Phabricate it !

Phabricator is a set of tools that allow "phabricating" software via Web. This set of tools was created at Facebook, although is being used at many other companies such as Airtime, Asana, Dropbox, deviantART, MemSQL, Path, Quora, and more.

Having a deeper view to the project, Phabricator appears to be a set of tools than, far from being a software forge, allow integration with an existing one in order to provide extra functionality.

In particular, "phabricating" the software implies, regarding this set of tools, being able to perform what other Software Forges also provide, without source code hosting infrastructure. Among the tools, next can be found:

- Code Review (Differential)
- Track Bugs (Maniphest)
- Browse source (Diffusion)
- Wiki (Friction)

Until here, no further extra functionality from services that are already provided but Software Forges such as Github. However, Phabricator seems to offer additional functionality that can make this set of tools to worth a while:

- CLI (Arcanist). It is supposed to be a command line interpreter that can perform almost all the functionality available, providing cryptic commands, ANSI colour (when supported), etc. It is supposed to offer, besides, compatibility in both Windows, Linux and MAC.

- API (Conduit). This program interface is supposed to offer an scripting interface to interact with  Phabricator, by means of an HTTP JSON API.

References:
http://phabricator.org

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

R.I.P.: Aaron H. Swartz

Aaron H. Swartz, aged 26, committed suicide in New Your yesterday.
This premature hacker, who was fourteen years when helped on developing RSS 1.0, and cooperated on the first drafts of the Creative Common Licenses, was found hung at home.
Apart from being also one of the founders of Reddit, he participated on the foundation of DemandProgress, mobilizing more than one million of activists against SOPA and PIPA.

Police arrested him on July 2011, accusing him of stealing four million documents from MIT and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. If convicted, he could have faced a maximum of 4 million$ in fines, as well as 50 years in prison.

Requiescat in Pace, Aaron !

References:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57563642-93/internet-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide/
http://www.marilink.net/2013/01/aaron-swartz-mundo-construir

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