Hard times for events despite interesting topic?

Next week will take place the Profoss event on legal impact of open source licenses and despite a very interesting that should make it one of the most interesting Profoss event until now, registrations are in the low-end of what I hoped.

Is this a consequence of the economic crisis we know? I'll try to answer that question later as I'm still focusing to bringing people to the event. If you want to help me, here is some promo text. Don't hesitate to send it around you!

EN

Understand the impact of open source licenses on your business.

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) is organising an informative event on 28 april 2009 in Brussels about open source licenses and their impact on businesses.

Speakers are all specialists and will share their knowledge with you during their talks covering these topics:

* Understanding Free and Open Source licenses (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact on business conduct: liability, due diligence processes Benjamin Docquir
* Problems encountered by a FOSS developer (Bruno Lowagie)
* code auditing tools , fossology
* EUPL: Why it exists and why it matters (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact on contractual documents (Benjamin Jean)

All details about this event and the registration form are available at the Profoss website at http://www.profoss.eu

FR

L'impact des licenses open source sur le business

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) organise à Bruxelles le 28 avril un événement couvrant l'impact des license open sources sur les sociétés.

Les orateurs sont tous des spécialistes qui partageront leurs connaissances durant leurs préentations (en anglais) couvrant les sujets suivants:
* Comprendre les licences libres et open source (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact sur les affaires: responsabilité, principes de précaution (Benjamin Docquir)
* Problèmes rencontrés par un développeur libre (Bruno Lowagie)
* Outils d'audit de code , fossology
* EUPL: Pourquoi elle existe et pouquoi elle importe (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact sur les documents contractuels (Benjamin Jean)

Tous les détails à propos de cet événement et le formulaire d'enregistrement se trouvent sur le site web de Profoss: http://www.profoss.eu

NL

Impact van open source licenties op bedrijven

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) organiseert op 28 april een evenement over het impact van open source licenties op het bedrijfswereld.

Sprekers zijn specialisten die hun kennissen zullen delen tijdens hun presentaties (in het engels) die de volgende onderwerpen zullen dekken:
* Vij en Open Source licenties begrijpen (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact op de business: verantwoordelijkheid, voorzorg maatregelen (Benjamin Docquir)
* Problemen ondervonden door een vrije ontwikkelaar (Bruno Lowagie)
* Code audit tools , fossology
* EUPL: Waarom het bestaat en waarom het meetelt (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact op contractuele documenten (Benjamin Jean)

Praktische details omtrent dit evenement evenals het inschrijvingsformulier zijn beschikbaar op de website van Profoss op http://www.profoss.eu

ERP event nearing!

If you're interested in Open Source ERP systems, be sure to attend the next Profoss event on 18 november!

I'm excited by the interesting content that will be presented: Adempiere, Openbravo, OpenERP will have a presentation, a method for evaluating open source ERPs will also be presented.

Registration is still open, but don't wait too long to register!

Profoss on twitter

I've not been a Twitter user until now, so I'm curious what impact this will have.
Follow Profoss at http://twitter.com/profoss

Some things changes, some don't

This quote I remember from the movie Matrix Reloaded is really the best I could find to describe this post, even if it will mostly focus on something changing: Microsoft's stance towards Free and Open Source Software.

Of course, years spent thrashing FOSS and comparing the GPL to cancer can't be forgotten that rapidly. Old reflexes remain. But it seems clear things are changing.

And I was very surprised to experience it myself when I heard from Dirk Tombeur that Microsoft will be the Gold sponsor of the ERP event by Profoss. I had already met Dirk at Profoss events, but I saw his presence as a need for Microsoft to keep an eye on the competition. Becoming the Gold Sponsor of a Profoss event is clearly another approach.

It seems Microsoft is changing, and starts to understand that the IT world is more heterogeneous than it would have liked some years ago. Keeping its stance of some years ago can only lead it to irrelevance.

Of course Microsoft is a company, and as such is always looking to generate revenue. But now, it seems to be interested to also generate revenue with FOSS. They're working on IronRuby, worked on PHP performance on Windows, submitted 2 licenses to OSI, became Apache sponsor, ....

But let's hope this is only the beginning. There's still a lot Microsoft should do for Open Source.....

Before I finish writing this post, let me quicly talk about something that is not changing: Profoss' focus on informing objectively about the use of Free and Open Source Software in professional environments.

Really, some things change, some don't.....

Next Profoss: ERP software

The next Profoss event will talk be about open source ERP software. Here's a list of software I know and that I will possibly contact.

• http://www.xtuple.com/
• OpenERP
• Compiere
  
• OpenBravo
• http://www.erp5.org/
• http://www.opentaps.org/
• Apache Ofbiz
• https://www.jfire.org/,

Fabien from OpenERP already expressed his interest. If you have any suggestion or if you can help me get in tough with good speakers about these software, let me know!

Raph

Planet Profoss launched!

I have finally launched a Planet feed aggregation at http://planet.profoss.eu. I say finally not because it was long and hard to set it up, but because I wonder how did not think of it earlier.

Included in the Planet are blogs and websites that cover professional open source.

