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OpenSource
Truths and mythsabout free softwareThere's no doubt that for decades free software has been one of the
technologies that has produced the most controversy, especially
because its philosophy about the way in which it's prepared and
distributed is very different to what we are used to, and because its
business model proves that an IT company can work differently to
traditional software companies and be profitable.
01
In these circumstances, it's logical that there's a
mix of conflicting claims about what free
software actually is and why its development
and use is characterized, either because of
sheer ignorance, misunderstanding or the
normal clean or dirty game of competition.
But just because it's logical, it doesn't mean that
the obligation to separate the grain from the
chaff in respect to this technology lacks
importance, even if it's just to guarantee a
minimum level of rigor and intellectual honesty
in this debate: at the end of the day, the most
important aspect is accurate information, that
the public knows what the free software is
actually offering before deciding if they want to
use it, and that people in positions of
responsibility in resource management are
aware of all its possibilities in order to choose
the most suitable product.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
Free software is software that,
after its acquisition, can be
used, copied, analyzed,
modified and redistributed by
users with full freedom thanks
to the open source. These
conditions must always be met
for it to be considered as such.
But we mustn't confuse "free"
with "free of charge", because
whilst it keeps these
characteristics, there's no
problem with it being
commercially distributed; i.e.,
freeware is not free software:
in general, it's distributed and
used at no cost, although the
first one depends on a specific
license, but the program can
never be altered.
Neither must we confuse it
with public domain software,
which doesn't require any type
of license to use because it
belongs to everyone, whilst
free software (always
respecting its basic principles)
works with different licenses,
i.e., legal authorizations to use
the programs: GNU GPL,
AGPL, type BDS or MPL and
derivatives.
GNU's General Public License,
or GPL, maintains the
copyright and allows it to be
redistributed and modified
provided that components
from the same license are
used; but if the open source is
mixed with another form of
license, the result will be the
latter, which is used by
approximately 60% of existing
free software.
A definition of free software
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
However, the Affero General
Public License is the same as
the first, but with an additional
requisite: the software must be
distributed if it is executed for
services in a computer
network. Meanwhile, the BSD
type license, as its name
indicates, is the license for
software issued with Berkeley
Software Distribution operating
systems, derivatives of the Unix
system with contributions from
the University of California in
Berkeley, and it maintains the
copyright to waive the
warrantee and correctly
attribute authorship in the
modifications made.
Furthermore, the MPL type
license, i.e., Mozilla Public
License, and its derivatives
encourage collaboration, avoid
virality of the GPL and a huge
number are used in operating
systems and other free
software products.
The owners of software
copyrights with a copyleft
license, for the free distribution
of altered copies and versions,
have the freedom to modify it
with the first copyright and sell
it with the license that best suits
them, regardless of the
distribution of the original
program as free software.
It's pretty common to find these
confusions among this
technology, freeware and public
domain, but it's also easy to
come across a series of ideas
that have nothing to do with the
reality of free software.
For example, many people think
that this technology doesn't
respect the patents or
copyrights, which doesn't make
much sense because their
developers don't use proprietary
software, meaning that there
The most commonwrong ideas aboutfree software
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
are no patents; it doesn't mean
that they lose their rights as
authors of the free software
programs: it just means that they
release the use of those they
have developed under the
principles of this technology.
There are also people who blame
their dynamic, that modifications
of proprietary sources are
patented, when free software has
nothing to do with the legal
umbrellas or loopholes that make
this possible. Some even think
that free software programs are
pirated or have expired licenses,
when their development is fully
independent and uses what
already exists in the same
technology to work on new
improved versions, but never
plagiarizing external sources
without the corresponding
permission from its author or
waiting for a license to expire,
since the developers of free
software already have enough
open sources to contribute with
their contributions.
The most surprising rumor about
this technology, as pointed out
by the international consultant in
IT policies and communication,
Ramón Ramón, is that "it's not a
professional system", that it's
made up of poor quality
products, even amateurish,
because the software passes
through the hands of too many
people and this is not a serious
work process, not like that of the
companies who manufacture and
distribute proprietary software,
supposedly, whose efficiency is
general not questioned.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
And what people who think that don't know, or are
yet to understand, is that first of all, free software
developers can be, and are, just as professional as
proprietary software developers, and that,
according to a study by the Universities Rey Juan
Carlos and Oberta de Catalunya, almost half of
these programmers also develop proprietary
software and can make a living from doing both,
which is an image that disproves the perception of
fanatics; due to the dynamics of free software
development, which doesn't have access limitations
to the source and has the possibility of immediately
testing a program or operating system, the
improvements and progress is faster.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
Furthermore, as mentioned by David Úbeda, one
of the managers at the Free Software Office at
Miguel Hernández University, which was the most
praised in the last Ranking of Free Software
universities (RuSL), regarding production
environments, Top500.org published a
monograph on "the overwhelming dominance of
GNU / Linux in supercomputers".
Úbeda also thinks that "the destructive criticisms
about free software normally come from
ignorance", criticisms which give rise to the idea
that free software is bad for the progress of the IT
market, and they tend to add that, since it's free, it
doesn't generate economic movement, which puts
an end to innovation and results in the
disappearance of small developer companies. In
reality, if many minds think more and better than
just a few, it's not unreasonable to think that many
free software developers can work more and better
than just a few proprietary software developers,
and if they can make a living from it, as is the case
with 65% of free software developers, this
technology does strengthen the market. And given
that it doesn't have to be free of charge since the
open and modifiable source doesn't take away from
the fact that systems, programs and applications
can be sold, such as charging for customer
support, distribution and user tutorials, it all
generates an interesting economic movement.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
Therefore, in no way does it kill the innovative drive,
given the exponential growth dynamic of the open
development, in which the only barriers are the limits of
individual creativity. And being aware that 90% of free
software developed in the world is done to order, we
know that a large number of developer companies remain
active thanks to this. What's more, the Linux Foundation
calculates that the financial value of the kernel of its
platform is around 2.2 billion euros.
Juan Julián Merelo, director of the Free Software Office at
the University of Granada, which is the most active in
Spain according to RuSL, says that the greatest myth in
recent times about this technology is "that it doesn't have
customer support". The truth is that it can be "bought, in
general, for any free software tool, from the Apache or
nginx servers to databases such as PostgreSQL or
complete systems such as Drupal. The argument is
precisely the opposite: with proprietary software, you only
have support from the company who made it or its
preferred partners. With free software, SMEs, local
companies or the self-employed who have experience can
also provide support".
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
It's also worth mentioning the
idea that free software
programs are incompatible
with proprietary operating
systems, when the truth is
quite the opposite, since the
dissemination of this
technology would be much
less, or that it's not valid for
critical systems with a strategic
importance, because they're
not secure, when the open
source guarantees that anyone
can check the security of all
programs and, as Ramón
Ramón adds, the fact that the
New York Stock Exchange will
be migrating to the Linux
operating system is a display of
the trust that can be put in it.
Meanwhile, Ramón comments
that one of the most popular
myths about free software,
especially in the offices of
senior government officials, is
that this technology "is only for
rich countries or for times of
economic prosperity and
overspending". Some think that
in actual fact, the time to save
is during times of prosperity,
which is when there is capital
to do so.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
The occurrence pointed out by
Ramón is based on the
misconception that the use of
free software is more
expensive than proprietary
software, when the savings
from not having to pay for
licenses significantly reduces
the user cost.
Nevertheless, despite these
frequent misconceptions
which, as I say, don't conform
to the technological reality,
according to a report about the
Evaluation of Free Software in
society, by
PortalProgramas.com with
surveys in 16 Spanish speaking
countries and in which 1,500
people took part, 70% of
people surveyed have used or
use free software programs on
a daily basis and 80% said that
they trust this technology. So,
based on this information, it
seems that rigor and
intellectual honesty are winning
the war in the debate about
free software.
01. TRUTHS AND MYTHS
of peoplesurveyedHave used or use free software programs
70%
Theindustrious historyof free softwareIt's thought that free software emerged in the '80s from a
need to produce it, faced with the overwhelming majority
of proprietary software.
02
However, although this is
correct, the development of the
first computers and IT programs
was collaborative, high
influenced by the academic
dynamic. In fact, at the end of
the '50s and during the '60s,
almost all software was
produced by academics and
groups of researchers who
worked together, and groups of
users distributed the operating
systems and programs, whose
source could be modified to
make changes or improve it.
Therefore, there were certain
software communities that can
be compared with the current
free software communities long
before it became popular, and
even before the
conceptualization of this
technology. Richard Stallman,
a New York programmer who
founded the movement for free
software, says there was a
community that shared IT
programs at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT),
where he was a hacker at the
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
years before the movement
began.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
However, the concept of "open
source", on which free software
is based, and the practice of
freely sharing technological
information comes from way
back, long before IT existed, and
from another technical field: the
automobile sector. Following a
business war related with the
patent of George Selden's two-
stroke gasoline engine, which
involved another group of
independent manufacturers
which included Henry Ford, a
new association from the sector
reached an agreement to
establish a multiple license for all
automobile manufacturers in the
United States, according to
which, all technological patents
developed would be shared
between them without any kind
of transaction, i.e., openly.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
At the end of the '70s and the beginning
of the '80s, by means of trademarks,
copyrights and leasing, the companies
that sold computers and software began
to charge for licenses, thus restricting the
development of this technology.
The letter that Bill Gates, the hugely
famous cofounder of the software
company Microsoft, wrote to IT
development enthusiasts in 1976 was
unforgettable.
Which not only reveals the change in
trend toward privatization that was going
to happen in the following years, but his
own misunderstanding of the collaborative
development model.
From proprietaryto free software
Bill Gates
“As most of you amateurs know, most of you steal thesoftware you use. Hardware must be paid for, butsoftware is to be shared. Who cares if the peoplewho worked on it werepaid or not?
