptus. Despite the fact that Eucalyptus is FLOSS, the product name and logo are trademarks.
  Being a platform provider, Eucalyptus main revenues streams come from:
  On the one hand, a verification proccess to meet high quality standards, via key factors such as [6]:
  - Organizational Agility
  - Operational Efficiency
  - Infrastructure Flexibility
  - Dynamic Scalability
  - Resource Control
  - Cloud Reliability
  - Regulatory Compliance
  - Hybrid Capability
  - Workload Portability
  On the other hand, different type of services:
  * Customer Cloud Support Services, in two flavours, Standard and Premium, offering 9/5 and 24/7 customer support [7].
  * Cloud Consulting Services [8].
  * Training: offering different kind of training courses via Eucalyptus University, as well as certifications, and partnership programs [9].

- BlackDuck: According to its web, Black Duck Software helps developers build better software faster with the power of open source software and methods [10]. To do so, BlackDuck offers software and services, to provide basically Open Source Software Assessment, evaluating the use of open source technologies and methods, including community engagement, to achieve business and technology goals.

  Initially, Business Model around BlackDuck is not easily classifiable. On the one hand, they provide Open Source Software Assessment, which includes includes evaluation of a company software to analyse, by using the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, different aspects such as [11]:
  - Code search, scanning and analysis
  - Ongoing, automated license compatibility notification
  - Comparing software in any code base to the known universe of open source code, and reporting matches
  - Cataloguing hard data that documents the code origin
  So, taking into account previous considerations, BlackDuck Software company could be considered to have, taking into account Daffara's Taxonomy on FLOSS Business Model, a model associated to "Legal Consultancy", as they provide a KnowledgeBase to provide legal assessment for companies about complex problems derived from multiplicity of libre software licenses and their compatibilities.
  But, on the other hand, Black Duck Software offers the The Black Duck Suite, which is a comprehensive set of governance and compliance automation tools that enable development organizations to harness the power of open source technologies and methods, offering [12]:
  * Automated governance with a customizable approval work-flow.
  * Automated compliance with code scanning and auditing.
  * A catalogue for open source, commercial and internally-developed software that allows developers to easily find, track and reuse approved code.
  * Comprehensive code search to help developers find and choose components.
  * A tool integration framework that is repository-neutral, including easy integration with issue tracking and build systems, software configuration management systems (CMS) and tools.
  Apart from that, Black Duck Software has a division, named "Olliance Consulting", which provides OSMA (Open Source Management Assessment), offering a quick and easy way to learn about industry best practices and assess organizational readiness and governance maturity around FLOSS [13].
  So, from this perspective, Black Duck Software could be considered as well a "Consulting Company", offering Assessment about selection and evaluation of software products and services, by means of its Black Duck Suite and its Olliance Consulting Division.

- Acquia: Acquia company sells support on a FLOSS CMS, in particular, Drupal. In particular, they offer a set of different product, services and technical support for this FLOSS CMS.

  Regarding products, Acquia sells a set of free downloadable software, such as [14]:
  - Acquia Drupal: combines Drupal with useful modules to make web publishing faster, easier, and more feature-rich.
  - Acquia Dev Desktop: free package that installs Acquia Drupal on Windows and Mac OS X.
  - Drupal Commons: free software for building and hosting collaborative website.
  Regarding services, Acquia offers cloud Drupal based hosting [15]:
  - Dev Cloud: provides Drupal-optimized hosting with professional administration tools.
  - Managed Cloud: provides Drupal-optimized hosting in an elastic, high-availability configuration.
  - Drupal Gardens: a SaaS to design, build, and host Drupal-based sites.
  Acquia offers as well support services, such as [16]:
  - Acquia Network: Answers, Tools and Support for professionals who build websites using Drupal.
  - Drupal Support:  With Client Advisors that guide customers in quiet times and respond to urgent needs.
  - Remote Administration: assigning Drupal experts to apply fixes, monitor backups, and test changes to keep sites secure and up to date.
  Last, but not least, Acquia offers training around Drupal as well [17].
  Taking into account previous considerations, it can be asserted that Acquia's Business Model, according to Daffara's taxonomy of FLOSS Business Model, is being "Product Specialist", selling the "best knowledge here" around Drupal CMS.
  Their main revenues streams come from services such as:
  - Training and consulting
  - Specialized support
  - Remote assistance
  - Specialized cloud hosting services, but always, based on Drupal together with additional products made by Acquia.

- Funambol: Funambol FLOSS project started as a mobile cloud sync solution . The open source version consists of a sync server, clients/applications/SDKS for mobile devices and computers, and connector software to interface with other mobile systems [18].

