Geosparc template

ir. Dirk FrigneCEO Geosparc, invited by

Power of open source, Business perception

Thank you JRC, for the invitation, to give me the opportunity to share my vision about the power of open source from a business perspective.Before I start with the topic, I think it is important to give some context about myself, as it will explain the motivation and the drive of the message. So let me quickly introduce Geosparc (http://www.geosparc.com), which is the company that pays me for the things I do.The reason of existence for Geosparc is to provide organisations with the best products to build Web and cloud based GIS Solutions.We exist since 2008. The founder is me, which leads me to the next introduction: who am I.

Dirk Frigne introduced

class-D mono amplifier with a low-pass filter for powering subwoofers

ir. electrotechnisch ingenieur, zwakstroom - 1986

Actually, I am an electronic engineer. The function of an electronic engineer is to design and create functional systems where electricity is used as a basic carrier to handle communication, messages, sound, graphics and automation.From the very start I was passionated by software and computer hardware, so I focused on Software Engineering. As the world is growing very fast in that direction it seemed to be a good choice and still is.

from Software Engineering

AgileScrumIterationsEngineering

6 year professional experienceAs Software DeveloperReading books, on the job training

I always had a passion to observe a real world problem and try to describe it in some models. Programming languages where just fantastic instruments for this purpose. Methods improved, software engineering became more and more mature.

to geo-it FOSS expert

Dirk Frigne receives the INSPIRE conference award

Dirk Frigne Vice President of OSGeoThe second Vice-President, from Europe, is Dirk Frigne. Dirk is an entrepreneur serving OSGeo as Charter Member and member of geomajas PSC. He is involved in the INSPIRE Committee and received the Award for excellence in geo-information technologies.

31 Januari 2016

2015 Lisbon INSPIRE Conference

[1] FOSS: Free Open Source Software[2] OSGeo: Open Source Geospatial Foundation[3] IOF: Industry Research & Development Fund

Januari 2014Dirk Frigne joins the board of the IOF Ghent University

Golden bit award 2016

Egov award nomination 2006

Egov award nomination 2016

Best in Sales Award - 2014

So I worked on several solutions, founded a couple of companies, and was lucky to be respected for the work we did resulting in some recognitions along the road.

Changing opportunities

Now, switch to the topic of this presentation, about open source (for the geospatial domain), more specific the business perspective of it.Consider the changes occurring in the word of mapping the last 50 years.There is a need to integrate all these digital layers into nice looking maps, giving the ability to the users to act on the represented objects and focus on the tasks they are supposed to execute.

Geomajas - Platform

OSGeo project to facilitate the build of Spatial Data InfrastructuresStarted in 2006Kul DFC Software Engineering Flemish environmental departmentJAVA based

This brings us to the Geomajas platform (http:www.geomajas.org).Probably one of the reasons I was called a Geo-IT expert is because I am the spiritual father of Geomajas, which is an important result of all the hard work we've done to make it easier to create SDI nodes that can support eGovernment operations.Geomajas is an OSGeo project since 2010 and was used in several >1M EUR software projects

Modern data acquisition

Today abundance of Data

Internet of Things

People as Sensors

Back to the world of creating maps. Maps are the representation of data, a lot of data. And modern techniques of acquiring data are coming every day:From drones over satellite, capturing areal images over cars shooting a mass of photo's. But it doesn't stop here. Actually, every car is acting as a sensor capturing data about the density of traffic, directions of traffic flow. Actually, all the sensors involves in the Internet of things (IOT) act as data sources that deliver information we want to map. Today every individual acts as a living sensor, sending his profile data massively to the Internet, providing a big amount of data ready to be explored, to improve our current processes and predict the near future and behavior of the people.

Big Data Challenge

All of the above leads to a big data challenge, where we are overwhelmed with data, and intelligence is needed to distill out of all this date the right information you need to know.So Data becomes more and more important as a (public) source of information to predict and support actions in our society. So Data should be a common good that everybody should access to.And this is why data should be open and accessible to anybody, not just to some big companies who managed to create big applications to get all this data.Which brings us to software

Statement 1:Data should be open and accessible to everybody

Statement 1: Data should be open and accessible to anybody, so the society can use it to organise and improve itself. The accessibility and free availability of data should become a human right, so that every human can develop himself based on the common know-how available in all the online data rescources.

Open Data

Interoperability

Open Source

Open Standards (Open API)

When we talk about (open) data, we often talk about interoperability. Open data is a requirement for interoperability between different systems, but it is not sufficient. We also need open standards, so systems are able to talk to each other.Governments explain that also open APIs are necessary, but I dont agree. What you really need is the third pillar and its called open source.

Software becomes is a corner stone of our society

Software has become an important building block of our society. Human beings and human society is becoming more and more depended on software.

The speed of software adoption

Software is growing rapidly to be embedded in every object (the internet of things as we call it or IOT)This is a graph of the number of new open source projects in time. The vertical axis represents the number of new open source packages, the horizontal axis is the time. This is the most recent graph I found, but I am interested in more recent data please send me the url if you find one.

Increasing dependency on data and software systems

Software Industry and Open Source

So lets talk now about the software industry and open source.

Many lives depend on the execution of software, think about medical devices, but also navigation systems and automatic cars and robots. In this example, I dont want to be in this car if the software is not reliable.The failed landing of the last Mars mission from ESA https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/20/mars-lander-lost-signal-one-minute-before-landing-esa-confirms Proves that software sometimes failes.And the Volkswagen emmision Scandal proves that fraude can be embedded in software (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal). This brings us to my important second statement:

Statement 2:Open Source Software should become a human right

Statement 2: Open Source Software should become a human right.Certainly in the case where software is used to support the public services in a country, or supports the decisions of the government:

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Governments and Open Source

Why should Europe Bother?