Currently in english, I am interested in publishing planets in other languages, especially dutch and french.

If you want to be included, let me know (by mail or leave a comment here). The goal is to only include posts related to professional open source, and avoid any posts unrelated to that subject. It should be achieved easily with the help of tags and categories though.

Profoss event round up

Yesterday's Profoss event about OpenOffice.org went pretty well: speakers where happy, but above all, attendants were happy of the event. Feedback forms were all positive.

This was the first half-day event organised by Profoss, and the conclusion is that it's a good format. You can expect more of these ;-)

And as always, absent people are wrong. No company sponsored the event, and Sun wasn't even present. So when the question was asked: " Which company can we contact to get help and support in an OOo migration", Machtelt could just name them, but how convincing is that when they're not event at this event?

Microsoft, to the contrary, was represented, and raised some interesting issues to get an interesting debate.

Are vendors really pushing OpenOffice.org?

The Profoss event on OpenOffice.org is taking place on 10th june, and the final list of speakers and schedule are now available.

Until now, the interest for the event from potential visitors is comparable to other Profoss events organised. But what is different, is the lack of interest from commercial OpenOffice.org proponents to actively support and sponsor this event.

The format of this event is different (one afternoon rather than 2 days), but I don't think this is the explanation.

With Sun being the main OOo contributor and a Profoss partner, I expected interest and active support from them, but only David helped me.

Novell is also a big OOo developer, but I never ever got an answer from them, though the person I contacted was advised to me by Michael Meeks, an OOo developer.

IBM didn't show interest either. Their marketing department seem to be very picky, and more interested in marketing show than really informative events.

Even smaller companies labeled as OOo specialists didn't come back to me.

Luckily, registration numbers are currently similar to other events.

So, what I wonder is: despite all the noise around ODF and OOo, is there real interest from those companies and other FOSS companies to push OpenOffice.org to the enterprise market? Or do they think the majority of companies are not ready for the switch? Or, worse, do they think OOo is not ready for wide adoption in the enterprise?

Lots of questions, let me know if you have answers.....

Lemon POS solution in Profoss directory

I just added the Lemon Point of Sale solution in the Profoss Software Directory (in english, french and dutch). Still a young product, but quite interesting.

Bye bye EC2, Hello Gandi Hosting!

I have been using EC2 for some time now, for example hosting the Profoss news website, the Profoss newsletter, and other personal tools. But it was kind of expensive for what I used, so I was looking at alternatives, but as I had not time to tackle it, it was left as an idea.

But now my EC2 instance became unavailable. And for those who don't know, an EC2 instance has no persistent storage, meaning that a reboot leaves you with a blank instance. Which makes backup even more important.

As I needed to restore everything from my backups, I decided to go the Gandi Hosting service. They partition their servers in 64 shares, and (currently) you can decide to use between 1 and 32 of them. Ok, one share is not very powerful hardware: 256 MB of RAM (+512 MB of swap), 5 GB of RAID6 disk space reserved for your data (the system is on another disk). Network bandwidth stands at 5 Mbits guaranteed. But one share only costs.... 6€! And you can start small and add shares as you need them.

So I decided to take 1 share, and see how things go. If I need more power, I'll add a share, and I'll pay 12€ a month. But honestly, with the tools running on my share, it could be some time before I take that step.

Profoss speakers: interesting as usual

Profoss tries hard to get interesting speakers with real world experience at their events, and this is also true for the next event about OpenOffice.org.

Are currently confirmed:

• Eric Descamps, the manager at the Belgian Post for the OpenOffice.org project, which went through a Proof of Concept phase, and is getting at the deployment phase. Eric will share his experience and lessons learned in the project he leads.
  
• Machtelt Garrels, co-founder of the OpenDoc Society, will give a talk on how to best avoid usual annoyances met by people switching to OpenOffice.org.

Further speakers will be confirmed soon!

This event will take place at the International Press Center from 14:00 to 18:00, and registration is open for all interested parties!

Profoss in the newspaper!

Today L'écho published an article about free and open source as an opportunity for SMEs. Profoss is mentioned as it is as founder of Profoss that I got in contact with Fabian Lacasse, the journalist who wrote the article. But that's not the most important. What is really important is the quality of the article. It even reminds readers that "gratuité" is not what characterizes free and open source software! Of course (however,... that's not a given in today's journalism), it reflects what I explained, but the writer managed to keep the substance while making it understandable to non-IT people. This is really an article of a quality I wished we saw more often!


But this is only one more step in reaching Profoss' goal to inform professional users of the viability of free and open source software. There's still lots more to do, so don't hesitate to spread the word!

Profoss directories launch!

I've been so busy I didn't blog for too long. It's not that I haven't anything to report: BarCamp Gent was great, MyOwnDB is progressing well, Profoss OpenOffice.org in june was announced, I was without internet 2 work days (and that's really a PITA!), etc...

But what I wanted to report in this post is that I've just launched the Profoss Directories (currently mostly in french, see why below) with 2 categories: Professionals listing companies and freelance specialising in FOSS, and Software, listing FOSS commonly used in professional environments.

