2009 Version

New Update: 23/07/09

All Themes will be updated with answers to 5 questions. These questions are asked transversally to all themes and the answers to these questions will be presented in the final synthesis.

Question 1: What’s new concerning the State of the Art you published in Dec. 2008?

- Theme 1: Public Policies:
  Alix Cazenave (April) and Philippe Aigrain (Sopinspace):
  There are contradictory evolutions: the penetration of FLOSS continues but at the political level there are still blocking (this statement will be supported with testimonials from various part of the world: Brazil, India, Spain, the Netherlands, based on a questionnaire)

- Theme 2 & 4: Innovation and Breakthrough:
- State of the art about cloud computing has significantly evolved. Different positions on this topics i.e. Smets vs. Stallman, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Cloud Manifesto
- Jean-Noël De Galzain (Wallix) and Eric Mahé to provide inputs.

- Theme 3: FLOSS developer communities and business ecosystems:
- Cedric Thomas (OW2):
  Acquisition of Sun by Oracle redefines the State of the art. Plus structuring of technology communities e.g. Ruby, Drupal, etc. Plus there is still no emerging leader (i.e. no “SAP of FLOSS”)

- Theme 5: IT 3.0
- Jean-Christophe Spilmont (Bull) and Philippe Montarges (Alterway) to provide inputs.

- Theme 6: **

- Theme 7: Brazil:
- Christiana Freitas (University of Brasilia) and Corinto Meffe (LSTI) to provide infos about the changes.
- Informations are also expected from India (Prof. C N Krishnan, National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software) and Spain (Pop Ramsamy, Cenatics)

Question 2: Has your vision changed? In case of positive answer, what has influenced this change and how?
- Theme 1: Public Policies:
- Alix Cazenave (April) and Philippe Aigrain (Sopinspace):
  In spite of the recognition on behalf of the “intellectuals” (cf Obama), the alliance between security and proprietary is reinforced and delayed evolution of lawful environments. Plus 2 visions are opposed: Internet as a threat vs. Internet as an opportunity.

- Theme 2 & 4: Innovation and Breakthrough*:
- Jean-Noël De Galzain (Wallix) and Eric Mahé to provide inputs.

- Theme 3: FLOSS developer communities and business ecosystems:
- Cedric Thomas (OW2):
  Difficulty to impose a “pure” Open Source model: communities function on a non commercial mode but as soon as it comes to business, the model becomes inevitably (open community source and hybrid business). It may be due to the dual nature of “Open Source Vendor” i.e. is “Open Source Vendor” an oxymoron?
- Theme 5: IT 3.0
- Jean-Christophe Spilmont (Bull) and Philippe Montarges (Alterway) to provide inputs.

- Theme 6: **

- Theme 7: FLOSS Worldwide:
- Christiana Freitas (University of Brasilia) and Corinto Meffe (LSTI) to provide infos about the changes.
- Informations are expected from India (Prof. C N Krishnan, National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software) and Spain (Pop Ramsamy, Cenatics)

Question 3: What is your Top 3 events which have changed FLOSS landscape these last months?
- Oracle / Sun
- Demoiselle (public framework in Brazil)
- identy.ca (open social network)
- blip.tv
- theora (in Firefox and daily motion)
- Lawsuit MS vs. TomTom
- Bilski case (pattent in federal state)

A survey is planned to collect data in a very simple format (tittle, web link, why).

Plus this survey will be run on a list of personalities such as R.M. Stallman, Schwartz, M. Shuttlewoth, D. Surman, Mitchell Baker, Larry Augustin, Danese Cooper, Marc Fleury, Brian Belhendorf, Eben Moglen, Yukihiro Matsumoto, Roberto Di Cosmo, Chris Di Bona, Simon Phipps, Marcos Mazoni, M. Tiemann, etc.

