UK OpenERP Partner Community
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting and chatting with most* of the businesses that are official OpenERP partners here in the UK.
We met at a pub in central London, and talked for around 3hrs. Everyone seemed to get on really well and most of us took the opportunity to share our experiences and promote our individual areas of expertise.
Four of us ended up going for the obligatory curry after the event which was also fun and very enjoyable – especially when the waiter brought me a fresh Naga Chilli to tantalise my taste-buds – hats off to Alan Bell and Chris from Credativ for having a taste of raw Naga. They are definitely NOT for the feint hearted…
The UK partners present at our inaugural meeting yesterday were (in no particular order)
Value Decision
Credativ
Publicus Solutions
Seath Solutions
The Open Learning Centre
A business-minded community of partners represents a much more compelling proposition to our existing and prospective customer-base than do standalone partners.
And here’s a very dodgy picture taken by yours truly:
UK OpenERP Partner Meeting
BSA Supporting Free & Open Source Software
BSA SPAM
This spam marketing literature however, is actually a very compelling call to action for those businesses that aren’t already protecting themselves by using Free and Open Source Software. If the image isn’t terribly legible, here are a few of the juicy bits just SCREAMING at you to think very carefully about the software choices you make in your business.
Your boss wouldn’t ask you to steal or commit fraud, would they? So why do they ask you to use unlicensed software?
Note the phrasing: “unlicensed software”. Of course Free software is licensed, so that’s OK then. There are lots of great Free Software licenses.
Here’s the bit where the BSA really start to suggest you should be using Free Software.
Here’s how easy it is to get caught up using illegal software:
- One or more software licenses are bought, but the software is installed on more PCs than the licenses permit
- Software is purchased for an employee’s home PC and is also installed on to a work PC
These activities are perfectly OK and in-fact encouraged with licensed Free software. A Free Software License gives a user the freedom to do these things; It’s called freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- Font designs and software are downloaded illegally from the internet
You can download legally lots of font designs from places such as the Open Font Library and Google’s WebFont Library online.
The recently released Ubuntu font is an excellent example of a high quality, freely available font.. You can read about it here, get it from here and even get the font source from here. You may also choose to use the Google Font API to use it freely on your website from here.
And as for downloading “software” well, there’s probably more Free software available for download than the BSA could shake a stick at.
So please, consider carefully what our friends at the BSA have to say and talk your bosses or employees about the choices they make. Using properly licensed software is not hard. You don’t have to be at risk from even making a simple mistake. Using licensed Free software protects you.
If you are in a business and want advice on the choices available there are companies such as our own that can help. The BSA would rather your employees take you to the cleaners…
So, if you know of a company that is using unlicensed software, please let us know now. You could receive a reward of up to £10,000.
Packt Publishing Supports Open Source by $300,000 (So far)
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve reviewed a couple of books for Packt before; they asked me and I was happy to (I got a free book for my time and learned some new stuff). Last year I felt rather honoured when asked to be a judge on their popular Open Source Awards – In the Open Source E-Commerce Applications category.
They’re a a modern Publishing business which. since last year, has a specialist brand Packt Open Source. It’s a business I’m quite happy to help promote and support as they reciprocate by supporting the communities and projects we all use everyday.
Today they announced a bit of a milestone.
Packt Publishing Believes in Open Source, Donates Over $300K to Projects
Birmingham, UK. 2nd March 2011
Packt today announced that its donations to open source projects have surpassed the $300,000 mark. Following its first donation to the phpMyAdmin project in April 2004, the company has gone on to provide sustained support for over 70 different open source projects.
Packt has introduced initiatives such as the annual Open Source Award and Open Source Project Royalty Scheme to provide sustained donations to projects over the last six years.
“Most of the money that we’ve used, donated from Packt has gone towards running jQuery conferences for the community and bringing together the jQuery team to do development work together.” said John Resig, the founder of the popular JavaScript library, jQuery. “The financial contributions have been very valuable and in that regard, have resulted in a team that’s able to operate much more efficiently and effectively.”