I'm still looking to complete these 2 categories and you can help in two ways:

1. Let me know what (your company?) I should add in which category
   
2. Help me maintain and translate the entries in these categories

I'm also interested in your feedback!

And the reason it's mostly in french: these directories will be (I was told so at least) referenced in an article in L'echo. This has accelerated things and I have had to concentrate on the french version, corresponding to the audience of the newspaper.

Start of presentations day

Bart will talk about MyOwnDB at Plugg, and I'll be talking at LinuxWorld for Profoss. Thanks to Murphy those 2 talks were planned simulteanously....

MyOwnDB selected for Plugg's Startup Rally

That's great news! We're in the list of 20 startups selected to give a small (2 minutes) presentation about our product. Based on this presentation, 3 finalists will be selected to give a 10 minutes presentation.

Bart will give this talk as I'll be talking at Linuxworld for Profoss that same day, thanks Murphy.....
If you go to Plugg, keep me updated of how good Bart was :-D
If you're still not registered, use the Profoss coupon to get a 25% rebate!

Plugg.eu coupon

Robin, organising the Plugg.eu conference, was so kind to give Profoss a coupon giving 25% rebate on the registration costs. Early bird discount expires at the end of the week, so hurry and register with the code PROFOSS.

Although I won't be able to be there as I'll be at Linuxworld for Profoss, we have registered MyOwnDB in the start-up rally. If we get through the selection process, Bart will get the opportunity to present MyOwnDB!

Unusable Flickr?

Is it me, or is Flickr's UI crap? More specifically: how do you navigate to view all pics in a set?
I have a Profoss set, and when looking at the first picture, how do I go to the next one? Is this mini-thumbnail lying silently and unnoticed on the right, the only way? What's more, this couple of thumbnail is certainly not intuitive: the left pic is the previous pic to the one displayed on the page, and the right one is the next. So when you go to the next picture, the one that was displayed goes the the left thumbnail, and the right thumbnail shows the new next picture. Let me tell you this is not intuitive, and certainly not for novice users.

And what if I want go to the 10th pic?

Compare this with Smugmug's interface, and you'll understand why people a ready to pay twice the price than what Flickr asks for their Pro account.
With Smumug, you get:

• rapid access to pictures, not only to the next one
• a layout adapting at the size of your browser window, showing the current picture in a bigger size when you maximise your window

Here's the gallery for my temporary account, which could become obsolete if I don't subscribe within 14 days.

Maybe Flickr's tools are more advanced (picture editor, stats), but what's the point if their interface is unusable for people not used to Flickr?

I'll keep using the free Flickr for now, but if I have to pay, I think I'll switch to Smugmug.

Any better suggestion?

VMWare at Profoss!

Yes, it's true. It's been a long journey, but it finally happened!
Jeremy van Doorn will represent VMWare in our panel discussion "Open or closed source, an open discussion". He joins Dirk Tombeur from Microsoft and Werner van Unen from Citrix. I expect Frank Kohler from Novell will participate too, but I'm waiting for a confirmation.

This will be a really interesting discussion, so don't hesitate and register! ;-)

The importance of Microsoft's presence at Profoss

So today I got the confirmation that Dirk Tombeur from Microsoft will participate in the panel discussion at Profoss titled 'Open or closed source: an open discussion'. I think this is very good news for the event attendance: they'll get several point of views exposed, and will be able to choose the best solution for their environment.

Profoss has never been started to convince people that they should switch to free or open source solution. Profoss was started so that people can make their own informed decision. And when I say informed, I mean "by knowing there are possibly free and open source solutions that are worthy alternatives to closed source proposals that should be taken into account".

With its stated goal to be objective, Profoss will let people compare proprietary software to free/open source software. It's no fun when everybody agree in a room. There's no progress happening. Progress happens with a constructive discussion when people disagree and present alternatives. At least strong and weak points of each party appears in such a debate.

I'm really looking forward to this friendly panel discussion!

Final schedule of Profoss

The final schedule for the Profoss event on virtualisation on 22 and 23 january in Brussels was published.

I'm really excited as I honnestly think the content that will be brought by the speakers will be very interesting. Each speaker is a specialist in the field, but coming from different horizons.

Here are the speakers, in no particular order:

• Frank Kohler, Virtualization project manager for SuSE
• John Abbott, chief analyst at The 451 Group
• Mike Kreiten, Product manager workstation and server at AMD
• Duncan Hardie, Solaris Product Manager at Sun
• Kris Buytaert, co-author of Virtualisation with Xen
• Tarry Singh, virtualisation advisor and Avastu CEO
• Kristof De Spiegeleer, Q-Layer CEO
• Herbert Poetzl, project leader of Linux-VServer
• Niko Nelissen, VP Business development Q-Layer
• Mattias Rechenburg, OpenQRM project manager
• Werner Fischer, Developer and OpenVZ specialist

For the price of 145€ excl VAT for one day, or 290€ excl VAT for two days, with the restaurant and coffee breaks included, who would want to miss this out? So if you're interestd in virtualisation, don't wait any longer and register!