“
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
He had to wait until September
1983 for Richard Stallman to
tell the Usenet news groups,
the well known and veteran
internet discussion group
generated by Tom Truscott
and Jim Ellis in 1979, that he
was planning on creating a
completely free operating
system, without restrictions for
its use, modifications and
distribution, which was known
as the GNU project. The story
goes that a printer at MIT, that
was impossible to fix because
it didn't have the open source,
may have inspired Stallman for
the project, or the encounter
he had with Symbolics, Inc
regarding his Lisp Machine,
which executes programs in
this language, and MIT
accessing its updates.
In 1985, the GNU Manifesto
was published, in which
Stallman explained his
motivations to develop an
alternative to Unix, a pretty old
operating system from the
AT&T Bell laboratories, and he
founded the Free Software
Foundation (FSF), which "is
dedicated to eliminating the
restrictions on copying,
redistributing, understanding
and modifying computer
programs. With this purpose, it
promotes the development
and use of free software in all
areas of computing, but very
specifically, helping to develop
the GNU operating system". A
definition of free software was
published in February 1986,
and the copyleft concept (not
the original term) that
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
Stallman dreamed up was
included in the GLP in 1989
and was updated in 1991.
That same year, the software
engineer Linus Torvalds, born
in Finland and a US national,
released the Linux kernel to be
freely modified; and in 1992,
he licensed a new version
under the terms of the GPL,
providing us with a free,
complete and efficient
operating system, the
GNU/Linux. To do so, he
based it on the one created by
New Yorker Andrew
Tanenbaum, professor of
computer sciences at the Free
University of Amsterdam, and
on some tools developed by
the GNU project.
But, as happens in the best of
families, controversy arose in
the free software community
about the name of the
operating system that Torvalds
had brought about: on the one
hand, members of the GNU
project asked for this system
to be called GNU/Linux
because most of them that are
based on the Linux kernel
derive from the GNU system,
whose development started
several years before Torvalds
presented his kernel;
meanwhile, those who decided
on the simple name of Linux
preferred it because it was
more recognizable and
practical and gave it more
recognition and therefore,
better acceptance.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
And that wasn't the only
controversy in the free
software environment. We
must remember that, following
the publication of The
Cathedral and the Bazaar, a
book by the historian of the
hacker culture, Eric Raymond,
about the controversy and the
free software that resulted in
the company Netscape
releasing its internet suite,
today better known as Firefox
and Thunderbird, Raymond,
Torvalds and other people
from that world founded the
Open Source Initiative in 1998
with the intention of
transferring the free software
philosophy to the commercial
environment, highlighting the
business potential of sharing
open source. The reasoning
behind this decision was that
the activism of the FSF didn't
attract companies such as
Netscape, but the Foundation
and Stallman vigorously
protested against the Initiative
because they considered that
it hid the social values of free
software and the emphasis on
the freedom of computer
users, although they also
protested against proprietary
software.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
When Juan Julián Merelo was asked what moment or moments in the
history of free software he considered to be the most relevant, the first
word that left his mouth was "Afú!", an expression from Granada that
sometimes indicates weariness and other times difficulty: it's not an
easy task to pick specific times from all those that have paved the way
for the evolution of this technology.
In the end, he decided on when Torvalds released Git in 2005, a
version control software application based on the BitKeeper
proprietary software and the Monotone free software, and its
maintenance for when there is a high number of open source files,
thus guaranteeing its efficiency and security. "Nowadays", says Merelo,
"free software can't be understood without this tool, which fully
dominates the outlook of the creation, production and distribution of
software”.
The milestonesof free software
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
Ramón Ramón looked out for themselves and,
although obvious like Stallman's encouragement
for this technology to flourish, they chose the
decision of the Autonomous Community of
Extremadura to choose free software in all its
schools from the year 2000, and in three years
it was the region with the most computers per
student in the whole world, which firstly ran
with GNU/Linux and then from 2002 with
Linux, an operating system in Spanish
developed and supported by the Community
itself, which now, it seems, is going to be
relegated in favor of Microsoft. It argues that it's
the system most used by teachers in their
homes, i.e., they're absurdly transferring a
personal choice to public education, and
Vocational Training, special education centers,
conservatory and Fine Arts "don't want
OpenOffice because they can't use it" and they
ordered Office, which is improbable because
OpenOffice is very similar to the other word
processor and is also perfectly compatible with
Windows.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
David Úbeda thinks, without a doubt, that
there are very significant milestones in the field
of free software that have marked a before and
an after; for example, when Torvalds began
the development and maintenance of the
Linux kernel. "However", he points out, "I think
that the most important time in the history of
free software occurred when a group of people
were able to channel all the collaborative
capacity and mobilize a very large number of
people for a single purpose, which was
releasing all their know-how [basic knowledge
as a way of transferring technology] to the
community.
That was the seed". He adds that the really
remarkable thing "is that it's still here with the
passing of time, meaning that this collaborative
capacity is just starting to get established,
creating stronger ties and participating in
politics to take this philosophy [of free
software] even further. This makes me think
that it's a process that's just getting started".
I hope he's right.
02. THE INDUSTRIOUS HISTORY
Open SourceinfographicWith Open Source you can read, modify and redistribute a
program's source code, as well as evolve, develop and
improve it. Users adapt it to suit their needs, correct their
mistakes and consequently create better software.
03
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
1950IBM source code
IBM releases the source code of
its operating systems.
1955Sharing User Group
With the express purpose of facilitating
the exchange of open source software
with IBM source code.
During the '60s and '70s,
UNIX is created within and
through Bell Labs, MIT and
General Electric.
Bill Gates expressed his
dismay at the wide
exchange of Altair BASIC
open source software.
CHRONOLOGY
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
1983GNU Project
Richard Stallman begins the Free
Software Movement, with the
founding of the GNU project.
1980Source BBS
Available at Bulletin Board
Systems. Source code features
in the free software movement.
1985Free Software for everyone
RMS founded the Free
Software Foundation (FSF). FSF
brings the open source initiative.
1987GNU Provides
GNU develops an assembler, a
portable optimizing C compiler
(GSS), an editor (GNU Emacs)
and Unix utilities.
1991Minix
Linus Torvalds publishes a
message on Usenet
comp.os.minix about the new
Unix kernel (Linux) that he has
developed.
GNU has the initial nucleus
and compiler required to
develop the program.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
1998Código Abierto
Netscape announces
that it will release the source code for
Navigator. Sun Microsystems and
Adaptec join Linux International.
Oracle and Informix announce that
they will connect their databases to
GNU/Linux.
1993USL v. BSDi
After it was installed
USL v. BSDi, FreeBSD
and NetBSD are
released as free
software.
1998Open Source
The term open source
is coined and during the
following week Bruce Perens and Eric
S. Raymond launch opensource.org
According to NT
Applications, Linux
OS's are used in
nearly 18% of all
web clients.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
2000Codificación
Many coding languages are
created to meet demand.
1999Minix
LinuxWorld Conference and
Expo. Apple releases Darwin
under open source license.
2005Git
Linus Torvalds begins working
on his own DVCS-Git.
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
2008/2014Movil OS
Android, Chrome, Chromium
OS appears and Oracle sues
Google.
2008GitHub
GitHub becomes the most
popular DVCS hosting site with
over 3.4 million users.
2015Apple announces Swift 2
under open source license
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
Depending on the rights that each
author reserves for their work:
Public source
Copyleft
Permissive
Strongrobust
Weakrobust
Open Source
PUBLIC
SOFTWARE
Public
Domain
(free)
COMMERCIAL
SOFTWARE
FreeWare
Shareware
Copyright
Closed
source
PUBLIC SOFTWARE
MODELS
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
TYPES
OF LICENSE• Binary code.• Use according to the license terms.• Negotiable terms.• Royalty payments.
Copyright
• Derived from open source.• Imposes distribution and hosting obligations.
Strong robust copyleft
• Modify open source.• Imposes distribution and hosting obligations.
Weak robust copyleft
• No distribution and hosting obligations.
Permissive copyleft
• Rights released by the author.• Expired rights.
With no obligations
- EULA- Microsoft
Reference Source
- GPL 2 / GPL 3- AGPL - CC- Berkely DB- EUPL
- LGPL 2.1/3- MPL 1/2 - CPL- Artistic License 2- Microsoft Public
- BSD 2/3 - MIT/X11- Apache Foundation- Zlib/libping- Academic Free
- The unilicense- CC0- WTFPL
COMMERCIAL
Closed source
FOSS
PUBLIC SOURCE
Open source
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Open source
03. OPEN SOURCE INFOGRAPHIC
Big Data and Open Sourceas innovation enginesOpen source has already been mentioned as a capital element
in free software development, and it's been made clear that it's
technology that is developed, modified and distributed freely,
focusing its theory around the practical advantages of this
dynamic rather than the ethics of freedom.
04
However, it's the Big Data
concept that complements open
source, and not just for the
faster expansion of technological
development, but also for the
freedom to access information
that, in other cases, favors this
development.
Both elements form part of
open innovation, a notion
coined by American professor
Henry Chesbrough,
organizational theorist, in his
book Open Innovation: The New
Imperative for Creating and
Profiting from Technology,
which was published in 2003
and whose ideas about how
technology should be managed
and used have been very
influential, increasing the public
impact of free software and
open source. Chesbrough
clarifies that we mustn't confuse
innovation with invention: the
second is the creation of
something new without it
having to result in financial
profit; on the other hand,
innovation is the application of
the inventions, precisely to
generate said profit, i.e., it
involves its introduction on the
market. And open innovation is
when companies look for new
technologies, exceeding the
scope of their own organization
and collaborating with external
partners, which brings together
internal and external knowledge
to complete strategic research
and development, or R&D,
projects and improve their
efficiency.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
“Business creativityis what turns theeconomic wheel, and every limit put on thiscreativity just putsanother stick in thewheel
Luís Bassat
“
©JotDown
This dynamic, which spurs
the flow of knowledge, also
means that risks and benefits
are better distributed with
external partners, and in the
companies themselves, it
results in a higher level of
participation from all
employees; and if we
consider the wisdom of the
influential publicist Lluís
Bassat when he said that
"business creativity is what
turns the economic wheel,
and every limit put on this
creativity just puts another
stick in the wheel", open
innovation is a clear drive for
business creativity, and
therefore, for development
itself.
