Certified Open™  

Defines and maintains the characteristics that products & services must achieve if they are to be seen as fully open

System Integration Database

Integration guidance for top vendor applications in a range of major service areas

Open Source Summit Report – Friday 9^th November 2007

Friday saw probably the UK's largest ever and most influential audience of non-techies to hear about Open Source/Free Software. The Open Source Summit, very successfully organised by the legal firm Olswang achieved some 250 attendees from across business. An excellent conference and an excellent set of presentations, really drilling down into the business and IPR issues around OSS. Bruce Perens keynoted and clearly got it spot on with the audience, both with his anecdotes and pragmatism. His identification between 'differentiating' and 'non-differentiating' software (that giving true competitive advantage for a company, and that 'merely' supporting)- hence where OSS/FS was most likely to be most successful – was well made. He also emphasised the point about the culture of participation. It was clear from a couple of the later speakers that this is still not understood by some. Jim Markwith of Microsoft was one of those. In a session on IPR, with the potential for high controversy (it wasn't), you could hear evidence of specific moves made to claim OSS support , but none of the change in business model or participation, that indicated it really was meant. Interoperability is never going to be seen as anything other than a threat to MS, forced on them by the EC or whoever, unless this mindset changes at the top.

For myself I shared a session (presentation) with Mike Robinson of Deloitte MCS, who like me talked on Openness, but included hot off the press details of the Oyster system built for for Transport for London. Based solely on Openness best practice and utilising much OSS software some 80% was saved on like for like costs.

We took the opportunity to launch the 3 month free trial of Certified Open – the first real test announced anywhere for Openness. I really drew the short straw since at the same time our partner on Certified Open, Free Software Foundation Europe, Georg Greve, was presenting it during the UN/IGF Conference in Rio.

Certified Open is really worth a look, if you haven't done so already. It's a programme designed to evaluate the technical and commercial lock-in associated with ICT solutions. It's very easy to use framework, based on self assessment that allows suppliers to register products and solutions, and for user organisations to validate their current state of ability to maintain choice. It focuses on Openness and operates equally without bias on either OSS/FS and Proprietary software. During the 3 month trial its all free , and even afterwards for Users and Free Software developments will get it for no charge. During the trial we are seeking both suppliers and users to test it in confidence, both the content and processes, prior to a full launch in the Spring. So all constructive comments are welcome ( www.certifiedopen.com).