SIGOSSEE Project News

Please download the file bremen_workshop_pack.doc.

Please download the file draft_agenda_doc

Open Source International Conference, Malaga Friday 20th February 2004 - In his keynote speech on Wednesday morning, leading American technology philosopher, Professor Carl Mitchum made a plea for "convivial" software - available to all and ethical at heart, and while much of this conference has focussed on the economics of OSS, the underlying philosophy underpinning it echoes this view.

An impassioned plenary session late that afternoon saw ex-President of Spain Felipe Gonzalez and MEP Marco Cappato of Italy allude to the need for new political syntheses to encompass the potential changes brought about through the widespread adoption of OSS and ICT/internet usage generally. Gonzales asserted that access to ICT alone is not enough - [it is] "the ability to create and to add value that is important..." stating in effect that a critical awareness of and engaging content is needed for the technology to truly benefit society; in short, collaboration and participation rather than passive consumption.

Elsewhere, contributors have emphasised that users should demand interoperability - that it should be a basic right "...[like] clean air & water..." and that they should evangelise OSS through actively passing on software amongst their communities. OSS has "crossed a Rubicon", it was said - it was not *if* but *when* OSS would be universally adopted and with distributed networks allow true collaboration across cultures and geographies through the virtual collapsing of the distances that seperate us.

Many more smaller forums have discussed specific aspects of OSS and its impact in changing the relations between us - the full texts of most are available in the proceedings from the conference, which will be posted for download soon...

One news item of note to have emerged is the meetings of the Debian Derivatives group, held in parallel with the conference here - which aims to unify all the current derivatives of Debian Linux under the Debian banner and to formulate ideas and strategies for the future development of Debian Linux and OSS generally.

Attendance at the Open Source International Conference, Malaga has been a

pretty even split between the hardcore OSS community (read Linux, in

particular the Debian community) and business - from entrepreneurs to

corporates alike. It is also very much a home affair, with the vast

majority of attendees coming from around Spain.

Discussion in the larger presentations and plenaries has been divided

between fundamental philosophical, political and legal debate about

notions of freedom, choice & openness and the adoption of OSS by both

corporates and governments.

Many speakers have referred to the München model and understandably much

has been made of the moves in Andalucia to ensure the general adoption in

the public sector of OSS. The possible knock-on effects on the proprietary

software industry (Ireland being cited as the world's No. 1 software

exporting economy) of widespread legislation to enforce adoption has been

noted.

Technical discussion in the main sessions is pretty much limited to either

OSS at the OS level or leveraging application software. Middleware was

given a passing mention in one contribution only so far.

Sun's approach is evangelical, taking the moral high ground over others

such as IBM, Novell and HP, also represented on this morning's plenary,

emphasising the broader view of the benefits of OSS for the developing

world - again the emphasis is either side of middleware - however they do

seem to be talking in the right direction - openness in standards,

interoperability, royalty-free patents and focussing on education as the

way forward. Again, the principle emphasis is on OSS in business use and

the economics of the transition from proprietary systems to OSS.

Unfortunately, translation hasn't been available in the side rooms where

some of the more detailed contributions have been held - including

unfortunately this morning's e-learning session, but I've managed to get

hold of the transcript disk this morning (these had run out before I

reached the registration desk yesterday...)