However, in honor of the
truth, it's important to note
that the use of external
knowledge of "the
technological gatekeepers"
was already theorized by
Thomas Allen, an MIT
professor in the '70s who, like
Eric von Hippel, another
teacher at MIT, in the '80s
identified advanced users as a
key resource for ground
breaking innovations.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
Innovation with Open SourceThe current technological world
has evolved in such a way, and
so quickly, that its complexity
makes it practically impossible
for one organization, on its
own, to monopolize talent,
innovation and results. We
must forget about the
development models in which a
company executes all aspects
of its technological products;
they're no longer optimum, and
much less viable; they're
obsolete.
The present and the future of
technology can be found in
collaboration, precisely that on
which free software is based,
which is the best example of
open innovation around,
although the obtaining and
granting process for software
patent licenses, which has
nothing free about it, also fits in
with Chesbrough's open
innovation thesis, because his
samples of technological
exchange are largely based on
patentable methods and related
licenses which are paid to
external organizations.
In any case, hackathons, which
are large gatherings of
programmers organized to
develop free software such as
AngelHack, which is the most
important free software in the
world, is an example of the
collaborative trend in
technological production.
Meanwhile, open source is
playing an important role in the
cloud and in the mobile device
environment, becoming a
source of innovative solutions
for user needs.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
Thousands of developers take
part in piles of different open
source projects which are
accelerating technological
innovation, and not just the
numerous companies, who
spent many years trying
protecting their sources from
prying eyes, are now changing
to open source, it's also
actively intervening in the
development process.
The managers of these
companies, such as NoSQL
Couchbase, Cloudera Inc. and
the great Red Hat, agree that
the accumulation of the
collaborative procedure speeds
up the process of achieving
the key features of the
ecosystems that need it to
innovate, and thus, open
source generally results in
better products than the
proprietary alternatives, and
faster at that; and that no
prominent software
infrastructure as a platform has
emerged in the last decade
with the dynamics of the
private source, which is a huge
competitive disadvantage that
kills off business innovation.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO MOTORES DE LA INNOVACIÓN04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
Companies such as Google,
which is almost fully based on
open source, Facebook, which
created the NoSL database,
and Netflix, realized that
software providers could no
longer meet their needs, so
they began to develop their
own software, and providers'
clients provided themselves.
Following the idea that the rest
of the world has much more to
gain with their inventions,
users of open source
technology are the ones
driving its development: the
need for software to be very
specialized according to the
purposes of each company
pushes them toward open
source, because they have
many more experts who are
able to resolve their problems.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO MOTORES DE LA INNOVACIÓN
The new Big Data worldThe concept of Big Data gives
a somewhat vague description
of a valuable and tricky set of
practices, techniques, ethical
issues and results concerning
the storage of mass
information, the IT systems
that accumulate data on a
large scale and the formulas
that are used to find recurring
patterns among the
immensity data.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO MOTORES DE LA INNOVACIÓN
These systems, of course, form
part of the information and
communications technologies,
ICT, which are currently having
a huge impact because data
processing in large and complex
fields was unthinkable until
recently. A report by the analyst
Doug Laney for Gartner in
2001 is usually mentioned in
this topic, which talks about the
features of big data such as
volume (the large amount of
data available to be analyzed),
speed (with which data
collection occurs) and variety
(due to the different data source
formats).
Open platforms' need for big
data is based on maintaining
innovation that draws on the
uninterrupted collection of
reliable information, which not
only required accurate
processing technology, but
also fast and easy access to
the instruments for intuitively
exploring new analysis
proposals without any barriers:
let's not forget how bad
limitations are for business
creativity. So these platforms
need to be transparent,
integrative, collaborative,
flexible and fast, and the most
used platforms nowadays
generally fulfill these
requirements: Data Analytics,
Hadoop & NoSQL, Data
Science, Data & the Cloud,
Machine Learning, Data
Architecture, etc.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO MOTORES DE LA INNOVACIÓN
There's no doubt that one of
the major sources of
information for big data
analysis are social networks,
but only for learning about the
behavior and interests of the
users, which is something that
all companies who want to sell
them their products yearn to
know. That's what social media
mining (SMM) is for, which is
"the process for extracting,
storing, representing, viewing
and analyzing mass data
generated by users to discover
significant patterns based on
social interactions on the
internet", as defined by a
recent study by the
Autonomous University of
Barcelona in 2015.
This process has an essential
tool, APIs, which are
application programming
interfaces that establish
connections using a
permission authentication and
authorization mechanism
which implements the oAuth
(open Authentication) protocol,
with which the user grants a
third party, service provider or
the application itself to access
their data, presumably to use
it for their commercial
interests.
04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
The most popular social media
APIs are those of Twitter,
YouTube, Facebook and
Instagram. The most flexible is
the Twitter API, for both
obtaining information thanks
to it being so public, and
because it makes it possible to
perform a large number of
social media actions, using
OR, AND and NOT logical
operators in their searches,
which are also included in
specific accounts.
Despite the fact that Facebook
holds much more information
on its users that isn't public, it's
very useful for its own
advertising API and it doesn't
perform searches with logical
operators or on specific
accounts. YouTube is pretty
restrictive on the number of
videos provided by its
searches, whose logical
operators, AND and OR aren't
optimized, and the access
token needs to be renewed
every so often.
And Instagram is the most
restrictive of all, as it doesn't
allow new images to be
published or comments made,
it's only possible to look at the
information, without a search
with local operators and only
using valid tags to achieve
effective results. So it seems
that there is still much to be
improved in this area.
04. BIG DATA Y OPEN SOURCE COMO MOTORES DE LA INNOVACIÓN04. BIG DATA AND OPEN SOURCE
There are currently two major transatlantic companies
in the open-source hardware market.
Arduinoand Raspberry Pidominate open hardware but there are increasinglybetter alternatives
05
Arduino and Raspberry Pi are used by project
developers worldwide in fields such as electronics,
the automotive industry, robotics, 3D printing and
that known as the Internet of Things, a business
that could reach a volume of 25 billion euros by
2020; however, other dealers already have
powerful alternative to both giants.
Arduino is the quintessential King of open-source
hardware. There are numerous types of
motherboards for different types of development
projects. From robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of
Things, wearables or smart textiles. All models can
be viewed on the Arduino website: totaling more
than 20 different products. Each has its own
processor, RAM, USB ports, etc.
ENTRY LEVELArduino Uno Arduino Pro Arduino Pro Mini Arduino Micro
Arduino Starter Kit Arduino Basic Kit Arduino Motor Shield Arduino Nano
ENHANCEDFEATURES
Arduino Mega Arduino Zero Arduino Due Arduino Proto Shield
INTERNET OF THINGS
Arduino Yún Arduino Ethernet Shield Arduino GSM Shield Arduino Wifi Shield 101
Arduino Gemma Arduino Lilypad Arduino Lilypad Simple Arduino Lilypad USBWEARABLE
Materia 1013D PRINTING
BOARD MODULES SHIELDS KITS COMING NEXT
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
There are many interesting projects with
Arduino: development of robots, instruments
such as a xylophone, sweet vending machines,
calculators, cameras, thermometers, and so on.
This hardware consisting of a motherboard with
a microcontroller and its own development
environment (Proccessing/Wiring programming
language and a boot loader) is undoubtedly the
most solid alternative development under
patent. Its use is universal.
Raspberry Pi has two motherboard models, A
and B, and two revised models, A+ and B+.
Model A has 256 MB SDRAM, a USB port,
HDMI output, and an SD memory card. It does
not have a second USB port or Ethernet
connection to the LAN. The improved A+
model, released in November 2014, still has a
single USB port, 256 MB SDRAM and no
Ethernet connection, but it is smaller in size
than the models that are 65 mm in length.
The Raspberry Pi Model B was the high-end
board until July 2014. It has two USB ports and
512 MB SDRAM. It also has an Ethernet port to
connect to the LAN. Its improved model, the
B+, was launched on that date with some
important improvements: more power thanks to
a new supply system, a microSD card, 3.5-mm
video and audio jack and 5V current limiter for
HDMI output.
See video
There are an enormous amount of projects with
this type of board: some developers have used
Raspberry Pi to design a universal translator, a
mini laptop, a compact camera, a digital radio
and an arcade machine. At websites such as
Instructables you can find hundreds of ‘Do It
Yourself’ developments. It's become a fever.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
Competitorsin the marketplace
BEAGLEBONE, a minicomputer costing $89
BeagleBone is one of the
strongest market alternatives
to Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
At present it has four products
on the market: BeagleBone,
BeagleBone Black,
BeagleBoard-xM and
BeagleBoard. They are all
motherboards with their own
processor, RAM, microSD card
reader, power supply and
connection port for
peripherals.
BeagleBone has a 720 MHz
ARM Cortex A8 AM3358
microprocessor, with 256 MB
DDR2 RAM, 3D graphics
accelerator, Ethernet
connection to the LAN, a
reader of microSD cards up to
4 GB and a USB 2.0 port. It is
a Linux microcomputer that
runs on Android 4.0 or
Ubuntu. It's compatible with
the Cloud9 Integrated
Development Environment,
which runs Node.js. The
Bonescript library is also
included, based on Node.js,
which offers several similar
functions to Arduino to
interact with the hardware.
