A path from information to action

Posted January 19, 2010

Introduction to 2010 Edition

While Open World Forum 2010 has been officially launched during last Steering Committee and Forum Committee’s meetings earlier in January, let’s have a look at what are the objectives of the 3rd edition of 2020 FLOSS Roadmap as it will be published end of September.

Full text of 2010 working document is freely available here.

Until now, 2020 FLOSS Roadmap has been conceived and perceived as a highly valuable source of information about FLOSS. But it has been also highlighted that it was lacking of tangible proposals. While keeping this informative quality, we consider that it is time for more concrete results in order to achieve our initial goal which was to produce an influential instrument for decision makers from public agencies to private companies.

The first version has defined the framework of our work, the second edition has validated the accuracy of this framework – 94 recommendations published for this 1^st version. But more than this validation, the 2nd version of 2020 FLOSS Roadmap in its synthesis and recommendation, has also focused on 2 important points:

FLOSS is like forests
Acknowledge the intrinsic value of FLOSS infrastructure for essential applications as a public knowledge asset (or ‘as knowledge commons’), and consider new means to ensure its sustainable development

These points have opened new types of questions:

If FLOSS is like forests, is there a “forestry” for FLOSS? Is acknowledgment of FLOSS as commons a necessity?

Then if we answer positively to these questions, it opens even more other questions such as:

What are precisely the issues?
Would it not be necessary to go from information / recommendation – what has been done on the 2 last years – to more concrete actions? Which actions could be taken? And could these actions be taken in commons?
Would these issues necessitate to establish a specific organization(s)? Or could a network of loosely coupled organizations succeed?

We also expect other new and challenging questions from contributors to enrich the debates.

Answers to all these questions are expected to make of 2010 edition a “call for action” – vs. purely prospective analysis. Full text of 2010 working document is freely available here.

2010 edition will also follow up on what has been already established – as we did previous years (new themes from Systematic, Cap Digital and other contributors, plus analysis about Open Cloud, etc.)

Last but not least, if you are interested in challenging 2020 FLOSS Roadmap with uncovered issues or questions, you are welcome. Or if you would like to propose paper on new theme which you judge important for the future of FLOSS, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Full text of 2010 working document is freely available here.