  Apart from this fact, Funambol company provides OneMediaHub, a commercial product based on Funambol that tries to address commercial needs in the market. OneMediaHub allows to secure, sync, and share digital content on mobile devices and computers, automatically and wirelessly, via the cloud. OneMediaHub software represents the company's latest technology. Meanwhile the open source software is not meant for large-scale deployments, and, obviously, it iss not commercially supported.
  So, basically, Funambol Business Model is based on a "Dual Licensing" model according to Daffara's taxonomy of FLOSS Business Models.
  Funambol is available in two editions with different licensing model [19]:
  - Community Edition: uses the AGPLv3 open source license that lets you offer your software to all who wish to use, modify and distribute it freely.
  - OneMediaHub is available under a traditional commercial software license. It consists of a superset of Community Edition functionality that makes it suitable for large-scale deployment. For example, it includes an AJAX web portal and provides capabilities to sync rich media and files with the cloud.
  Revenues streams for Funambol come for selling the commercial version of OneMediaHub. Together with the commercial version of Funambol, OneMediaHub, Funambol has also additional revenues streams, associated to [20]:
  - Annual Software Maintenance and Technical Support: Funambol provides software maintenance and technical support including technical assistance, troubleshooting and software updates.
  - Professional Services: Funambol offers consulting services, offering professional services to help companies architect, design and deliver the highest-quality services.
  - Training: Funambol offers a five day KickStart training program.
 
References:
- Liferay:
[1] http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/ee/overview
[2] http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/ee/service-levels
[3] http://www.liferay.com/services
- Eucalyptus:
[4] http://www.eucalyptus.com/eucalyptus-cloud
[5] http://www.eucalyptus.com/customers
[6] http://www.eucalyptus.com/eucalyptus-cloud/iaas
[7] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/support
[8] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/consulting
[9] http://www.eucalyptus.com/services/education
- BlackDuck:
[10] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/getting-started
[11] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/products/knowledgebase
[12] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/products/black-duck-suite
[13] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/consulting/strategy-development/open-source-management-assessment
- Acquia:
[14] https://www.acquia.com/products-services
[15] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/cloud-hosting
[16] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-support-tools
[17] https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-training
- Funambol:
[18] http://sourceforge.net/projects/funambol
[19] http://www.funambol.com/solutions/licensing-editions.php
[20] http://www.funambol.com/support

- Economic Aspects of Libre Software:
  http://docencia.etsit.urjc.es/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=4418

2012: Great year for Linux

To summarize, 2012 was a great year for Linux Operating System. The Linux Foundation has released a video to announce the increasing popularity and achievements of the Linux Operating System.

Among all the achievements obtained by Linux Operating System, from my perspective, these are, from more to less important, the ones to highlight [1]:

• Red Hat achieved $1 billion in revenue, the first time an open source vendor reached that milestone. It is a key data to demonstrate that, a company whose core business is based on FLOSS, can be profitable.
•  Android has increased its position to control more than 50 percent of the American mobile market. Moreover this, it is considered that world globally, Android has reached 75% of global market share, reaching 136 million units shipped in 2012 Q3.
• The availability of the Steam distribution platform for Linux. This fact can be a key factor for Linux to start being used in Desktop computers, the only Operating System Market where Linux is pending to place a decisive position.
• The automotive industry’s adoption of Linux-based solutions.
• HP became a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation. Apart from the important economic impulse that this means for the Linux Foundation, the key factor is the importance of having another huge company interested on Linux Operating System.

Apart from previous facts, there has been other occurrences that must be distinguished, as they are less important in terms of economic aspects, but are important as well to clarify Linux Operating System good health in 2012:

• Linux founder, Linus Torvalds, has received the Millenium Technology Prize.
• Dell‘s Sputnik Ubuntu-based laptop.
• The advent of Chromebooks, which is a clarifying movement from Google to bet on Linux Operating System for the Desktop market.

To summarize, it seems that Linux Operating System is in one of its best moments, and project sustainability is ensured. Apart from preserving its market position in other environments, year 2012 has supposed big advances in other markets, such as Mobile Operating Systems. On the other hand, year 2013 will clarify if Linux ends to play a key role in Desktop Computers market, depending on success of Chromebooks and together with Steam as gaming platform.



References:
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unfx2qCj6Ao
[2] http://www.thevarguy.com/2012/12/14/measuring-linuxs-success-in-2012/
[3] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/12/what-year-linux-please-join-us-celebration
[4] http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/02/idc-android-market-share-reached-75-worldwide-in-q3-2012/
[5] http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/19/coming-to-a-car-near-you-linux-goes-automotive-signs-up-harman-intel-toyota-samsungs-tizen-and-more/
[6] http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/05/hp-linux-platinum-member/

Opening Source: Going Forward

Jeremy Eder (RedHat) explains on this article, titled The open source advantage: Executives learn how to stay competitive,  about different movements from big Companies that are switching to an Open Source model for some of their products.

On the one hand, Jeremy explains about RedHat's Open Source software products build or acquired, such as RHEV-M(oVirt), CloudForms (Katello) or OpenShift (OpenShift).

On the other hand, he explains how Redback and NASA worked together within an Open Source model for OpenStack, with participation of other companies, such as RedHat itself. Success of the project enables it to become independent, switching to a Foundation model.

Apart from that, the interest on this article lays on the citation of Dreamworks as other company switching to Open Source, in particular, to OpenVDB

OpenVBD is an Open Source sparse volume processing toolkit. In this particular case, an analysis on the possible causes for Dreamworks to initiate this adventure, and, from my perspective, applicable to the vast majority of this type of movement:

• There is a possibility about Dreamworks considering not much more value to be extracted from OpenVBD, as industry continues moving on.
• Another possibility has to do with the company moving to other environments, in order to explore the path to profitability through new tools, techniques and processes.
• Although critical to business, OpenVDB has its own life and it would benefit from additional developers contributions.