The classic BeagleBone
motherboard is priced at $89.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
The specifications of the other boards are available in this table:
BEAGLEBONE BLACK BEAGLEBONE BEAGLEBOARD-xM BEAGLEBOARD
PROCESSOR
MAXIMUMPROCESSOR SPEDD
ANALOGPINS
DIGITALPINS
MEMORY
AM3358ARM Cortex-A8
AM3358ARM Cortex-A8
DM3730ARM Cortex-A8
OMAP3530ARM Cortex-A8
1GHz 720MHz 1GHz 720MHz
7 7 0 0
65 (3.3V) 65 (3.3V) 53 (1.8V) 24 (1.8V)
512MB DDR3 (800MHz x 16), 2GB (4GB on Rev C) onboard storage usingeMMC, microSDcard slot
256MB DDR2 (400MHz x 16), microSD card slot
512MB LPDDR (333MHz x 32), microSD card slot
256MB LPDDR (333MHz x 32), SD card slot
USBHS USB 2.0 ClientPort, LS/FS/HS USB 2.0 Host Port
4 Port, LS/FS/HS USB Hub, HS USB 2.0 OTG Port
USB HS Host Port, HS USB 2.0 OTG Port
HS USB 2.0 ClientPort, LS/FS/HS USB 2.0 Host Port
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
VIDEO
AUDIO
SUPPORTED
INTERFACES
microHDMI,cape add-ons
cape add-onsDVI-D (via HDMI connectors), S-Video
DVI-D (via HDMI connectors), S-Video
microHDMI,cape add-ons
cape add-ons 3.5mm stereo jack 3.5mm stereo jack
4x UART, 8x PWMLCD, GPMC, MMC1,2x SPI, 2x 12C, A/D Converter, 2xCAN Bus, 4 Timers
4x UART, 8x PWMLCD, GPMC, MMC1, 2x SPI, 2x 12C, A/D Converter, 2xCAN Bus, 4 Timers, FTDI USB to Serial, JTAG via USB
McBSP, DSS, 12C, UART, LCD, McSPI, PWM, JTAG, Camera Interface
McBSP, DSS, 12C, UART, McSPI, PWM, JTAG
PRICE $89 $149 $125$49
As BeagleBone works with Linux, any developer can create their own software in a variety of languages: C,
C++, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Javascript. In addition, BeagleBone has a community of programmers
that always shares tutorials, examples, videos and documentation that may serve as a guide to perform
developments with the boards.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
See video
MINNOWBOARD AND MINNOWBOARD MAX,
Intel low-cost option
MinnowBoard may be the
closest thing to Arduino and
Raspberry Pi on the market,
but instead of containing an
ARM microprocessor, it is an
Intel Atom, specifically an
E3825 (dual-core, 1.33 GHz)
microprocessor. Compared
with Arduino or Raspberry Pi
boards, the leap in
performance is high. The file
transfer speed is greater.
Other specifications: it has 2
GB DD3R RAM, 8 MB flash
memory, an integrated Intel
HD Graphics card, Ethernet
connection to the LAN an RJ-
45 port, microHDMI video
output, a microSD card
reader and two USB ports,
one 2.0 and another 3.0. Its
power supply: 5V, 2.5A
connector.
The motherboard runs on
Debian operating systems,
Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 and
Android 4.4. It is also
compatible with the Yocto
Project, which provides open
source tools to help
developers to customize their
own Linux distribution for any
hardware. It's pricey: the
MinnowBoard MAX costs
$139.
MinnowBoards are
manufactured by CircuitCo, a
company that manufactures
customized microprocessor
based in Richardson, Texas.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
NANODE,
test the Internet of Things
Nanode is an open-source
motherboard used by
developers to experiment with
the Internet of Things. Nanode
allows connection to the
Internet through a browser or
through an open-data API such
as Cosm. It can be used to
detect environmental data
such as temperature, air
quality and meteorological
elements through sensors. It
was developed by Ken Boak,
within London Hackspace,
which is a developer
community where ideas and
tools are shared.
A well-known example of use
was the experiment conducted
by Nat Morris, who was able
to feed his dog completely
remotely through being
connected to the Twitter social
network.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
See video
CUBIEBOARD,
great value
Four different models of this
open-source motherboard
have been released so far, the
Cubieboard1 up to the
Cubieboard4, which is the
latest model launched to the
market. Right now there is a
new prototype, the
Cubieboard5, which will soon
start to be distributed. For the
more advanced model, the
Cubieboard4 or CC-A80 board
includes four ARM Cortex A15
processors plus four ARM
Cortex A7 processors with
GPU PowerVR G6230. It is
obviously one of the most
powerful open-source
motherboards.
It also has an Ethernet
connection to the LAN, two
wireless connections (Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth 4.0), a USB 3.0
port, 2GB of RAM and 8GB
storage memory. Supported
operating systems with
Cubieboard are Android,
Debian and Ubuntu. Currently
there are several different
vendors: eBay, Aliexpress,
rOck.me, eleduino, among
others. Cubieboard provides
the full list. Prices range from
40 euros for the Cubieboard1
up to 110 euros for the
Cubierboard4.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
UDOO NEO,
the potent mix of Arduino and Raspberri Pi
UDOO Neo is open-source and
low-cost hardware for Android
and Linux. It has a 1 GHz ARM
Cortex A9 processor, with an
additional 166 MHz Cortex M4
processor. It also has
Bluetooth 4.0 and an Ethernet
connection. It also has 1 GB or
512 MB (basic version) DDR3
RAM, an integrated 3D graphic
controller and HDMI output.
Another defining characteristic
of UDOO Neo is the sensor
that combines an
accelerometer, magnetometer
and gyroscope, which are
three essential elements for
projects in fields such as
robotics, 3D printing or
drones. There are many
examples of projects with
UDOO: robots, smart mini
cars, virtual orchestra, coffee
machines in the Internet of
Things… They're all here.
UDOO Neo is fully compatible
with Arduino board
accessories. The different
hardware models range from
73 euros for the basic model
to 99 for the most powerful.
They can be bought from
UDOO's own site.
05. ARDUINO AND RASPBERRY PI
The most usedfree software toolsfor publishing contentWe could ask ourselves what would happen to websites without content
management systems, or CMS, which are IT programs that activate a support
structure or framework to develop and administer different levels of accessible
content for different types of users, even with different administrators.
06
They are based on an
interface that has one or more
databases in which the
website's content is stored,
which could be processed
independently from the
design, meaning that a new
format doesn't have to be
established for the content
each time the design is
changed.
Websites are essential for most
companies and they are
always conveniently
accompanied by promotion on
social networks, which is why
CMS are of vital importance for
them: they're what enable
them to show the world their
best side.
Content management is a
super mix of design,
development, information
architecture, integration with
social networks, marketing
and particularly interest for
achieving the best user
experience. CMS have come a
long way over the last three
decades, whilst the way in
which users comprise,
administer and deliver content
remains stable.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
Developers use content
management systems to offer
unique digital experiences with
very specific tools, and the thing
that obviously accelerated the
innovation of the CMS was the
development of open source:
developers speed up their work,
which they can also control more,
without waiting for license codes
from providers and they can test
a tool before buying it; the
customization and expansion of a
CMS stands out, connecting it
with different applications,
which have improved their
interfaces to make the use more
attractive; and the processes
and tools for the development
have been pleasantly simplified,
with resources such as the
collaborative platform for GitHub
free software projects,
automation, integration,
streamlined encoding, testing
and deployment, as well as the
execution of new systems and
virtualization.
Having said this, it's indisputable
that since developers can work
faster and more efficiently
thanks to open source, it's good
for businesses.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
Not many people remember or
are aware of the arduous work
that went into designing,
developing and maintaining a
website before CMS: the
manual conversion of
documents to HTML and any
direct correction of the files,
one by one, was very
painstaking.
But since it's not true that things
were always better back in the
day, the work dynamic
changed radically when the first
content management systems
were invigorated with advances
in HTML, PHP and the internet
thanks to the progressive
increase in companies and
institutions that publish a large
amount of content on the
internet and demand
continuous updates or the
possibility of being able to
personalize their websites. They
grew in number extremely
quickly during the '90s, and
individuals also wanted to share
their own content. The CMSs
that we know today arose from
this desire and need.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
A little backgroundabout CMS
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
The pioneering CNET, a
technological news website,
first used its system in 1995 to
administer documents and
publications and the company
that developed it, Vignette. In
1999, Xpedio was presented
by IntraNet Solutions, and it's
considered to be the first truly
complete CMS. Two years later
we were introduced to
Movable Type, a system for
publishing blogs produced by
Six Apart; at the same time,
the very young SilverStripe
Limited launched SilverStripe
and the well know Drupal was
born, which later changed to
open source.
The technology process for
internet users, who were
interacting in blogs and social
networks in larger and larger
numbers and with increasing
skill, resulted in specialization
and in the proposal to dispatch
more friendly products: Google
purchased Blogger in 2003,
which Prya Labs had
developed in 1998; the
notorious and unique
Wordpress came about in
2004, the less known Made
Simple and Textpattern
months later, and in
September 2005, the famous
Joomla.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
The best in content managementThe best known CMS are Wordpress, Joomla and
Drupal. All three are based on the PHP
programming language and on the MySQL
database management system, and they have
heaps of options for developers and users. But, at
the time of choosing one of these platforms, the
best thing is to know how complex they could be
to install, whether the templates and accessories,
extensions and plugins they have are sufficient for
our needs, are easy to use, customization and
updates, etc.
During the installation of Joomla, and unlike with
Wordpress and Drupal, the user needs to enter the
name of the database, can check the configuration
before the process completes and choose whether
their website will go online straight after. The
installation program also requires that the user
deletes its source folder once completed. This
platform doesn't provide information about the
number of templates or themes it has, but it does
say that it has more than 7200 plugins. It's easy to
get lost on its administration page, with so many
dropdown, vertical and horizontal menus that are
full of options; it's interface is elegant in comparison
with that of Drupal, for example, and it's aimed at a
more thorough control. It can be updated from the
server, but it's not always possible to use this
method, so there is an option to select an update
file and install it manually. Lastly, another interesting
aspect is the possibility of being able to edit the
template without being connected.
