I’m happy and honoured to say that I have finally found a person who will take care of SOS Open Source business development.

Read more at SOS Open Source.

We appreciate all the support we’ve gotten over the years from Slashdot’s logged-in users. They take part actively in discussions, and in exchange for their active interest in the site, we like to give a few perks over and above what our beloved anonymous readers get. But we never want to deprive anonymous readers of the actual features of the site — whether you’re a logged-in account holder, anonymous, a subscriber, or have a username but are browsing anonymously at any given moment, Slashdot has always been freely available to read for anyone with a browser and an uncensored Internet connection. It’s a balance we try to maintain, too, Sure, we’d like you to login, and we think it has some worthwhile benefits (like tracking comment responses, building karma, and using the Zoo system to keep track of your friends and foes), but we’ll never force you to. Today, we’re building on this approach, by introducing a feature that benefits every logged-in user, but still leaves the page free to read for all. We’ll be phasing in over the next few days a button that logged-in users and subscribers can click to decrypt the text of each Slashdot posting with the trivial transform known as Rot13.

Read more at Slashdot.

So said, SourceForge is still dedicated to being the most trusted source for Open Source, and will continue to provide free hosting for your Open Source project, and you’re welcome either if you need the full set of tools or just a way to distribute your program.

If you didn’t check it out yet, take a moment to look at our brand new Enterprise directory (beta).

If you want to know more about our new corporate entity, you can read all about it at slashdotmedia new website.

Either enterprise-grade projects developed at SourceForge or at other forges would benefit from being enlisted in the new directory, now enriched with a resource center containing useful information about partners, add-ons, books and upcoming events.

Over 40 million unique visitors per month come to SourceForge looking for open source software, and enterprise-grade products is a big part of it. The Enterprise directory is just aimed at making IT Decision Makers’ lives easier, by gathering projects’ relevant information in one single page.

Hope you’ll enjoy, stay tuned!

I have just received an email from the Agency for Digital Italy answering my self-candidature to join the working group aimed at defining the technical and economical assessment criteria for open source procurement.

Apparently they received an high number of requests, and my resume wasn’t good enough, says Francesco Grasso, Coordinator of the working group and sci-fi writer.

Bryan Cheung, Liferay’s cofounder and actual CEO, while sharing his experience about how Liferay grew its project into a product provided me with additional information.

During the call we have been surfacing the ratio of the number of Liferay users over the number of Liferay customers. Having precise and accurate numbers, especially for the number of users, maybe tricky, so Bryan told me Liferay customers/users ratio is between 1/250 and 1/400.

While other open source vendors showed different ratios, the general take is that the more users the better. I remember talking to Matt Asay about the importance of investing in PR.

Among other take aways from the call I’d definitely mention the following.

1. At some point you need a product manager able to integrate customers’ needs into product’s features.

2. The importance of moving to a plug-in architecture, enabling third-parties to add features,

3. Long maintenance matters in the enterprise market,

4. Both Product and Customer development are key to your success,

5. Channel partners and marketplaces are a must unless you want to build a lifestyle company.

Take your time to read the full interview.

For more information visit the PROSE blog.

Thank you for your collaboration!

I look forward to further collaborate with OpenOffice, the Apache Software Foundation and all open source projects making everyday easier living open source!

Since the goal of the survey is to ascertain the requirements of a hosted source forge for EC ICT projects, we’d welcome especially FP7 projects’ members to take the time to answer all our questions.

All individual responses will be treated as confidential however we plan to use a summary of results in future presentations to the community. So, please fill out the PROSE online survey and contribute the improvement of FLOSS adoption in European projects.

For more information on the survey visit the prose BLOG http://ict-prose.eu/blog

Thank you for you collaboration!

The last major change to the law occured this summer, and at least in theory it has been reinforced the obligation to consider open source solutions, as Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz has noticed in his article about the news:

Only when a technical and economical analysis demonstrates that it is not possible to obtain at a lower price an open source solution or to reuse a solution developed internally, then it is allowed to purchase a proprietary licence of use.

The good news is that the new-born Agency for Digital Italy has just put out a call inviting interested parties to join a working group aimed at defining the technical and economical assessment criteria.

People interested in joining the working group have to submit an application by sending a certified email to pareri@pec.digitpa.gov.it.