fOSSa 2011 Conference

Open Collaboration, Open Data, Open Cloud

Responsible: Engineering Group – R&D – Gabriele Ruffatti

• How can we face them?
• How much new opportunities coming from open cloud services will actually grant user freedom and open collaboration?
• Will open data change the internet rules?

At this track speakers will share their vision with the audience and will give a sample of what’s currently happening.

Open Past : can books be opened by digitization ?

Easy-to-go Live demo!

Agile BI at work with SpagoBI

• Founder of SpagoWorld and IT director at Engineering Group (IT)
• Gabriele Ruffatti is Architectures & Consulting Director within the Research & Innovation Division of Engineering Group www.eng.it.
• He has held senior management positions  in project and product management, software process improvement & quality assurance and in architectural solutions definition.
• He contributed to the development of the corporate quality system and to the achievement corporate quality certifications.
• He is active in project management activities and software engineering coordinating projects and communities within its company.
• He is a focus point for open source initiatives within Engineering. In 2004 he founded SpagoWorld initiative (www.spagoworld.org).
• He is currently member of the SpagoWorld Executive Board and of OW2 Consortium Board of Directors (www.ow2.org), where he promotes activities and initiatives; he is also active in the Community of Eclipse Foundation (www.eclipse.org) and in the Italian Open Source Competence Center (http://en.flossitaly.it).
• He has signed the FLOSS CC Network Manifesto (www.flosscc.org). Interested in OS education activities, from 2006 to 2008 he was an Adjunct Professor for open source at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science degree, University of Padua, Italy.

Responsible for the Openess theme & Chairman of the unconference panel

• Journalist, university teacher, researcher, with over 10 years experience in divulging and raising awareness at a policy level around FOSS related topics, working inside and outside FOSS development communities .
  Arturo is now leading the “Logos–Lab” the Open Source technology lab at Cattid, a research center of the University of Rome, La Sapienza http://w3.uniroma1.it/logos
• Before working for the Prime Minister Office in Italy, where he is actually serving as information officer, he has worked with the Latium Regional Council to protect and nourish the non material cultural heritage using Free Open Source Software, GPL and Creative Commons licences.
• Arturo wrote tens of articles and book contributions around Free Open Source Software, both for the general public, the private sector, Italian and European institutions.
• He is the author of the first movie on FOSS (http://bit.ly/aYe9M6 ), with interviews to R. M. Stallman, Bruce Perens and others. He also gathered the FLOSS “founding fathers” in Rome http://bit.ly/cpjisA, http://bit.ly/9MSoy0 , and presented them to the Italian Chamber of Deputies President, allowing them to be heard in a special commission on the adopotion of FOSS in the public sector in Italy.
• He is also exploring these topics in the ArDiCor weblog and in his youtube channel, http://www.youtube.com/ardicor, and in several Italian newspapers such as La Repubblica

Free Software as a Commons

Thanks to its characteristics, free open source software is a distributed property that is capable of evolving into a Public Good. Its "open" and modular language, which is freely accessible and was created thanks to the collaboration of various people at different stages, allowing it to be perfected and modified, makes the free software be a "relational good". Thanks to its accessibility, non-exclusivity and lack of competitiveness, it owns all the characteristics of a common resource: something which everyone can make use of, even if they have not directly participated in its creation. The free software, as an "environment for interaction", presents itself as a meeting place for scientific research, social cooperation and innovation. As a result of its "openness", the free software is capable of "evolving" into an incubator for ideas and relations, which are the abstract constituents of highly evolved technological products. The free software acts as an incubator, offering tools and resources to produce a social capital and hence, a repertoire of information and relations that present themselves as resources available to the collectivity. This offers single enterprises the opportunity to organise themselves and work in unison.

• For over 15 years, I have assisted various companies in their choices
  of IT infrastructure and computer software.
• With a background in computer engineering, I have primarily worked FOR eight years in the fields of software publishing, consulting and
  implementation of systems with customers. I have worked with a wide
  range of companies; from small businesses, THROUGH SMEs (Small & medium enterprises) to large account.
• As an independent specialist, I offer consulting services and training;
  I conduct conferences, hosts and manage communities. My areas of
  intervention are “free and open source software”, “cloud computing” and the “Web3D” (or collaborative work environment based on virtual worlds).
• I am also a member of the “Collège de Recherches et Enseignements de Meza” (research, development and tutorial of web3D’s laboratory ).
• You can find all THIS information as well as my technology watch via:
  http://philippe.scoffoni.net

Open Cloud? Where do we stand?