A lot of people still think that Drupal is a platform
that's especially difficult to install and even to use,
but that's no longer the case, because the
executives finally decided to commit themselves to
simplicity in all areas. Now, after downloading and
decompressing the files and placing them in the
server's root folder, the software does its job.
However, users need to create a database and, as
with Joomla, specify the name and password. It
currently has more than 1,300 themes and around
17,400 free modules, which is what plugins are
called in this platform. Furthermore, the user
interface is very simple, with a tool bar at the top
that contains the important aspects of the site,
including a list of publications and comments, and
the other links in the menu are very intuitive.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
But lo and behold, the only way to update any
element of Drupal is manually, which includes a
certain risk, up to the point that if it doesn't work,
the website could be totally lost, which makes it a
good idea to ask for help from experts if the user
isn't an expert. Neither does it have any support to
customize the theme, so a module needs to be
installed to customize it without connection.
Unlike Drupal, Wordpress is known for being the
easiest CMS to use out of the three, and this fame is
well deserved. It needs the same information as
Drupal and Joomla, but it doesn't seem like it: the
config.php file is created with all the data needed
and then the user just has to start the installation.
The Wordpress community makes their presence
clear with more than 2000 themes and over
39,200 plugins available. The interface is very
straight forward, even for beginners, given that
Joomla and Drupal use more technical language.
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
06. THE MOST USED FREE SOFTWARE TOOLS
Wordpress also has online updates and alerts any
time there is a pending update, although the
manual route is still an option. One of the most
attractive features is the online editing of files,
where users can customize their template and
even the plugins, editing them directly. The truth
is that although Joomla is more interesting in the
sense that all the controls make it possible for
users to administer their website to a greater
extent. Simplicity is the leading lady of software.
That's where Wordpress' huge popularity comes
from compared to the other two platforms, and
because if users discover an error in this CMS, or
any other problem, they can be sure that the
bustling community of developers behind it will get
straight to work to find a solution. Maybe I
exaggerated with the speed, but experience has
shown that they won't stop until they've solved the
problem.
Free softwarefor handling customerrelationshipsFor any company, taking care with the service they give their
customer base and storing all the information about them, which can
be useful for optimizing this service and persuading them to use their
products, is a monumental task.
07
That's why, due to this need,
the software was developed to
provide a solution: the CRMs,
IT support systems for
managing relationships with
customers, for sales and
marketing, that administer a
data warehouse of the
company's sales and
customers. But a CRM system
is not just a list of contacts with
a record of their transactions
with the company. Many of
these systems are able to
connect with financial advisors
and accountants to help with
the monitoring of income and
expenditure, and they favor an
analysis that could result in the
company better predicting
what their customers will need
in the future.
In their book Managing
Customer Relationships: A
Strategic Framework, business
consultants Don Pepper and
Martha Rogers say that "a
company that's fully committed
to its customers is a company
that uses information to obtain
a competitive advantage and
achieve growth and
profitability. In its most
generalized form, CRM can be
considered as simply a set of
practices designed to put a
company in much closer
contact with its customers.
And therefore, learn more
about each one, with the
broader aim of each of them
being more valuable,
increasing the value of the
company". We mustn't lose
sight of competitive
advantage, because if we add
that with what is already
provided by the way
companies work with free
software and open source in
the CRM development, they
obtain a much greater
advantage, and all they need is
an internet server, a database
and a browser.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
The software that makes businesses happy has
been around for decades. The companies who
revolutionized IT were founded in the '70s:
Microsoft in 1975, Apple in 1976, and Oracle,
which was the first company to develop business
software, in 1977.
The first CRM products appeared in the '80s: in
1986, Mike Muhney and Pat Sullivan created
ACT, or Automate Contact Tracking, a contact
manager to replace rolodexes in SMEs, which is
now one of the most widely used in the world
with a proprietary license; and in 1989, Jon
Ferrara developed one of the first FSAs, or sales
force automation systems, part of the CRMs that
automatically file each stage of a sales process, for
the same kind of companies as ACT.
In the '90s, CRMs were consolidated as a business
product, and the term, which grouped the most
concepts despite the fact that many programs
specialized in specific areas, prevailed. In 1993,
three years after leaving Oracle, Tom Siebel
founded Siebel, a company that became the
world leader of CRMs, taking 45% of the market
share. In principle, it was just SFA, but support
and marketing quickly extended to the CRM.
How CRM has evolved
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Meanwhile, Marc Benioff, who had been a
programmer at Apple and an important member
of Oracle, left this last company and founded
Salesforce in 1999, where he proposed a 100%
cloud software with just the SFA functionality.
During the first decade of the 21st century, the
dot.com bubble expanded, and then burst in
2002, resulting in a shockwave in the IT sector,
with hundreds of jobs lost through mergers and
acquisitions. Microsoft purchased Great Plains in
2000, and in 2002, Great Plains acquired
Navision, placing it very well in the CRM and ERP,
or enterprise resource planning, sector.
Oracle took over Siebel in 2005. And meanwhile,
the percentage of failed CRM implementations in
companies was considerable, at 65% in 2002.
At the end of the decade, Salesforce was leading
the sector and the CRM cloud model with SFA had
been launched on the market, once again, as was
the case for Wordpress, due to its simplicity. This
is when free software and open source programs
finally appeared: Odoo (before Open ERP) in
2002, SugarCRM and vtiger CRM in 2004,
CiviCRM in 2005 and Fat Free CRM in 2008.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
This decade, with the leadership of Salesforce and
its model, has seen the birth of Zurmo in 2011,
which is committed to the gamification of CRM, of
X2Engine CRM in the same year, and of EspoCRM
in 2014. The competitive environment of the
previous decade is still around, so free software
just has to fight to become worthy, insisting on its
advantages, delving into the dominant model and,
in turn, innovating as only open source can.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
SugarCRM
The best known open source
CRM system, and therefore,
the most used, is
unquestionably SugarCRM,
and it has been the foundation
for other similar systems. It's
based on LAMP (Linux-
Apache-MySQL-PHP), but it
also works in other platforms
that offer PHP, such as Solaris,
Windows and Mac OS X, and it
does almost all the functions
that a company could need,
including everything related to
the customer, contract
management and reports and
analyses, support for mobile
devices and marketing tools.
There are two versions: a
hosted version and a
community version; the first
one has to be purchased and
it's available in three packages
with a free trial version that
lasts a week; the community
version can be downloaded
and installed on the users'
servers, and although it lacks
certain features of the hosted
version, it's still useful for small
companies.
The best free software CRMs
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
vtiger CRM
vtiger CRM is based on
SugarCRM and emerged as its
fork, although it's branched to
also look like the Salesforce
tool in open source. It's not a
first-line clone; it has the basic
functions, such as automatic
sales and inventory
management, the customer
helpline, and analyses and
reports, but it doesn't have
certain task management,
collaboration and third party
integration features.
vtiger CRM can be
downloaded and installed on
own servers, or users can opt
for the hosted version, which
isn't free and is also available in
trial version. It's a good choice
for SMEs, and some of its
packages work for smaller
companies, which can be
expanded with add-ons.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
CiviCRM
A very different proposal from
the previous two is CiviCRM,
which is a tool aimed at profit-
free organizations and is also
built to be integrated with the
most famous CMSs, i.e.,
Joomla, Drupal and
WordPress, meaning that the
formations it uses can fully
manage the image, activities
and financial transactions on its
website. It's useful for
managing donors and their
contributions, organizing
campaigns and overseeing
fundraising. There's a demo
available and the full CRM can
be downloaded.
Fat Fre CRM
The name Fat Free CRM is the
most eloquent; it's a minimal
but functional system. Its
interface is very attractive and
easy to use. It has plug-ins and
its developers work with Ruby
on Rails, an open source
internet application framework,
written in the Ruby
programming language, with
the MVC, or Model View
Controller architecture, which
aims to combine simplicity
with the development of real
life applications in less source.
In no way can it be compared
with SugarCRM or vtiger CRM,
but it has no problem working
for small companies and other
institutions. There's only one
version to download and install
on an own server; there is no
hosted version.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Zurmo
Zurmo is maybe the most up
to date CRM in terms of
innovation, because its
developers were determined
to combine the customer
relationship management
system with gamification, i.e.,
using techniques, objects and
dynamics from computer
games in non-recreational
operations to promote
motivation and reinforce
performance for achieving a
goal, which "has become one
of the best strategies for
recruitment, retention and
engagement, in both B2C and
B2B environments for
marketing", according to the
National Association for
Gamification and Digital
Marketing (ANAGRAM). Its
developers, explained that
Zurmo "uses gaming
mechanics to award a user's
use of the system and
promote a more practical
behavior", and the more areas
they explore and handle, the
more rewards they get. We're
not just talking about a
package with everything that
companies and other
organizations expect from a
CRM, such as tracking the
customer base and the sales
and submitting reports, it also
awards and spurs on
customers to enjoy using the
system. It also has an online
demonstration and offers a
free trial of the hosted version.
Since we're talking about open
innovation, its source code is
also available for anyone who
wants to access it.
07. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
The Open Source Internet of Things:platforms and applicationsfor developersDevelopment tools, hardware, smart home software, integration
platforms, monitoring processes, operating systems…
08
The Internet of Things (IoT) is
one of the technological fields
where strong growth is
expected: 17 billion dollars by
2020, there times the current
business volume. It is an
expanding market, where
more and more companies
value the connectivity between
devices and with the Net.
In fact, according to a survey
conducted by Forrester
Research, more than 80% of
international companies believe
that the Internet of Things is
the most appealing field for
their interests over the next
decade. And what is probably
more important: 25% of those
companies are already
implementing IoT solutions.