The Open Source Awards, now in its fifth year, has been adapted from the established Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award with the wider aim of encouraging,
supporting, recognizing and rewarding all open source projects. “The support that Packt has shown, through its book royalties and awards, has contributed to that success and helped the Drupal project handle its growth”. Added Dries Buytaert, founder of the CMS Drupal, winner of the 2007 and 2008’s Overall CMS Award, and a project which also benefits from Packt’s Open Source Project Royalty Scheme.The Open Source Project Royalty Scheme allows projects to benefit from the publication of a Packt book, as they are allocated a percentage of every copy sold. “This is a support system that we provide to every open source project that we publish on” said Julian Copes, a spokesperson for Packt Open Source. “Packt is proud to have reached this significant milestone and remains committed to keeping donations at the heart of its long-term publishing strategy.”
Open source software is freely available and free from restrictions. Open source projects survive largely on financial donations and support to cover the essential costs of running an
open source project. Therefore, regular donations are vital for their ongoing development and relevancy. “Moodle is grateful for the royalty donations that Packt have volunteered to send us as part of their Open Source Project Royalty Scheme.” said Martin Dougiamas, founder of Moodle the hugely popular open source course management system. “The money donated helps us fund a developer for a few months a year and thus contributes directly towards Moodle core development, support and improvements in the future.”Are you an open source project that Packt has published a book on? Packt believes in Open Source and your project may be able to receive support through the Open Source Project Royalty Scheme. Simply contact Packt: royalty@packtpub.com.
Interested in which projects receive support through the Open Source Project Royalty Scheme? Click here to view all projects involved.
I wonder how long it will be until they reach $500,000 in contributions…?
Ubingo!
Next week is a rather special week in the Ubuntu development cycle, it is the Ubuntu Developer Summit. This is a gathering hosted by Canonical, this time in Orlando, Florida, where developers and all those interested in the future direction of Ubuntu can discuss in person the plans for the next 6 month development cycle leading up to the Natty Narwhal release.
It isn’t just a random talking shop though, there is a very structured and full schedule, in fact you can see it all here http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-n/ the times are all local to Florida, which means the day starts at 2PM UK time. To participate remotely there are IRC channels for each room and there will be remote audio to listen to, so wherever you are in the world you can get your thoughts and opinions across, and choose bits that you want to contribute to in this cycle.
The whole thing kicks off with a keynote address by Mark Shuttleworth on Monday, where he will set out some of the major themes of the week and of the cycle. To spice things up a bit for all the remote participants we have created a little game to play along from home, click the link to start playing:
ubingo
Rules
- One gulp of $drink for each word said during Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote speech at the Natty Narwhal Ubuntu Developer Summit
- Finish the glass you are on when you complete a line (and pour another)
- Have a shot glass lined up to down if you get all the words
- If you are in a timezone where the sun is not yet over the yard arm, or are not of drinking age or inclination then you might want to use a non-alcoholic beverage, this is of course perfectly acceptable
- Players attending UDS in person should probably not be drinking (or shouting out “House!”)
- Players should join the #ubuntu-UDS channel on freenode to shout out the words they spot (although we might move to a different channel if play becomes disruptive)
vtiger CRM – A “Proper” Open Source CRM
I wanted to point any readers who may be interested to a new post I wrote over on our company blog. It discusses the latest release of a very popular business application we spend more and more time working with our customers on – vtiger CRM. CRM meaning Customer Relationship Management. Not only do we help others use vtiger CRM, it is also our own tool of choice for Sales and Marketing Automation.
The company behind vtiger CRM just released the latest version, 5.2.0, which has several major new features and lots of minor tweaks and improvements too.
We think this is the best truly Open Source CRM application currently available. There are other CRM systems that claim to be Open Source but are actually Open Core which is not the same thing at all.
If you want to learn a little about vtiger CRM, please drop over here and feel free to use the comments or contact-us page if you want to find out any more.
