Alfresco says UK FOSS adoption growing fast
Well, well, well.
I am mightily pleased that it looks like, finally, the UK is waking up to FOSS. According to this press release from the Enterprise Content Management company Alfreso they have seen a rather dramatic swing:
Alfresco Software today announced that despite the global economic downturn, it has witnessed record levels of customer adoption in the UK as businesses rethink their proprietary software strategies, turning to more cost effective and scalable open source alternatives.
They go on to describe some the new customer roll-outs and just what a significant chnage they have witnessed in the recent past [emphasis mine]:
“The world is undergoing serious economic turbulence, but at a time when businesses know they cannot simply terminate IT projects, open source software provides the perfect solution,” explained John Powell, CEO, Alfresco Software. “By resisting the demands of monopolist proprietary vendors, organizations in both the UK’s public and private sectors are reaping the benefits of creating flexible and scalable infrastructures while lowering their overall IT spend. Open source powers the internet today and that low cost scalability is coming to UK enterprises. Today the agenda is reducing cost and improving productivity with the resources you have. Alfresco has just recorded its most successful ever quarter and we’re looking forward to continuing that success through 2009.”
That’s great news. I’m really pleased for Alfresco, who release their excellent product under the GPL and have built a solid community behind them. And I’m also even more pleased for the businesses who are seeing the true value that can be obtained from Free Software.
Their competitors, who haven’t yet discovered the value of FOSS, could be getting a very rude awakening over the coming months and years as those that have begin to reap the rewards of massively reduced costs, freedom from vendor lock-in and the upgrade-treadmill the proprietary vendors so love you to run on start to pull away. How much more flexible and agile will a business be when it gets the freedom to decide from whom, and what software products, to purchase or use?
Just perhaps, the times they are a changing…
Feel the heat of the Open Sourcerer
OK. Sorry for the bad title but I couldn’t think of a better one.
This is very off-topic but something I really, really love (even more than free software probably): The Chilli. I really get a kick out of hot food and I also enjoy growing them too.
Today, the 11 October, was a sunny warm day for the time of year and it seemed the right day to reap the harvest from my small greenhouse.
Chillies from The Open Sourcerer
I had 6 plants in total grown from seed which were started off in late February. My BW has helped nurture them through our rather damp and grey summer and the results have not been too bad. I have been consuming chilli straight from the plant for the last couple of months and have also given some to friends/family too so, so I am quite pleased with the crop although the harvest wasn’t a large as some years in the past.
The larger round chilli (top left) is an Italian variety my Sister-in-law bought for me last Christmas. What a great present! A tiny pack of seeds and from it I get these really nice peppers. Thick fleshed, good slightly fruity flavour, not too hot [for me at least!]. Perfect for Arrabiata or Piccante sauces with pasta or sliced on Pizza.
The long chilli is the very well known Cayenne (top right). These are typically used to make a great spice powder that is usually known as Cayenne Pepper and this is not the same as regular Chilli Powder. They taste great, not too hot once again, but are great grilled and eaten whole or added, at the last minute, to curries. The plant these chillies came from I actually bought from the Chilli Fiesta at West Dean Gardens. I try to go every year. It’s a chilli lover’s delight and attracts many thousands of visitors in just two days.
The small chilli are all very hot and will be eaten throughout the coming winter in stews, curries and anything else that I can squeeze them into. My family – especially the kids – don’t really like heat that much so it is one of those foods that I mainly get to indulge in all by myself.
Preserving them is pretty easy. The big chillies will be dried in the airing cupboard then stored in a dark place along with all my other spices. Once dried they will keep almost indefinitely it seems.
Here are some I prepared earlier. These have been drying for about a month in the airing cupboard and are now totally bone-dry.
Dried Cayenne Peppers
The small chillies I simply washed, cleaned, dried and put into small bags and they have gone in the freezer. This is a great way to keep them. Just take out a few when you need them and by the time you have got from the freezer to the chopping board they have nearly fully defrosted and are almost as good as they were when picked. As these small chillies generally get cooked and are for flavour not texture, the cell damage caused by freezing is not really an issue. Again, they seem to keep almost indefinitely.
If I had had a larger crop, I would have made some Chilli Pickles too. This is a brilliant way of preserving them and is just fantastic in a cheese sandwich. I still have some Chilli Oil Pickle in the cupboard that I made about 15 years ago. It still tastes great too!
Next year I have a real treat in store 
At the Chilli Fiesta this August I managed to find seeds for the Naga Bih Jolokia. This was the first year they have become available to the consumer apparently. I hadn’t seen them before at any rate. In late January or early February I will start them off indoors to give them the longest possible growing season. Hopefully this time next year, I’ll be writing and showing off some home-grown Nagas…
Open Source in Education
The very limited use of FOSS in the UK’s education sector has long been a source of much puzzlement and even anger – from this side of the IT divide at least.
In the last year or so we have, happily, seen a rise in the background noise level, and more recently with BECTA’s activities and the award of the approved supplier status to Sirius IT as signs that things are finally changing.
This morning, I saw a post on the OOo marketing list from Ian Lynch publicising this new place of reference and support for the education sector: Open Source Schools:
Open Source Schools is an initiative to inform schools about Open Source Software (OSS). A number of schools are already realising the benefits of OSS within their ICT strategy. This project will work to share their experiences with the wider community of educational practitioners.