According to Gartner, growth
is unstoppable: the
consultancy firm estimates that
in 2020 there will be 25 billion
connected devices, 30 time
more than in 2009. It forecasts
that in 2015 there will be 4.9
billion IoT devices, 30% more
than in 2014.
This intends to be a list of
some of the best known open
source platforms on the
market, divided into the
different fields of activity:
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Node-RED is a simple, open source visualization tool that connects devices for the Internet of Things.
Developed by the Emerging Technology department of IBM, the tool enables a piece of hardware, an API or
on online service to be connected. Node-RED provides a user-friendly interface for developers to connect
devices easily and quickly. Node-RED has been developed in node.js, a server-side JavaScript platform widely
used in IoT projects, and can be run in the cloud.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
1. Node-RED:
Hardware and software development tools
It is also a tool that enables the deployment of new nodes for connecting more devices or services without
any problems. It is a scalable solution. The entire project is available in GitHub under an Apache version
2.0 license.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Node-RED could be used, for instance, to create a chat application using the Bluemix, environment, IBM's
cloud platform for building, managing and running all kinds of applications. If you are a developer and are
interested in using Node-RED to create a chat app, read this tutorial. This is an example of the HTML page's
structure, which contains a <div> that receives the chat messages and a footer with the send fields. The
entire data handling process is done through the JavaScript language.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Kinoma Create is a construction kit that enables connections between devices without the need for having
too much knowledge of programming in JavaScript. Kinoma Create already has everything needed to start
developing small IoT projects. Its main components are:
2. Kinoma Create:
• A touchscreen.
• An ARM SoC 800 MHz processor.
• Bluetooth and WiFi wireless connection.
• Several ports for connecting peripherals,
including a USB 2.0 port.
• 128 MB RAM and 16 MB flash memory.
• A microSD card slot.
• Loudspeaker and microphone.
• Linux distribution.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Kinoma Create can be used for all kinds of
projects: you can connect temperature, light or
motion sensors for a specific purpose and receive
notices on the cellphone when there is a change.
And you can also change the light or temperature
conditions from your own device.
On the Kinoma Create website there are many
tutorials on the practical applications of this
technology, with access to the development code
uploaded in GitHub: with Kinoma Create you can
create a synthesizer (Kinoma provides the open
code for developing the user interface), a camera
trap (it takes pictures if an animal or object stands
in the way of the laser beam) or an automatic
alarm-bell that goes off to alert us of a situation.
See video See video
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Eclipse IoT is an open source platform that
enables Internet of Things applications to be
developed in Java. It provides a set of open
source technologies for connecting and managing
several devices in an IoT environment.
It also supports some of the fundamental open
standards for any Internet of Things solution:
MQTT (a machine-to-machine connection
protocol), CoAP (a protocol for simple connection
of devices to the Internet) and Lightweight M2M (a
server-client communication protocol that enables
data transmission or the administration of sensors
or cellphones).
Eclipse IoT offers gateway services for the Internet
of Things to help developers handle both IoT
applications and devices.
3. Eclipse IoT:
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
• Connectivity administration in the cloud.
• Support for protocols for connection between
devices and servers.
• WiFi network configuration.
• Remote application and device configuration
and administration.
Kura is not the only project or the only framework that enables the development of Eclipse IoT. There are
also other interesting initiatives:
• Mihini: An open code development framework
based on Linux. It provides an API for
developing machine-to-machine applications
with a very short learning curve. Developments
with Mihini use Lua as the programming
language.
• OM2M: Implements the SmartM2M standard. It
provides an M2M service platform for
developing independent services that enable
the deployment of vertical applications and
different types of devices. It has a REST API for
machine authentication, application
registration, asynchronous communications,
access management…
• Eclipse SCADA: A set of tools that provides
libraries for developing both front-end and
back-end projects, an application interface… It is
a scalable and completely customizable
solution.
Within this platform programmers have the Kura development framework, based on Java, and OSGi, that
implements services as important as:
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
As homes are packed with more and more devices, there is a greater need to connect them to enjoy a true
smart home experience. OpenHUB provides a platform for integrating devices that, for obvious reasons,
speak and communicate in completely different ‘languages’. How does it achieve this? Through automation
processes and user interface units.
4. OpenHUB:
Smart home software
• It can run on any device capable of running
a Java Virtual Machine under a Linux, Mac
or Windows operating system.
• Rules engine to meet automation needs.
• Several native user interfaces.
• Open code solution.
• Continuous improvement through its
community.
• It has APIs for integrating with other
systems or platforms.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
IoTSyS provides a device communication system based on IPv6, 6LoWPAN, Constrained Application Protocol
and Efficient XML Interchange protocols and standards. Its aim is to provide interoperable interfaces that
enable connection between devices, for example, sensor systems. The platform originated within the
framework of the IoT6 European research project and is maintained by the Automation Systems Group of
the Vienna University of Technology. Its utilities are diverse: connecting light and motion sensors on a blind,
air conditioning systems, acoustic alarm…
5. IoTSyS:
Information exchange betweenapplications and devices
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Demo 2
Demo 3 Demo 4
See video – Demo 2
See video – Demo 3
See video – Demo 4
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Contiki is an open code operating system for Internet of Things systems. It enables the connection of 8-bit
computer systems or systems integrated on microcontrollers, including sensor network nodes. It is used for
noise monitoring, electric power measurement, alarm systems, home automation, remote surveillance… It is
based on protocols and standards such as IPv4, IPv6, 6lowpan, RPL and CoAP. Its features are:
6. Contiki:
Operating systems
• Execution protothreads.
• Web browser.
• Web server.
• TCP/IP connectivity.
• Multi-task kernel.
• Remote client using VNC (Virtual Network
Computing).
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
It is defined by its creators as “the user-friendly
operating system for the Internet of Things”.
RIOT is based on a microkernel architecture. It
runs on 8, 16 and 32-bit hardware and,
through a native port, in both Linux and Mac
OS environments. It enables application
development through standard programming
in C and C++ languages. It is offered under an
LGPL license.
7. RIOT:
TinyOS is an open source operating system for
wireless sensor networks. It is written in the
nesC programming language, a dialect of the
C syntax optimized to avoid the problems
derived from the memory limitations existing
in sensor networks. TinyOS is a joint project by
the University of California, Berkeley and Intel.
There are tools and libraries in C and Java that
increase its functionality and opportunities for
use.
8. TinyOS:
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Brillo, Google's open code operating system for
connecting wearables on the Internet of Things,
is based on the Weave communication
language, a common system that would enable
all devices to speak and communicate in the
same ‘language’. In this case it would not be
necessary for the devices to run with Android.
Google's aim with Brillo and Weave is to create a
true Internet of Things, where each and every
device can actually be connected: household
appliances, sensor networks, mobile or electric
devices…
9. Brillo:
See vídeo
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
Nimbits is a PaaS data registration platform for connecting sensors in the cloud. This open code service
enables connection to socials networks such as Facebook or Twitter, to databases, to the WolframAlpha
computational knowledge engine… Some of its basic features are:
10. Nimbits:
Integration platformsand tools
• It uses the Spring development framework.
• It has a REST API.
• Data can be uploaded and downloaded in
CSV format.
08. THE OPEN SOURCE INTERNET OF THINGS
The best free software resourcesfor internet salesWe all know that e-commerce consists of the purchase, sale,
distribution, marketing and supplying of information for products
and services via electronic means such as the internet.
09
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
However, what's maybe not as well know are
the four different types of this commerce:
• B2C (business-to-consumer),
when companies sell to the public;
• B2B (business-to-business), when
companies do business amongst
themselves;
• B2G (business-to-government),
when companies sell to
government organizations;
• C2C (consumer-to-consumer), on
the platform used by consumers
to trade between themselves.
This economic activity has some very specific
features and huge advantages for companies
that use it. It's ubiquitous, interactive,
personalized and rich in formats, and has a
global reach, universal standards, a wealth of
information at low cost and a social technology
with which users generate content.
Companies also expand their customer base
potential and enter a broader, and even more
remote, market, the opening times are 24/7
and the asynchronous dialogue makes
customers loyal, drastically reduces sales costs,
improves distribution and communication with
the customer base and optimizes the
effectiveness of advertising campaigns, thus
generating a competitive advantage. This
advantage, added to that of the fast
development of open source e-commerce
platforms, as seen in other cases, is double.
The history of e-commerce is
longer than it may seem. It
began in the first years of the
internet and has grown
exponentially with the passing
of time, becoming a multi-
million dollar business that
already forms part of the
everyday lives of millions and
millions of people.
Electronic Data Interchange
invented EDI in 1960, which
was a system that gave
companies the opportunity to
make electronic transactions
and exchange business
information. Ten years later,
although computers as we
now know them didn't exist,
the first business relationships
appeared that used computers
to transfer data. It was English
businessman, Michael Aldrich,
who invented online shopping
in 1979, giving rise to
business transactions over the
internet.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Essential times in the evolution of e-commerce
In 1981 we had the first B2B
e-commerce system with the
travel agency Thompson
Holidays and the first banks
with online services; in 1984
the first B2C e-commerce
system appeared and the first
purchase was made; and a
decade after Aldrich's
invention, the World Wide
Web, by another Englishman,
Tim Berners-Lee, gave global
e-commerce an incalculable
push; so much so that in
1991, NSF (National Science
Foundation) allowed the
internet to be used for
business purposes and in
1994 Netscape implemented
the SSL protocol, guaranteeing
data exchange security.
But before the latter, in 1992,
the shop Book Stacks
Unlimited developed an e-
commerce that accepted the
use of bank cards as a means
of payment, and in 1994,
systems emerged for paying
third parties with bank cards
and Pizza Hut accepted
internet orders. Amazon and
AuctionWeb (which later
became eBay) were founded in
1995, and Paypal one year
later. Retail broke onto the
internet scene in 1999.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Two years later, Amazon
launched the first m-commerce,
or mobile commerce, platform,
for making purchases from
mobile devices. In 2002, CSN
Stores and NetShops studied the
market segments to sell online.