The advent of « cloud computing » is now a recognized truth. It has become evidence for individuals as well as for a wide array of organizations and businesses. Nevertheless, one must not forget to wonder about the conditions in which this outsourcing of our data and programs are made. The Open Cloud offers to provide its users with open, free and loyal services. What are the initiatives to date in Open Cloud ? We will identify the major players of this movement. However, the openness of the code is not sufficient and the terms of use are to be studied in detail. The definition of “Total Information Outsourcing” (TIO) given by the FFI (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure), provides us with a guide to good practice that can be checked against “service contracts” known as "cloud computing".

François Bancilhon

• François Bancilhon is currently CEO of Mobile Services Initiative for INRIA and CEO of Data Publica.
• He has co-founded and/or managed several software startups in France and in the US (Madriva, Arioso, Xyleme, Ucopia, O2 Technology).
• Before becoming an entrepreneur, François was a researcher and a university professor, in France and the US, specializing in database technology.
• François holds an engineering degree from the École des Mines de Paris, a PhD from the University of Michigan and a Doctorate from the University of Paris XI.

The Revolution of Open Data!

Open Data movement is a fairly recent phenomenon. The main idea is that public data gathered, maintained and used by public organizations, should be made available for access and re-use to citizens and companies. Initially born in Anglo-Saxon countries, it is spreading to all western democracies. It has several facets: legal, business, technology, political, etc. In this presentation, I will give an overview of Open Data with some focus on the technology aspect.

• Formerly a research scientist in computer science, Bernard Lang was a founder of AFUL, an association for the promotion ot free software, open standards and open access to digital resources.
• He now promotes these aspects of digital creation as a member of the French Higher Council on Litterary and Artistic Property.

   

Open Past : can books be opened by digitization ?

Digital creations are regulated by copyright or droit d'auteur. This right was originally a conséquence of the material and industrial character of works dissemination.
Is it still adequate in a world of digital creation ?
How does it interact with the need to digitize our cultural heritage ?
To what extent should the exclusivity of the right to authorize or to forbid uses be opposed to the public access to works ?
 We explore these issues in the context of the recent proposal by the European Commission for a directive on orphan works.
 

Unconference panel

fOSSa unconference panel format 
Several fOSSa speakers, 3 minutes each,  introduce the panel saying what's key in their's vision of Radical Openness. Then, the open debate share ideas, collects morethoughts from the audience, anyone free to contribute to kick-start the writing of the fOSSa Radical Openness Manifesto.

fOSSa unconference panel abstract
Next Ted Global 2012 is going to address Radical Openness. They say: "The world is becoming ….. radically open — manifesting itself in open borders, open culture, open-source, open data, open science, open world, open minds."
We want to test the fOSSa friends feeling, stimulated by fOSSa speakers that will introduce their suggestions about which are next steps towards a broader open word. Come to the panel, rise your voice, share your ideas. Let's build a Radical Openness Manifesto together!

• Computer industry veteran Simon Phipps has engaged at a strategic level in the world’s leading technology companies. He has worked in roles such as field engineer, programmer and systems analyst, as well as run a software publishing company. He worked with OSI standards in the 80s, on collaborative conferencing software in the 90s, and helped introduce both Java and XML at IBM. A Director of the Open Source Initiative, he takes an active interest in Free and Open Source software and is a widely read thought-leader with a regular column on ComputerWorldUK.
• He is currently Chief Strategy Officer of open source access management startup ForgeRock – see http://www.forgerock.com for more. Before that he spent a decade at Sun Microsystems where he helped pioneer Sun’s employee blogging, social media and community engagement programmes. In 2005 he was appointed Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, co-ordinating Sun’s extensive participation in Free and Open Source software communities until he left in 2010. In that role he oversaw the conversion to Free software of the Java platform, Solaris UNIX, the SPARC architecture and the rest of Sun’s portfolio, all under open source licenses. An outspoken advocate of the value of Open Document Format (ODF) for businesses and governments, he has been an advisor to local and national government agencies across Europe, the Pacific Rim and Latin America as they have devised and implemented strategies around Free and Open Source software.
• He holds a degree in electronic engineering and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. His personal home page and blog is http://www.webmink.com.

Special talk!

Openness and the Meshed Society

Our society – government, laws, economy, businesses, education – all evolved in response to the hub-and-spoke economy of the industrial revolution and its perfection in the mid 20th century.

But today's society has a different topology – a peer-to-peer mesh.

Open source helps us to understand why radical openness is actually the rational response and the workable path forward. I'll explore these topics and explain why software freedom needs to be our inspiration.