fOSSa 2011 Conference

Let's share some thoughts…

Open source can be seen as a development, collaboration, distribution, marketing and disruptive innovation model that has gradually fostered the built up of a new collaborative way of working in the R&D domain, often evolving towards the creation of an organised community.

The increasing connections at the international level raise a need for remote collaboration around the world that emphasises the need to organise the creation, promotion and sustainability of such projects. Open Source model has proved its efficiency to address this new way of working.Nevertheless, successfully launching, developing and maintaining an Open Source project is not always a spontaneous action, since it relies on a structured approach and requires good knowledge and practice of the Open Source culture.

The history of F/OSS can be traced back to academic origins…

Distributing source code under a permissive license was the de facto rule in academia in the 70s. In 1969, the first connection was between the University of California Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute:

“On October 29th, 1969, two distant ARPANET computers exchanged a message for the first time: it was all of two letters "lo." (by Leonard Kleinrock) and it crashed the entire system! This work laid the groundwork for what we call today the Internet.”

Since then, the Internet has become ubiquitous, faster and increasingly accessible to non-technical communities. Social networking and collaborative services have grown rapidly, enabling people to communicate and share interests in many other ways. Let's face it, 40 years ago, Academia met the Open Source, Open System and Open Standards.

FOSS has changed in time…

Open Source was born in a context of hackers, many of them working at universities, an IT generation interested in technology and ethical values. FOSS is currently a wide spread paradigm throughout the software industry, even if its alignment with academic goals tends to be forgotten.

Nevertheless, many times proprietary-driven models have prevailed.

• Will new business models & apps (SaaS, Cloud, Mobility, IoT) actually grant openness?
• Will the “digital native” generation care again for ethical values rather than just focusing on “service consumption”?
• Is the Bazaar vs Cathedral paradigm dead?
• Is the development of open source Malls the new strategy?
• Which are the new dangers challenging open collaboration on the internet?

Well… it’s time to meet again and discuss together in an open-minded context about…

• What’s happening in the open domain?
• What tech people are actually doing?
• Which are the upcoming issues & challenges with the respect to open development, collaboration, knowledge sharing beneficial to academia, education & industry

Together, let’s put the OSS back at the crossing roads of Industry and Research!

Are you still with us?

Thanks to the public and experts contributing to the successful outcomes of the event and have given their valuable contribution to the discussion on the role of open source software nowadays, fOSSa conference is playing a predominant role in the OSS arena year after year pushing Open source back at the crossing roads of Industry & Research.

fOSSa is a real nice and creative moment, many participants, experts, insiders, human beings:

• Roberto di Cosmo, IRILL Project Leader, and,
• Ross Gardler, OSS Watch manager & VP of Apache Community
• David Cuertielles, Co founder of Arduino
• Fiorello Cortiana, Italian Senator
• Chris Aniszczyk, Top Eclipse Committer & Red Hat Engineer OSS Evangelist
• Ralph Mueller, President of the European Eclipse Eco System
• Wayne Beaton, Eclipse North America Community Manager
• Dave Neary, GIMP Project Leader
• Jason Van Zylck, Maven Project Leader

While the first edition aimed at providing valuable information about the OS model at large.

The second edition focused on specific key aspect in the renovation of FOSS: Development, innovation & research (the basis of FOSS), Community management & Promotion (to vitalise the foundations of FOSS), Education (to look at the future), Public sector (to democratise FOSS to public service & citizens).

fOSSa 2011 (26, 27, 28 October, Lyon) will go further and address …

⠋ Education
⠋ Community Management & Digital Habitats
⠋ Development, Research & innovating collaboration
⠋ Openness — Open Collaboration, Open Data, Open Cloud
⠋ New trend in Open Source  — HPC, Mobile Citizens, the underground hacker community, 3D Printers, technologies for disabled people, Internet of things, future research communities…

 Special lightning talks…

"Cloud, Mobile & the digital native generation" by Francois Elie…
Simon Phipps about Development & Openness…
Alexis Mouchekine – Oracle – Angel or Deamon?
Adrian Bowyer – the OSS 3D Printers guru!

Thanks to the success of the two first editions, fOSSa is playing a predominant role in the OSS arena year after year and has become the place to "open YOUR mind”…

• Present innovative & interesting stuff (projects, demo, realizations…) with inputs from technologists & developers,
• Report the state-of-the-art of best-of-breed topics… inputs from journalists & bloggers,
• Highlight issues, challenges, opportunities… inputs from keynote speakers, and,
• Show/foresee new ideas, paths to be covered… inputs from politicians & intellectuals.

fOSSa is a real nice and creative moment, no excuse to miss this!

– end