Category: Projects

Reactivating CoopX : Idea of a project towards interoperable software development hosting platforms

CoopX … that name doesn’t remind you of anything ? …

Well, it’s the name of an old project, started in 2001, whose goal was to try and gather people working on different software development hosting platforms in order to elaborate a standard for interoperability between these platforms.

AFAIK, some progress was made but the project did not deliver anything really useful that could be integrated into the existing platforms. Everybody involved was quite busy elsewhere and the project, only based on volunteer contribution stalled for a while… until its website (http://coopx.eu.org) eventually became unavailable (in the meantime a crash of the tuxfamily platform occurred, which didn’t help… but the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine hopfully have saved a copy… although it’s not responding at the time of writing – Update : finally working, so here is the link.).

This kind of idea is still something that might be worth investigating… and who knows, maybe this time, it would be possible to draw enough support to work in way so that existing platforms really benefit from that work.

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More details on libre software in FP6 Call 5

I’m adding more details on the most interesting aspects of the possible funding of libre software RtD projects in IST FP6 in the forecoming Call 5 (followup to my previous post).

As I said, I think there should be plenty of oportunities for actors in the libre software field to get funding in the fore-coming call 5. Here, I will comment and draw your attention on the documents that were provided at the Info day, since they contain very valuable informations.

The slides The Strategic Objective “Software services” by David Callahan (Deputy Head of the Software Technologies Unit at the Information Society Directorate) state clearly what the Commission is expecting in proposals related to Open Source :

Research into technologies specifically supporting the development, deployment, evolution and benchmarking of open source software. Investigation into the use of open source models for improving software engineering. This investigation should be based on agreed indicators of productivity and quality and result in a measurement of the economic impact of OSS.

(slide 11).

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Report from IST InfoDay on 21 – 22 April 2005

Interesting oportunities for funding from the IST Call 5 for libre software research and development.

I’ve been in Brussels for the Commission infodays on 21 – 22 April 2005, which addressed activity in the field of software (and more specifically, at times, the topic of libre software). There seem to be plenty of oportunities for actors in the libre software field to get funding in the fore-coming call 5.

Here is my report about the worskops on “Key Challenges for Software and Services Research” and the preparation of Call 5. Update: I have a written a more focused post for description of Call 5 oportunities.

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Presentation at OSS2005 on 13 July 2005

I will go to OSS2005 in Genova (Italy), between 11th and 15th of July, to participate to OSS2005, and present our paper “Why and how-to contribute to libre software when you integrate them into an in-house application ?“, which describes our past efforts on the development of the in-house ProGET platform.

Abstract :

Free or open source software are common tools that everybody can use and customise at its convenience to create in-house applications. Using and customising free software is not sufficient to ensure that this in-house application will be maintainable at mid or long term. This paper draws lessons from our in-house project, the development of a groupware Web platform for researchers, to help defining a policy through which efficient contributions can be made to open source software so that the in-house projects may remain viable.

The program of the conference is available on-line, and looks promising.

UPDATE : The list of accepted papers (and abstracts) is available on-line.

Will visit Brazil to celebrate Official Year of Brazil in France… and participate to WFS2005

2005 is Official Year of Brazil in France … so that’s a very good time for visiting Brazil.

I will probably do so, as I’m going to participate to the 6th International Free Software Forum, which will be held betw. june 1-4, 2005 in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil. I will be part of the technical committee of the WFS2005 – 6th Workshop on Free Software.

Now, all I have to do is start learning portugese / brazilian 😉

UPDATE : I have uploaded the slides of my presentation to the PFTCR project’s page : Integration of libre software for in-house application – Strategy for contributions – Example of the ProGET collaborative work platform for researchers at GET. Read also my report (in french) at : http://olivierberger.com/weblog/index.php/2005/06/03/19-compte-rendu-fisl-60-a-porto-alegre