Surrounded by stunning buildings lit up by the bright sunlight, Keble College in spotless Oxford was the perfect international setting for TransferSummet/UK 2010. “…a forum for business executives and members of the academic and research community to discuss requirements, challenges, and opportunities in the use, development, licensing, and future of Open Source technology”.
I recently decided to take the opportunity to work for my company, Interlinux Ltd, full time after a three year employment contract within academia. The summit presentations have been of a very high standard and relevant to the Interlinux Ltd business strategy; to primarily provide consultancy and services to UK Higher Education. This summit has been the ideal opportunity to undertake some business development, networking and product awareness; I look forward to seeing the results of my attendance over the coming weeks.
The combination of talking with other attendees and the presentations, has left me with an optimistic picture of the current state of the open source industry and a clearer view of its relationship with academia and open source development communities. I am left picturing a triangle; with academia, the open source business model and open source development communities at each of the corners with a strong relationship along the lines. The Red Hat speaker, Phil Andrews, spoke of the fine balance between generating commercial revenue and investing in the creative and innovative non-commercial communities that are so vital to the generation of open source code. Too much commercial focus then the community can become disenfranchised, too much investment in the community and shareholders become concerned. After talking with academics I can see that academia faces a similar challenge. This summit will assist with the adoption and general acceptance of open source as a viable tool to satisfy many of the immediate and long-term technology requirements within academia and serve as a reference for business. It is apparent, after experiencing the commercial talks and sponsorship, that many of the jagged edges around commercial open source are naturally smoothing out as time progresses.
It is clear to me now, that the open source business, academic and community triangle, mentioned above, has overlapped in history but it is not quite apparent on the surface. Apache httpd server has academic grass roots, commercial application and a strong community with governance provided by the Apache Software Foundation. The president of ASF, Justin Erenkrantz delivered an enthusiastic talk about the foundation. A member of an open source development community could also be delivering commercial open source services and be an academic! Certainly I talked to a number of attendees who resided at two corners of the triangle. The future of continued and more widespread adoption of open source technologies partly depends on finding and building upon common ground between open source service providers and academia. I have experienced plenty of evidence there is common ground the past two days.
– Damian
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