In 2005, Bazaarvoice created a
platform to show the values of
internet companies.
And lastly, before Apple
launched the App Store and
Groupon arrived in 2008, and
bitcoin, the virtual currency, in
2009 (although a bit late),
Prestashop was launched in
2007 and Magento in 2008,
two platforms with open source.
That's how free software
reached e-commerce.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The most interesting open sourceplatforms for e-commerceMagento is the real diva. It has a modular
architecture, great flexibility and control over the
virtual store, a visually attractive design, website
traffic analysis and sales reports, the Google
Website Optimizer, a tool for optimizing websites,
and others for SEO positioning, a great order
processing, responsive templates for adapting to
mobile devices, the creation of promotional and
discount coupons, a newsletter, and the
possibility of managing several stores from the
same administration panel.
It's quick, and thanks to its scalable model, it
specializes in medium or large retailers. However,
it loses points for its installation and very complete
control panel, which makes its customization
rather complicated.
VirtueMart, VirtueMart, written in PHP and
requiring MySQL, is not a specific product for
developing virtual stores, rather it works with the
content management system Joomla. This is
considered to be an advantage, given that the
possibility of adding a series of CMS elements to
the sales platform makes it more versatile. It's
simple and takes advantage of the flexibility and
strength of Joomla, and is easy to update,
although this flexibility doesn't reach the use of
functionalities that can only be used with plugins.
Meanwhile, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that
CMS as Wordpress has plugins such as
WooCommerce, WP e-Commerce and Jigoshop
for integrating e-commerce tools into a website
designed with this content platform.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
The old OsCommerce open source software is
still highly used for e-commerce, although it's
now somewhat obsolete compared to the
others, which have evolved. It's used for
managing virtual stores in different languages
and for ordering products, its categories and
client list, it has a very advanced delivery
method, transactions in all currencies and sells
both physical products and digital downloads.
As a payment system, it accepts PayPal,
2Checkout, Authorize.net, PsiGate, SECPay,
iPayment, NOCHEX, credit cards, payment
upon delivery, bank transfers and checks.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Installation is simple and there is supposedly a
large community of developers, which makes its
obsolescence somewhat incomprehensible,
unless it's come to a standstill. Block
modifications must be done manually because
OsCommerce barely takes the CSS into account.
Any small change makes PHP knowledge a
must and it has a multitude of bugs and security
errors.
The OpenCart control panel has a very good
design, simple and intuitive: after installing the
software on the server, the user just needs to
choose a template, whichever one best suits the
business, and add any kind of products to begin
selling. The pages it generates are optimized by
search engines, and it's possible to check out
without registering or a guest checkout.
For payment modules, OpenCart has gateways for
PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.Net, LiqPay,
Moneybookers, WorldPay, SagePay, eWay,
PayPoint, AlertPay and Paymate, bank transfer,
payment on delivery and check. It's useful for
SMEs due to its flexibility, high customization and
total lack of technical complications. It provides
free support and updates.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Prestashop is the second most popular e-
commerce platform after Magento, although it
doesn't take second place among the most used.
Its used by numerous big brands for their virtual
stores. It contains dozens of functionalities in 38
languages with which, for example, it's possible to
sell physical and downloadable products, issue
invoices, track products that have been sold,
make offers and give discounts, import CSV files,
enter barcodes, stipulate the metatags for all the
store's pages, export products to eBay, implement
subsidiary programs and allow comments from
the customer base. Prestashop's simplified and
friendly URL addresses favors SEO positioning in
search engines and has responsive templates and
integrated payment modules for Paypal, Google
Checkout and MoneyBookers and Google
Checkout, but also for bank transfers and checks.
09. THE BEST FREE SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Zen Cart uses PHP and MySQL and is distributed
free of charge with a GPL license. It was
developed with the invaluable guidance from
retailers and programmers with experience selling
items on the internet. It's possible to find
collaborations that improve the different versions
that exist in certain forums, and it's precisely these
collaborations that made Zen Cart one of the most
used e-commerce applications.
The profitabilityof free software companiesDoubts about the profitability of companies specializing in free
software don't only make no sense in light of the data we have
available, but also because it's obvious that they're based on
wrong ideas and pure and simple ignorance.
10
10. THE PROFITABILITY
And although it seems counterintuitive that a community
software model is capable of being the foundation of a
strong and profitable industry, the financial success
stories in this sector keep multiplying.
Free software stopped being a thing of crazy
programmers when companies realized that purchasing
licenses that cost millions from Oracle or Microsoft
increased expenditure and their dependence on these
companies. In exchange, free software could offer similar
tools and, somewhat important, better scalability.
The value of the innovation that this technology is able to
accumulate results in this development model being
useful for coordinating and stimulating the developers to
produce secure, solid and customizable platforms on
which to cement services that pique confidence and
attract investors and customers. Open source hasn't just
perfectly adapted to the cloud computing trend, but its
profit has grown exponentially alongside it.
This technology has increased its business
implementation, and with it, companies that have
based themselves on it have prospered, whilst
they no longer depend on a community of users-
programmers, but rather they develop their own
products.
Two very clear examples of the success of
companies specialized in free software are Red
Hat, who, since 1993, has developed one of the
best liked GNU/Linux operating system
distributions of its time, and Canonical.
If there is one company that has proven in recent
years how profitable free software and the
freemium revenue model can be, it's Red Hat
When it went public, its shares had the eighth
highest profit on the first day in the history of Wall
Street. And although it was significantly affected
by the 2002 dotcom crisis, its profits in 2011
reached 100 million dollars for the first time.
Therefore, common sense should dismiss the idea
that there couldn't be open source companies like
Red Hat, capable of earning more than 1 billion
dollars by providing free products.
Canonical, focused on computer software with
Ubuntu and a service provision business model,
has made a position for itself thanks to the
demand for this provision-related free software
product, and every year the difference between its
profits and losses reduces, putting it on track to be
just as profitable as Red Hat, which will no doubt
occur in the not too distant future.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
How free software companies earn moneyIn a world where money moves
mountains, it makes sense that
open source wouldn't be so
popular without cash involved,
especially taking into account that
companies need income to
survive. And that's how free
software companies do it:
Thanks to investments from
people with large amounts of
financial resources who are
fascinated with the field of
technology, or they think of
themselves as philanthropists, or
because they want to buy
influence in this sector, there are
open source companies who
survive, and even run extremely
successfully. What's more,
technological projects have the
highest success rates on any
crowdfunding platform, and
normally get the funding they
need to get set up.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
However, this revenue doesn't
come directly from companies'
economic activity, so luckily
they have other sources of
capital such as double license,
or freemium, which offers one
free trial version and another
that costs money, with the
hope that their customer base
will try the free version and like
it so much that they decide to
update to the special paid
version to obtain additional
functionalities and tools which
they would otherwise not get.
There are many cases where
free programs are distributed
at no cost, but other cases
where the distribution has a
price, and sometimes very
high at that. Although it's
normally possible to obtain
both versions of the program
from different sources, besides
the cost, the program is free
because users are free to use
it as they wish: charging to
distribute the software doesn't
imply that it's any less free.
Meanwhile, payment support
also provides fresh money to
free software companies, since
the time generally comes that
an IT product will have some
kind of fault, and the user has
to call technical support and
pay for it. Or for periodic
maintenance services.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
Furthermore, certain open
companies have gone back to
using subscription based
support, where customers use
the software for free, but must
pay the technicians to help
make sure that the equipment
is working properly.
There are other free software
companies who charge for
advising about the choice of
applications and even to
develop customized
applications based on their
own free applications. There is
also competition in the free
software arena, and some
companies decide to release
software and platforms in the
open source platform to take a
larger share than their
competition, which results in
indirect revenue from the
expansion.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
With regard to doubtsabout their profitability...Despite everything we've discussed, many people wouldn't invest a single euro in this technology because
they don't expect to recover it. And when Juan Julián Merelo is asked what he would say to those who think
that companies dedicated to free software can't be profitable, he emphatically responds:
“
“
Juan Julián Merelo
10. THE PROFITABILITY
They just need to inform themselves.
There are large companies whose core
business is free software, such as Red
Hat and Canonical. And also small
companies. The license sales model is
taking up a smaller share of the market,
and in a service or software sales model,
such as service or data-based, free
software has many more advantages
than proprietary software
When asked such a pertinent
question, Ramón Ramón
insists that "free software is not
a synonym of gratuity. There
are thousands of free software
companies in the world, and
many of them are generating
large profit, jobs, wealth, etc.
The clearest example could be
that of Red Hat", said Merelo,
"a large multinational that
generates gains. What's more,
Google wouldn't be what it is
today if it weren't for free
software".
David Úbeda delved deeper
into Ramón's last comment:
"I would ask them [those who
think that free software isn't
profitable] if they think that
companies such as IBM and
Google, with products such as
Android, based on the Linux
kernel, released to the
community aren't profitable.
Maybe those people don't
know about the business
models that could be formed
around free software. There is
a lack of training on the
matter, and companies also
need to put more trust in the
community of developers and
in their product".
It seems like the three
specialist are very clear that, if
it was possible, not only would
they have no problem to
invest in free software, but
they would do so very happily.
10. THE PROFITABILITY
An idea of the present and a look to the futureIt seems that free software has a promising future. However, to form
some idea about what it could actually be like before it takes over,
there's nothing better than analyzing the present and consulting our
specialists on this technology, since they have been studying and
dedicating themselves to it for years.
