March 2021 Newsletter



[OW2 Newsletter - March 2021 - From the OW2 Management Office]

Dear OW2 Members, dear All,

During a quick chat on the theme of our annual conference (Leveraging the European Open Source Ecosystem), OW2 President Jean Parpaillon remarked that, rather than talking about financing open source, maybe we should start by simply paying for it. When you think about it, two substantially different, yet complementary models.

Financing open source means allocating upfront resources to projects or equity to open source vendors in return for a technical result or financial gain. The problem is it’s a technocratic approach determined by the ex-ante strategic thinking of funding decision-makers who may at any time modify their strategic priorities. While the financial method may impact the structure of the open source industry, momentarily boosting projects or vendors, it does not ensure its sustainability.

By contrast, paying for the use of open source is a sustainable, long-term economic solution. It establishes a truly industrial and balanced relationship in which monetary recognition is transferred from those who use the software to those who develop it. It may not create instant winners, but in the long-term it establishes a healthy and resilient environment. Open source vendors are frugal; trust them to be sustainable from receiving fair payment for their software and services. 

OW2’s OSS Good Governance initiative and our project Market Readiness Level assessment are all about recognizing and supporting the true cost of open source through a fair and sustainable value-sharing model.

On another note, the OW2 Technology Council has co-opted BlueMind, the comprehensive collaborative mail suite, as a new project in the OW2 code base.

The OW2con'21 Call For Presentations is open until March 15, 2021. Please send your submission ASAP! Save the date for OW2con'21, June 23-24, and check out how you can become a Sponsor! Sponsorship helps to make an even better conference.

Thank you for your on-going support,

Cedric Thomas

 

PS: Project leaders: Please use your project dashboard to publish your updates. Your news will appear on our Project Marketplace home page and in this newsletter.

Project News

New project

Bluemind: a sovereign and competitive alternative solution for collaborative messaging and unified communications enabling users of proprietary systems to switch to an open source platform system without giving upon their habits.

Project Updates

  • Rocket.Chat: published version 3.12.0 with a bunch of new features and improvements. More.
  • ASM: released version 9.1 bringing JDK 17 support and several bug fixes. More.
  • XWiki: released version 13.1 that brings to version 13 stability and improvements such as better user experience for page translation feature. 12.10.4 bug fix release was also published. More.
  • Sympa: 6.2.61 beta has been published and everyone is invited to test it and report issues. More.

Project of the month

LemonLDAP::NG is a modular WebSSO (Single Sign On) implementing CAS, SAML and OpenID Connect protocols. LemonLDAP::NG won the 2018 OW2 Community Award. More.

 

Community News

OW2con'21, June 23-24, Online

Only 10 days left before the Call for Presentations deadline (March 15). Do not wait and submit now, we look forward to reading your proposals! Check our sponsoring opportunities. More.

FOSDEM, February 6-7, Online

FOSDEM is over now, many thanks to all OW2 members and colleagues who joined us on the virtual booth or contributed in the Devroom on Dependency Management. All Devroom videos and slides are available now. More.

Open Research Webinar Series, March 4, Online

Join today's webinar at 04:00 CET.  This event series is organized in cooperation with the Eclipse Foundation to introduce european software research projects. The next webinar will be on June 1. Discover the agendas and register. More.

BlueHats Workshop, March 26, Online

OW2 will present the OW2 Good Governance Initiative in the BlueHats Workshop Series on March 26 from 11h00 to 11h30. More.

FASTEN Virtual Workshop, April 8, Online

OW2 and the FASTEN H2020 research project organize a virtual workshop on "Risk Mitigation with Software Composition Analysis and Dependency Management". Join us April 8 at 16:00 CET and learn about existing tools and latest innovations. More.

17th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS Conference), May 12-13, Lahti, Finland (moved online)

OW2 is chair of the OSS2021 Business Track "Industry Conference". A Call for Presentation is open (deadline March 21), check out details and submit your proposal! More.

Beta-Testing Services for Innovative Projects

Do you have a software ready for beta-testing? Leverage the ReachOut platform, engage with the community, reward your beta testers and collect external feedback. Check out the active campaigns. Attend next webinars. Register your own project.

OW2 Good Governance initiative

Check out the newly opened OSS Good Governance Resource Center. Work in progress! You are welcome to contribute and share content, best practices and experiences. More.

In the OW2 Ecosystem

We are pleased to welcome RIOS, the Rete Italiana Open Source Network, as OW2 associate organization. RIOS represents a reference point in the peninsula for whoever wants to operate enterprise-grade OSS solutions. More.

 

OW2 CEO Cedric Thomas co-signs op-ed in Le Monde with Stefane Fermigier and Prof. Roberto Di Cosmo in support of MP Eric Bothorel's recommendation to set up a specialized open source bureau for the French administration. More.

 

First SWForum Workshop on Trustworthy Software and Open Source, March 23rd-25th, 2021 (16:00-17:30), online, organized by the SWForum project, funded by the European Commission. More.

In our Research Projects

Play the Platform Workflow Video and read the project glossary to learn DECODER secrets to extract and store new software knowledge. More.

 

The FASTEN project team is about to publish a beta-testing campaign to get user feedback on its Java call graph generator tool. Stay tuned!

OW2 Community Notices

 

The OW2 board and chairperson elections will be held from February 3 to March 18, 2021 and our General Assembly on March 5, 2021.
 

 

Outlook

B-Boost Conference, June 15-16, La Rochelle, France

The second edition of B-Boost open source conference is co-organized by NAOS, french open source regional cluster and the CNLL, with the support of the region of Nouvelle Aquitaine. More.

 

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