However, Eder concludes that, from his perspective, the main reason is about the cost:

• Cost/maintenance burden for OpenVDB exceeds value derived. Setting it open and costless would mean just a better situation.

As main conclusion, recall that, moving to an Open Source model is just the unique tool to maintain certain products or projects along the time.

Complete article:

http://opensource.com/life/12/11/open-source-advantage

Carlos Daffara: "Open Source Contribution to Europe's economy: 450 billion euros"

According to Open Source researcher Carlos Daffara, the savings associated to the use of Open Source in Europe, taking into account all advantages provided, rises to 450 billion euro.
Directly using Open Source software solutions means reducing costs up to 114 billion euro.
Moreover direct costs, other aspects, such as reduction of project failures, as well as reduction of code maintenance, mean savings, from Daffara's point of view, up to 342 billion euro.

From Daffara's point of view, applying macroeconomic estimation and data from code reuse, up to 35% percent of the software used in the past five years is directly or indirectly related to Open Source software.
Meanwhile, it seems that Daffara's numbers are not far from another industry groups and analysts estimations, that consider savings aroung 374 billion and 399 billion euro.

References:
[1] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/contribution-open-source-europes-economy-450-billion-year

Some numbers of Free Software on the Web

Regarding numbers to show quantitavely ciphers on the Free Software deployment, I would like to focus on those Free Software applications impacting on the Web.

Web Servers Market:

Although on Web Servers Market the leader continues to be Apache, this Web Server seems to be losing market share. Competitors, apart from Google, are increasing their market share, and doing this market to return to be considered as an Unstable Market, taking into account that Apache is again under 60% of the Market Share:

Most Reliable Hosting Site:

In terms of reliability, Hosting Site is a good example of the dominancy of Free Software based Operating Systems. Next table shows that, between the 10 most reliable sites, Linux is used in 5 of them as Operating System. Meanwhile, FreeBSD is used also in other 3 sites:

Rank	Company site	OS	Outage hh:mm:ss	Failed Req%	DNS	Connect	First byte	Total
1	Datapipe	FreeBSD		0.000	0.071	0.018	0.038	0.057
2	Qube Managed Services	Linux	0:00:00	0.007	0.132	0.071	0.142	0.142
3	XILO Communications Ltd.	Linux	0:00:00	0.007	0.331	0.132	0.388	0.668
4	iWeb	Linux	0:00:00	0.010	0.137	0.085	0.171	0.171
5	INetU	Windows Server 2008	0:00:00	0.013	0.092	0.090	0.266	0.535
6	www.logicworks.net	Linux	0:00:00	0.017	0.212	0.089	0.444	0.683
7	Server Intellect	Windows Server 2008	0:00:00	0.017	0.058	0.107	0.215	0.537
8	Multacom	FreeBSD	0:00:00	0.017	0.143	0.117	0.236	0.600
9	ReliableServers.com	Linux	0:00:00	0.020	0.371	0.097	0.200	0.282
10	Swishmail	FreeBSD	0:00:00	0.024	0.127	0.071	0.141	0.285

Meanwhile, if further inspection is done [1], 22 sites out of 37 are based on Linux, and 6 out of 37 are based on FreeBSD. So, in total, among the most reliable hosting sites, 28 out of 37 (75%) are based on FLOSS based Operating Systems.

Web Browser Market:

Web Browser Market Share is not an easy topic, as, depending on the data source, the Market varies significantly.

On the one hand, sources as "StatCounter" show Google Chrome winning the Market to Internet Explorer:

Meanwhile, other sources shows significantly different results. NetMarketShare shows dominancy of Internet Explorer in the Desktop Web Browser Market

Meanwhile, from NetMarketShare studies, Safari is the market leader in Mobile Market:

To end with Web Browser Market Share, a third study, by "Statowl", showing the Market still leaded by Internet Explorer, with Chrome and Firefox closing the three main actors in this Market:

Free Software based CMS:

Last, but not least, an study of the Market Share around CMS based on Free Software, by Water and Stone [2]

This study shows, among many other, the Alexa Top Million CMS usage, based on W3Techs. It can be infered that, Wordpress is CMS Market Leader, with Joomla and Drupal as second and third actors in the Market, but still far from Wordpress:

References:

[1] http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?orderby=epercent&tn=october_2012

[2] http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2011OSCMSMarketShareReport.pdf

Web Servers usage:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/11/01/november-2012-web-server-survey.html

Most reliable hosting sites:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/11/01/most-reliable-hosting-company-sites-in-october-2012.html

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/Hosters?orderby=epercent&tn=october_2012

Web Browsers Market Share:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255886/google_chrome_overtakes_internet_explorer.html

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-weekly-201120-201220

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=165

http://www.statowl.com/web_browser_market_share.php

Open Source CMS Market Share:

http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2011OSCMSMarketShareReport.pdf