11
The presenttimes of freesoftware in SpainPerhaps the budgetary savings argument is the most important for
implementing free software in Public Administrations, although Juan
Julián Merelo doesn't like to use it: "As if it's that easy to one day stop
paying licenses and the next day everyone is being productive using
the corresponding free software. In general, it's not like that. The
Administration has to invest in training and in software development to
be able to implement successful solutions, as we have seen, for
example, in Zaragoza, or in the administration of the University of
Cordoba or Murcia. That's why, as far as I'm concerned, the most
important argument is budgetary freedom: once the free software has
been implemented, you free up a budgetary item that you can use for
whatever you want: ITC or any other area. You don't have to block off
a part of the budget to pay for licenses year after year, with an
increasing risk of arbitrary rises, as has happened more than once
(and will keep happening)”.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Meanwhile, Ramón Ramón thinks that "It's a solid
and very helpful argument, but I don't think that
there will be savings in the short-term, and
sometimes the cost will even go up. Nevertheless,
this doesn't take away from the fact that there are
significant economic benefits: the main thing is
that the fate of the economic effort is changed; it
goes from being royalty payments or use rights
and brokering of any company to hiring
professionals and companies in the region.
"It also generates much, much wealth, even
though people who defend proprietary software
say otherwise: the software that really generates
money is proprietary.
"However, in my humble opinion, and equally
important, is that technological sovereignty has
become the main wager in many Latin American
countries. They are the representatives chosen
by the people who have control over technology
and, thus, of their country, and we're not talking
about transnationals or the intelligence services of
third countries.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
What's worse is when the multinationals that have
spent years bleeding countries and administrations
dry declare technological neutrality. Technological
sovereignty is the result of freedom".
David Úbeda thinks that the budgetary savings
argument probably "has a significant influence on
implementation, and even more so nowadays.
However, it should never be the strongest
argument. To explain it, I'll use a pretty common
example used in education, when a teacher
teaches a group of students a mathematical
algorithm with proprietary software: would it make
sense if the students could only implement the
algorithm with a certain software? Certainly not.
They should learn the algorithm and have the
freedom to implement it with any software that
allows it. These students will have been taught
knowledge, concepts and procedures, but they
must respect the fact that the IT implementation of
the algorithm to resolve a problem could be
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
resolved using any software, and since teaching is
public education, the most logical would be for this
software to be free, whenever possible. Another
thing would be if there wasn't free software to work
with a specific material".
Taking advantage of the fact that Úbeda has
brought up the field of education awakens curiosity
about how establishing free software in Spanish
education would change things of it evolves
favorably. Merelo focuses on higher education,
although he doesn't see any clear trends:
"Although, unfortunately, proprietary tools are still
widely used, it's true that certain trends such as
computation in the cloud or data science, which is
exclusively based on free software, helps to expand
this technology. At least initiatives such as free
software offices are emerging, meaning that people
are made aware of and use it more, and in some
cases, such as that of the University of Miguel
Hernández or Zaragoza, or the coordinator of free
software offices in Galicia, and they're doing a great
job.”
Ramón is categorical; the implementation of free
software in education is not evolving very
favorably: "Firstly due to the constant attacks from
corrupt and inept politicians; the clearest example
occurred not long ago: Extremadura and its
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
schools were sold out by a
caretaker government to
transnational oppression. And
secondly, because there are
many teachers who don't want
to innovate, they don't want to
open their minds and prefer to
indoctrinate and enslave future
generations instead of making
a minimum effort to learn new
technologies”.
In this case, Úbeda thinks that
"if these irrational cuts in
education have brought about
any positivity, it's that people
have had to reinvent teaching
because, among many other
things, costly computers and
licenses can't be purchased or
renewed. Fortunately, in Spain
we have great teachers who
have known how to turn
things around to adapt to
these difficult times. Of
course, this has meant that
teachers have had to adapt
quickly to this situation, and
therefore, its implementation
[that of free software] has
evolved faster. It's also true
that we have all had to learn
to make a greater
rationalization of public
expenditure than before. This
should be a lesson that we
should never forget.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
However, there is still a long way
to go in the field of education.
We need to remember that
many students used GNU/Linux
distributions in their pre-
university stages in their
respective Autonomous
Communities (take a look at
Lliurex in the Autonomous
Community of Valencia) and
when they go to university
that have classrooms with
Microsoft IT systems".
There is definitely a long way
to go in the field of free
software. Now it would be
very interesting to know what
they think about the initiatives
that have been launched for
the use of free software in the
Public administration and
whether a specific and detailed
section needs to be approved
in the legislation to ensure its
implementation. Merelo
doesn't seem to be very
convinced: "What initiatives?
I've heard about municipalities
such as Zaragoza, which are
migrating free software,
councils such as Granada,
which has a rather advanced
distro implementation
program, but the truth is that I
haven't heard of any initiative
in the General State
Administration.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
"In fact, there are general initiatives ranging from
something as obvious as not mentioning a
specific brand when purchasing an application,
and they generally manage to find a way to
avoid them, to the National Interoperability
Framework Observatory, (NIFO), which
recommends using open standards for
documents and such. Even so, I still have to use
a computer with Windows almost exclusively to
sign documents from the administration.
"So I guess that in general the short answer is
that the initiatives I know of (although there may
be initiatives that I don't know about) are
insufficient".
Like Merelo, Ramón also feels that there is a
need for "more effort in these times of turmoil.
I remember that the more people talked about
the crisis in Spain, the more friends from other
countries asked me how it was possible that our
government has the solution in front of them
and they didn't take advantage of it. To fight
cuts, more free software and less neutrality.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
"Why doesn't the administration
use free software? And if being
committed to free software
means being committed to
ending corruption, being more
transparent, having a greater
democracy, generating quality
employment, and being
committed to our companies
and future generations, it's
definitely a State matter, but I'm
afraid that our government
doesn't see it like that".
Free software is the answer to
fighting corruption. It's a
commitment to democracy.
Úbeda thinks that establishing
free software in Spanish
education will come about on
its own: "It won't stand up to
scrutiny. But first we need to
make users and workers aware
In Public Administrations it's complicated to
coordinate these types of initiatives internally, so
image approving a national legislation. We also
have a handicap we have to fight against and beat,
which is the refusal to leave the comfort zone with
respect to the software or system we use
“ “
Úbeda
of the benefits of using free
software in the Public
Administration. If the majority
of people don't believe in it, it
will be difficult to successfully
approve a legislation.
Furthermore, an error in its
implementation could lead to a
dismal failure that could be
difficult to recover from".
Forgetting about the comfort
zone, do you think that there
is a long way to go for free
software to reach its full
potential in the world? What
countries should Spain learn
from? Merelo doesn't think
that we need to learn from
anyone, although that doesn't
mean to say that we're the
masters. Initiatives such as
Linex or the free software
offices in universities are pretty
unique. Issues such as the
transparency law, although
not perfect, go a step beyond
legislation in many countries.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
And there is a community of
active and enthusiastic users
and developers.
"But there's a long way to go.
In general, the Administration
ignores initiatives that come
from below from user groups
that have little continuity,
although it is true that there is
a good level of communication
between all the free initiatives
that range from hacktivism to
comprehensive cooperatives
and time banks, passing
through free networks and
open data communities. If I
focus on university and
education, which is my
business, there is still a long
way to go, and I'm not talking
this time about free software,
but about the freedom of
software as a good practice.
It's illogical that at university,
where they don't generally tell
you that you have to study a
subject using just one book,
they force you to use a single
application or programming
language.
Eventually, free software
offices and user groups must
evolve into mutual interest
groups (for example, users of
a program or language) rather
than advocacy communities,
meaning that the ideas of free
software are adopted as best
practice by Administrations.
But I'm afraid that there is still
a long way to go".
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Ramón agrees: "Yes, there's
still a lot to do. Spain was once
a power. But nowadays it's
very regulated. Learning about
different fields from countries
such as Brazil, Ecuador and
France would be highly
recommendable".
And Úbeda insists on the same
idea: "There's a long way to go,
but the important thing is that
we're on the right track. It's
difficult to change everything
that's bad from one day to the
next, since every country has a
different political, social, cultural
and economic situation".
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
Having asked Merelo about
how he sees the future of free
software and how he expects
this technology to develop and
its expansion in coming years,
he says that he has no idea,
that he left his crystal ball in his
other pants; but in the end he
goes out on a limb: "There's a
trend lately to change from
strong licenses such as GPL to
more permissive licenses such
as Apache or MIT. I don't know
if this trend will grow or if it
could take a less pleasant
course. There's also a trend to
use and develop tool
ecosystems: there's talk about
the Full-Stack DevOps, which is
going to make things rather
complicated: we're going to
have to learn about and
control a pretty wide range of
tools, one of which may have
to be JavaScript, as well as the
Git. It's difficult to predict the
future for the rest. A while ago
I found out that there are two
JavaScript construction tools
that I'd never heard about
before. We all know the joke:
"The days that have passed
without a new MVC framework
coming out in Javascript". Now
Perl 5 will give way to 6,
Python 2 to 3, etc.
The future of free software
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
It's possible that free software
becomes increasingly more
mainstream, but with the pass
from desktop computers to the
kingdom of tablets, and from
there to wearables, I don't
know what the hell is going to
happen. What is clear is that
with free software, and IT in
general, we have to learn new
things every week, if that's
possible to do without
forgetting what you already
knew". And to top it off, he
says sarcastically "With the
exception of C ++, because
there's no problem at all if you
forget about that".
Ramón, on the other hand,
sees the future of free software
"much slower than fans of
technological freedom would
like. The interests against
technological evolution are
known: the sector always
resists evolving and, in
cahoots with corrupt
politicians, inept technicians
and the great machinery that
is communication and
marketing, it makes this David
vs. Goliath task progress too
slowly. Even so, there are
reasons to have hope, and the
most obvious example of that
is Big Data and all, or most, of
the mature and professional
solutions are in free software".
Úbeda sees a very positive
future for free software: "I think
that the foundations are being
laid in education for our
graduates to enter the market
with open culture, and this will
help to change to mentality of
companies who still don't trust
this type of technology
developed by the community".
Let's hope that his words are a
prophecy that will be fulfilled
soon.
11. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
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