Category Archives: Events

Rights Ratchet Talk

Simon delivered a talk for the new Tidelift conference “Upstream”. In it he drew together the threads of several earlier posts about the rights ratchet model (“bait & switch meets boiling frogs”) using the history of the now-defunct Sugar CRM open source project as an initial case study and then examining the various ratchets that remove rights from open source project participants, ways to detect that a project is actually a rights ratchet and steps to mitigate the consequences including promoting permission in advance.

the-rights-ratchet-modelDownload

The FAQ as Vital OSPO Tool

Using a community FAQ as a way to get internal disagreement addressed and external communities on board – the OpenJDK experience!

In this talk from FOSS Backstage 2021, Rich Sands and I discuss the way we used a (very large) FAQ to both align the disparate corporate functions inside Sun Microsystems and address the lack of trust in Sun by both the Free Java community and the wider open source community. What we did back then is still a highly appropriate tool for any OSPO that needs to stand in the divide between a controversial corporate position and an aggravated community.

Welcoming Software Heritage

Coade Stone is a fantastic artificial rock whose creation process was lost for more than a century because it was kept secret, although it has recently been reverse engineered.

Comments delivered at the opening of Software Heritage at UNESCO:

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to bring greetings from the Open Source Initiative, the global charity promoting open source and acting as steward of the open source definition and the list of approved licenses.  Continue reading →

FOSDEM: How the humble FAQ got Java Open Source

Rich Sands and I gave a new talk in the Community Devroom at FOSDEM. We explained how important the OpenJDK FAQ had been to Sun’s ability to release the Java platform as Open Source, and explained (using an FAQ of course!) how to use the same approach in other projects.

There’s more to say on the subject (we originally created a 40 minute talk before we found we only had 15 minutes, hence the slight over-run) so hopefully OSCON will accept the proposal we run the whole thing there.

FOSDEM: The Third Decade of Open Source

This weekend I spoke at FOSDEM in Brussels to deliver the opening conference keynote. My subject was “The Third Decade of Open Source” and as OSI President I summed up the main events of the last 20 years, some of the key facts behind them and then offered five trends that will shape the next decade.

 

Engaging Open Source Communities

At FOSDEM 2017, Simon gave a well-attended talk explaining many of the things that could go wrong for a company trying to engage a large open source project over legal or governance issues. Based loosely on a mailing list thread at the Apache Software Foundation, the talk highlighted seven things to avoid and gave ideas on how to do so.

Continue reading →

Meet At FOSDEM?

The coming weekend marks the return of the Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting — FOSDEM. Held annually in Brussels, it’s one of the world’s largest gatherings of open source developers and a crucial venue for many projects to get together and discuss their next year over a few beers.

Simon will be attending for us. If you would like to meet him, you’ll need to tell us as his diary is packed and the event is huge. Please use our contact form.

See you there!

EU Open Data Cities Workshop

The Open Data Cities Workshop is on the afternoon of the 27th of September in Bolzano, Italy and will explore practical issues encountered by cities already engaging in Open Data practices. It will also create a space in which to share experience, advice and ideas with the intention of forming a collaborative ad hoc network of Open Data cities to continue sharing experience, collaborate on projects and reduce costs through collective use of software. The event is running as part of  the Festival of Innovation, yet is itself a by invitation only event. If you wish to be issued an invite, please do get in touch.