Sessions at TransferSummit 2011 about Open Source on Wednesday 7th September

Open source is more than just a licence, it is also a software development methodology that allows companies to share resources and collaborate on critical parts of their software/service offerings.

Open innovation means combining internal and external ideas, and internal and external paths to market, to advance a company's technology. The parallels should be obvious, yet people don't always think as open source as an enabler for open innovation. Open source, if done right, brings many external eyeballs and fast feedback to the software development process.

We will show how those eyeballs and feedback can make a huge difference in a company's potential for innovation, and as a result provide compelling arguments for moving large parts of your software development efforts to open source, as Day Software (now part of Adobe) started doing a few years ago.

Open development processes and the open innovation that they enable are spreading into areas other than software.In recent years the open hardware movement has gathered speed and is attracting the attention of commercial participants.

Commercial engagement with open source and open hardware involves contribution and collaboration in some areas, while still retaining a competitive advantage. For example, organisations may choose to keep some IP closed, or they may focus on developing superior services around open IP. This talk explains how Toby Churchill manage to integrate design contribution, collaboration and IP in a way that supports commercial product development and manufacture.

In this session, Paul Fremantle, CTO and Co-Founder of WSO2, will explain the business benefits of cloud platforms, and look in detail about why Open Source is a key component of any cloud strategy. Paul will specifically address how companies, organisations and academic institutions can build a strategy for cloud adoption that addresses the realities of privacy issues, lock-in concerns and flexibility to move between clouds. In particular Paul will look at the relationship between Open Source and Cloud. We will also examine real-life examples of commercial Open Source usage such as projects at eBay.

Aimed at IT managers, project managers, IT decision makers and department leaders, Paul's talk will focus on real-world concerns and issues with cloud and open source.

Open source code can present significant risks to the original contributor, the maintainer and the user if the legal status of that code is not managed and tracked. The overhead in doing IP management and due diligence can be prohibitive. As a direct result of this open source foundations have emerged.

In this session a panel of experts will examine the need for these foundations. They will examine various foundation models designed to insulates developers and their employers from the "red tape" of open source software development by providing a legal framework and a set of documented processes for IP management. This allows developers to focus almost exclusively on building software using the Apache Way (a collaborative consensus based software development process).

When engaging with open source organisations, lawyers and business people alike face a learning curve. Issues in the world of open source are different from a proprietary software deal. For both business people and their lawyers, there is not only the challenge of brining open source into a previously closed environment, but the difficulty of understanding why some of the contract issues may be different and how these are dealt with. From the lack of need for an escrow agreement where the code is public, to the obligation to comply with the licences in the code, contracting in the world of open source is much easier with a basic understanding of why there are differences and what these are.

In this session Amanda Brock, General Counsel for Canonical, will examine the concerns and rationales that drive these differences and will describe more measured strategies for managing the perceived risk. Amanda will explain and help create an understanding of the issues, to facilitate both business and legal advisers' careful management of service agreements (whether for development or support) relating to open source software use can ensure a company can successfully use open source software.

As a co-author of the FSFE's European Legal Network, Contract Risk Grid, Amanda will walk you through contract issues, terms and solutions.

The webinos project will define and deliver an Open Source Platform and software components for the Future Internet in the form of web runtime extensions, to enable web applications and services to be used and shared consistently and securely over a broad spectrum of converged and connected devices, including mobile, PC, home media (TV) and in-car units.

On the surface it would seem that the effort of collaboration on software results in reduced output. After all, decision making, consensus building and collective planning all take time. However, when managed well open source development can signficantly increase productivity as well as improve quality.

In this talk Sander van der Waal, Service Manager of OSS Watch will set out to demonstrate that this is the case. Along the way he will describe how to ensure collaboration is painless, productive, rewarding and even fun.

What is the real value that Open Source has brought to the economy? This is not a peregrine question. Since most of the current evaluation methods are based on assessing “sales”, that is direct monetization of OSS, we are currently missing from this view the large, mostly under-reported and underestimated aspect of open source use that is not “sold”, but for example is directly introduced through an internal work force, or in services, or embedded inside an infrastructure.

In this session Carlo Daffara will demonstrate that OSS provide cost reduction and increases in efficiency of at least 116B€, 31% of the European software and services market.

The open source paradigm is not confined to software projects and it's increasingly being used in support of the development and licensing of hardware. Open Source Hardware (OSHW) enjoys close linkage and a symbiotic relationship with open source software, its ecosystem is growing at a significant rate and with some predicting that the market could be worth $1 billion by 2015.

In this session Paul Downey and Andrew Back will provide an introduction to OSHW illustrated using a series of existing projects, from alarm clocks, 3D printers and the Arduino platform, through to cars and laptops. Explaining how open source techniques are being applied to hardware development and using Google's Accessory Development Kit (ADK) for Android as a case study. Through the combination of OSHW and open source software we will see that the potential for innovation is limited only by resources and expertise.

Organisations across the globe are creating and distributing products that include open source software. To ensure compliance with the open source licenses, each company needs to evaluate exactly what open source licenses and copyrights are included – resulting in duplicated effort and redundancy. This talk will provide an overview of the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) specification. This specification provides a common format to share information about the open source licenses and copyrights that are included in any software package, with the goal of saving time and improving data accuracy. This talk will review the current status of the initiative; discuss the benefits to organizations using open source and share information

The much anticipated UK Government ICT Strategy 2011 strengthened its focus on open standards and open source to deliver better IT systems and drive value for money. The Coalition Agreement itself aims for a “level playing field” for opens source.

The policy on open source was launched in 2004, and relaunched in 2009. However the Government wants to further improve its use of open source technologies. To this end, an Open Source working group has led on efforts to understand barriers to wider open source adoption in Government, and to create an action plan to address these barriers.

Tariq Rashid, an architect from the Home Office, will explain why Government believes open source has value beyond simply cost free software. Open standards are key to encouraging a competitive market that works for the customer’s benefit, and open source is an important participant. Open source aligns with other Government priorities for SMEs and the Big Society.

The session will centre on the Government’s action plan to address barriers to open source adoption, targeting almost every step of the IT system lifecycle. Tariq will report on some early successes, and outline challenges ahead.

True to the open approach, you are encouraged to challenge, query and suggest new ideas for the action plan.