Westminster eForum Speech
Today I had the pleasure of addressing the Westminster eForum event on Free and open source software in business, in government. I had a five minute slot following the excellent Karsten Gerloff of the Free Software Foundation Europe, then after speeches from Paul Holt, Andrew Katz and Christopher Roberts we had a panel Q&A with questions from the audience. Here are the notes from my speech, transcripts of the whole event will be distributed around Westminster. The seminar was sponsored by our friends at Sirius.
Hello & Good Morning Ladies & Gentleman.
My name is Alan Lord and I am co-owner of The Open Learning Centre; an Open Source Software Consulting and Services business based in Surrey.
In the few minutes I have I would like to briefly discuss a few of the themes that were suggested for this session.
So, starting with the first one then:
The challenges faced by small, medium and large organisations implementing Free & Open Source Software?
For me, one of the key challenges is Procurement:
Procurement practices have not kept pace with changing times. Existing policies and procedures often struggle with the idea of acquiring something that is ”free”. In addition, in our Free Software marketplace, many suppliers do not have the budgets or resources to participate in lengthy tendering processes and, frankly, often have better and less costly opportunities to pursue elsewhere.
Another challenge is lack of familiarity and knowledge: There is still a significant proportion of the population who haven’t really heard of, or understand what Free & Open Source Software is, even though they may use it everyday. The Open Source community has made tremendous inroads and awareness is definitely increasing, but bear in mind, we are competing against companies with multi-billion dollar marketing budgets.
Now I’d like to move on to mention something about:The costs of deploying Free and Open Source software?
Firstly, it’s important to recognise that the ”free” in Free Software generally refers to freedom and not necessarily the price; although Open Source Software is frequently zero cost too. It should be recognised that implementing any software solution has costs, whether or not the software itself is freely available.
Time, of course, is not free; training, consulting and other professional services require people and knowledge, all of which have a cost whether they be internally or externally sourced. Although I feel fairly confident in saying that Open Source providers tend to charge comparatively less, I would recommend you use your experience to estimate and budget for the financial costs of the professional services you will need to acquire. Typically, the work required will be similar, in volume at least, for any given project whether Free or proprietary.
The financial benefits of Open Source really make an impact once you start using it: There are no ongoing licensing fees; you may copy and replicate what you have as many times as you wish. Product development, bug fixes and new features can generally be introduced at your discretion, and not that of your software vendor.
Another question that is often discussed is:
Is Open Source Software vulnerable?
Open Source Software is widely regarded as being inherently more secure than comparable proprietary software. Generally I would concur with this; particularly with regard to Operating Systems such as Linux and BSD. However, no software is ever infallible or 100% secure, so as an IT manager one must take all available precautions.
Many of the stories of Open Source vulnerabilities are, in the end, down to lack of skill or knowledge in setting up and maintaining these systems; this is just the same as with the proprietary alternatives. Again, skills and good education are the key to minimising these risks.
Free and Open Source Software is created in a very different way to legacy software. The ‘source code’, or instructions, are public; anyone can look at them. In a well managed Open Source project this visibility actually helps to improve the security of the end product. The benefit of this code-transparency was famously described by Eric S. Raymond, a well known Open Source author and advocate:
“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
And finally I’d like to touch upon the question:
Who is responsible if Open Source Software is compromised or malfunctions?
Well – to be blunt. You are.
But then how is this different to proprietary solutions? If you’ve ever read a License Agreement for proprietary software then I’m sure you will have noticed that they start by disclaiming all liabilities, warranties and risks. Here’s one sentence taken from a very famous proprietary software vendor’s license agreement:
“The entire risk arising out of use or performance of the OS Components AND ANY SUPPORT SERVICES remains with you.”
If your chosen proprietary software is compromised or malfunctions what happens? Basically, you await the benevolence of the manufacturer, who is hopefully still in business and has a copy of the version of your product. With Free and Open Source Software, you will ALWAYS have a copy of the source code available.
A key feature of Open Source licensing, and something that is specifically NOT offered in the proprietary world, is the empowerment to improve and change it yourself. This doesn’t mean that you have to write the code though, there are lots of developers who will do that for a fair price.
Thank you.