During next Meeting, we will elaborate on the 2 following questions:

Question 4: Global Crisis:
Beyond the fact Global Crisis impacted most of activities, how would you position Floss in this context? Is this crisis a threat? An opportunity? Both?
If the question is about Global Recovery, would you consider Floss as a part of the answer?
- 1) Impact of Global Crisis
  - About Service based Business Models
    - 2 types of companies:
      - Large Integrators: here the crisis has low impact including on pricing (they work on functional / business parts of software for their customers)
      - Small specialised service vendors: difficulties to find big deals due to their size (they provide expertise, architecture etc.)
      - But this is not specific to FLOSS
    - 2 opposed trends: Opportunity i.e. Floss as an alternative for CIOs vs. Low Cost Solution, Bargaining and risks of impoverishment
    - Low activities in SI and internal training —> no need to look for external expertise delivered by FLOSS specialised companies
    - User’s expertise is growing and SI’s expertise decreasing –> bargaining
    - There is a risk of loss of competences
  - About Software based Business Models
    - 50-60% Subscription, 40-50% Services (including training, expertise, etc.)
    - Here we can see significant growth (cf. Red Hat)
  - About Cloud Computing based Business Models based
    - Acceleration of transfer of some applications on clouds
    - Growth in hosting
  - About Public Sector
    - Here progress are very diverse and may be discussed
      - Brazil, UK, Netherlands are making enormous progress
- 2) Global Recovery and FLOSS
  - Public Industrial policies are not focusing on services but on traditional industries. Except in the US where new administration is planning 60B$ investment and declaration of intent from EC Viviane Reding about “Digital Europe – Europe’s Fast Track to Economic Recovery” , there is no significant plan to invest in IT (vs. auto industry).To be followed: the role of Vivek Kundra, Obama’s newly-appointed CIO concerning cloud computing, Google, open platforms and Open Source
  - While Industry is concentrating and number of players reducing, there is no leader in FLOSS companies when compared to other IT players. But should we compare FLOSS ecosystems and Industry? And to protect FLOSS ecosystems, the same way politics are envisioning green evolution of Society, a real software ecology must be envisioned for insuring future sustainability (etc.)
  - But actually can popularity of proprietary solutions and concentration of IT industry (e.g. iPhone 3.0, new Windows version 8, Sun Microsystems acquisition by Oracle) be considered as trends in favour of FLOSS?

Question 5: Which prediction(s) would you revise and how? What new recommendations would you suggest?

- Data need to be taken into account. Software is not only programs but also data. And data can be a lock for the future (even when software is free). Vision about contents and copyright law may have to be revised due to Internet (cf. Pirate Bay case)

Seven predictions for FLOSS in 2020
1: Global Digital Divide reduced thanks to FLOSS
2: FLOSS is now mainstream
3 : FLOSS Communities are enablers of Business Ecosystems
4: Cloud Computing is ubiquitous
5: The IT industry is the champion of eco-responsibility
6: FLOSS is a strategic tool for Enterprise IT 3.0, i.e. Open IT
7: 40% of jobs in IT are FLOSS related

Eight Recommendations:
1: Define a stable, clear and neutral legal context
2: Invest in FLOSS R&D for strategic technologies and services
3: Develop FLOSS education, skill and employment
4: Create Open Platforms based on Open Standards and Open Services
5: Establish Openness as a standard for Innovation and Business
6: Promote FLOSS adoption and usage
7: Encourage FLOSS users to contribute to FLOSS
8: Develop inter-actions between FLOSS Communities

Other related Initiatives

This section tries to identify similar and complementary initiatives. In case you would like to let us know about what is happening in your area, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Michael Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs of Red Hat and President of Open Source Initiative (OSI) published a position paper “Software Industry vs. Software Society: Who wins in 2020?” (paper first presented at Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum, Sept 2006 in Kyoto, Japan)

PLOSS, French initiative gathering FLOSS enterprises, has recently worked on a list of “10 propositions for digital ecomony recovery”. A poll has been set up in order to get feedback from the community on the propositions. This poll could be reused for 2020 Floss Roadmap.

A similar initiative has been set up by Computing Community Consortium in the USA in order to define policies to fund FLOSS academic research.

* Directors of Theme 2 and 4 decided to merge into an unique theme

** Due to the lack of data to correlate the analysis, Theme 6 is temporarily stalled.