The project will support a community of practice that engages those who are currently using OSS and welcomes and supports new members. Our aim is to create an educationally focused project driven by the needs of the community – giving them the means to become confident users of OSS.
A great idea Ian and I hope it gets wide publicity. It was a very timely post considering a couple of conversations I had yesterday at the Woking Business Expo where we were exhibiting…
The first discussion was with a parent and school Governor who has really started to understand FOSS and the benefits it brings from several meetings we have had with him over the last few months on a more professional basis. He dropped by yesterday to say hi and was very keen to introduce the concepts and ideals of FOSS into his school and LEA. We will help him in this as much as possible. Dave, let’s arrange that beer!
The second, and far more worrying conversation, just shows what a total travesty it is that we continue to teach our children not how to use a computer as a tool, but instead teach our kids how to open and create a Microsoft Word or Excel document. Another visitor to our stand (and parent) was discussing the experience of a colleague whose child came home from school with some homework only to find he couldn’t open the files on his home PC as they were created in Office 2007! The family couldn’t afford to buy it – and why the hell should they frankly? This was obviously very distressing for the family and child concerned.
Our our schools now a sales channel for Microsoft I wonder?
The result of this kind of upgrade-treadmill that MS would love us all to live on permanently, is to create a two-tier system of education for our children: those whose parents can afford to buy expensive commercial software and those who cant.
The UK Government, even more so now they have just spanked £500bn propping up the banking system, must start to act and reduce the outrageous and completely wasteful expenditure on proprietary software. Why oh why don’t we just do a nation-wide roll out of OpenOffice.org to EVERY computer in the public sector and especially in Education? It would be a good start, and then we can get rid of that festering boil called Windows later.
- No more extortionate upgrade costs,
- no more public documents created in binary, patent encumbered formats,
- an end to the single vendor lock-in and monopoly,
- no more two-tier children…
We can always dream I guess.
The Open Learning Centre at the Woking Means Business show
Here is a picture of our stand at the Woking Means Business show. Do you think we could fit a few more computers on it? Can you identify them all? There are actually two more under the desk that are not visible in the picture.
OOXML: Flogging a Dead Horse
I am continually amazed by the amount of time, energy and expense that the ISO are going to to support the standard that nobody really wants or believes (in except for one corporation and it’s paid lackeys of course). Yes, it’s IS29500 (OOXML to you and me).
In the last few weeks we have had coverage with some lovely photos of the events taking place in Korea from that bastion of fair play and honesty Alex Brown. How the poor live eh? All sponsored by our friends and yours: Microshaft. Well actually, if you buy their software, you have probably been paying for the luxury hotels, drinks and food.
We have also heard how the Norwegian NB (National Body), that actually voted against OOXML becoming a standard but were ignored, has resigned en-masse:
We end our work with Standard Norway because:
- The administration of Standard Norway trust 37 identical letters from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee.
- The process within Standard Norway has been unpredictable and the administration has changed the rules along the way.
- Standard Norway and ISO have committed a series of violations of their own rules and other irregularities in the OOXML process.
“Standard Norway has overruled hundreds of thousands of users in the public and private sectors”, says Martin Bekkelund.
The mass-copied Microsoft-letter did not contain a single professional argument. Standard Norway first said that these kinds of statements would not be given any weight. However, at the end of the process they changed their mind and emphasized the Microsoft letters. Thereby, Standard Norway misled the committee members.
And we have also seen IBM – a conservative corporation by any measure – making a public statement about the standards process needing reform. Bob Sutor expands on the announcement:
I’ve asked before in this blog if we don’t need some sort of full disclosure from standards participants. In the wiki IBM facilitated last summer, there was a good discussion of the notions of open government and how these might apply to standards making. Over time various votes on standards will be won or lost. I think an open, transparent organization should help users and other stakeholders understand who voted how and why. This is especially true for organizations that represent countries. We must have and understand accountability.
Not very clouded words for “ISO: Sort out your house or become an irrelevance”.
And we also had, back in September, the signed declaration by 6 countries – Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, South Africa and Venezuela – deploring the refusal of ISO and IEC to further review the appeals submitted by the National Bodies of four nations.
And in support of ODF we have – almost daily it seems – countries, public bodies & departments and corporations requiring/mandating [PDF] the use of the open and royalty-free ODF to store their documents. Here some of the countries that have (or are) adopted ODF: Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, France, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland and Uruguay. Many others are close on their heels.
Which countries have formally adopted OOXML? Which countries have said they are thinking about adopting OOXML? I have yet to see any. Perhaps Côte d’Ivoire might eh?
But OOXML is not quite dead yet. There is a danger. And one we must all be vigilant toward: There is a possibility of Microshaft and it’s Lackeys trying to gain control of the maintenance of the ODF standard. Currently this is handled by the very open and transparent OASIS organisation. This process might end up being transferred to ISO under the guise of a group known as SC34. This committee is loaded full of Microsoft puppets – several of whom are British and have shown a total disregard for due process to this date.
Perhaps the title shouldn’t be “flogging a dead horse” but more of a “dead cat bounce“.