This is a strong statement, and to make it work, we need political action. So lets talk about why a government should bother to take action.Lets consider Europe, because this is our local laboratorium, but it applies to all the governements

ObservationsOpen Source software is already used by a lot of almost all companies and organisations

Open source & proprietaryLets start with the observation that open source software today is used by (almost) all organisations and companies. Even the companies who uses closed source software to protect their IPR.

OSS

- Webserver (Apache, Tomcat, ...)- Android phone- Apple computer- Geoserver- Qgis

Today, Open source is used everywhere

Just a couple of examples to make it obvious:Everybody who uses a webserver: a lot of chance you use Apache or TomcatOr if you are using a smartphone (Android phone)Even the Apple operating system is based on open source (Mac OS X based on Berkley unix kernel)And in the domain we are active: Geoserver, Qgis,

OSS

This is a slide of only the OSGeo open source projects.

Observations: OSS used by many

But in reality, all companies are using open source software.

Observations: Software Industry

Just start a thought experiment:I present you some logos of companies that are strongly depended on software:

Can you name me a couple of European companies?

Observation:

Almost no big software companies in EuropeAlthough industry is large, also in EuropeMany examples of US based companiesNo big players in Europe (SAP, Nokia and TomTom being the bigger players)Although: a lot of SME's producing software

How can we change this?

Real entrepreneursDefinition of real entrepreneurs (personal definition):fools who think they can change the world

and they really do!

We need to change our attitude, we need to accept our diversity and the typical culture with all here advantages:Definition of real entrepreneursI have a definition for a real enterpreneur: (personal definition):fools who think they can change the worldand they really do!

And I will give you an example of a real enterpreneur:

Example of a Real entrepreneursMission to Mars of Elon Musk

Elan Musk has a vision, and the ability to moilise people to execute the vision.

Example of a Real entrepreneurs

In Europe we need this to, this is a modes example on a much lower scale, but it is by having these initiatives we will learn also to become great!Think global, act local.

Observations: new economyThe world is changingEnvironmental challenges

Migration challenges

Evolutionary challenges

Software is becoming extremely important

More and more of the industry is based on software

Data (and predicting the future) are the next big evolutions where software becomes involved

Free access to (software and data) resources becomes a must have

99%USA: 261 B$ (2007)[1]USA is world leader in Software Industryopen source generates value[2]

[1] BSA[2] http://pt.slideshare.net/cdaffara/economic-value-of-open-source-14861646 Carlo Daffara

Some facts:

In Europe: 99% off all the industries are small and medium businesses.The software revenue is a market of 261B$ in 2007(BSA report)It is a fact that open source generates value.Based on these elements we should be able to create a big software industry in Europe. Based on open source. Europe should consider this as an opportunity to become strong in this domain.Making open source a human right will help the citizens of Europe and the European software industry.

Open source software generates value

But

Already a good and interesting trend, but still 13% of the total budget flows to US licenses

So ...

Europe should have the ambition to become also a major player in this industry

Europe SME Open source Industry

The responsibility of the enterpreneurs is to learn to work together and form a strong consortium. Just like the small fish defeat the shark in the film finding nemo

Some challenges

New featuresThis is the nature of FOSS, no problem to find a sponsor to pay for the feature

Often a problem to pay for committing back to the project

to find funding for the maintenance of the project

Libraries used by a lot of other projectsFOSS used by FOSS projects, commit culture

Respect for the work of others

Of course there are still a lot of challenges

The economics of a community

A community cant be managed=> A community should be INSPIREd :-)=> Based on volunteers

There are several leaders helping growing the community=> not a single individual=> often people with a lot of experience in their field=> being respected for their input (my2c)

Within OSGeo we promote a do-ocratyThis doesnt mean you dont need a platform to succeed

This doesnt mean principles of democratic handling are not important

Makes it difficult to manage

Makes it fun to participate

But with all the experience we have based on all these vibrant communities (such as OSGeo http:www.osgeo.org) we have a big advantage and starting point.A community just acts as a small government, focus on one specific item that hold together every member of the community: the interest in making all the geo spatial software open and available.

Respect for diversity

In such a community, everybody is respected for his contribution. Nobody is on the top and is the leader of the community. Everybody is depended on everybody else, on an equal basis. Everybody has his role to play.

Respect for diversity

Community Officer wants to solve his problem for a zero license cost

Incentive to contribute: provide software that makes his live easier

Payed by tax payer

Academic researcherwants free access to the software

Incentive: to use in his academic research, or for his academic research

Payed by tax payer

Everybody has his own agenda, and his own interests to contribute, and everybody gets out what is important for him/her. But what is important: most of the time there is an enormous energy going on, and everybody has the experience that it is actually really fun.

Respect for diversity

Coworker in commercial company wants complete freedom to use software to solve his problem without worrying usage obstacles

Inventive to contribute: use software that makes his live easier / commit back because it returns respect and is fun

Payed by the commercial company / users of the services - products

Entrepreneur (startup)wants to have access to free resources to build a business

Incentive: with the option to scale and earn a lot of money

Risks his own time and money + shareholders money

ConclusionsStatement 1:Data should be open and accessible to everybodyStatement 2:Open Source Software should become a human rightWe should have the ambition in Europe to create a strong software eco-system, based on FOSS.

INSPIRE is an interesting scale to test this for the whole industry.

Work is already in progress to evolve in this direction (SMESpire initiative, AR3NA initiative, OSGeo consortia )

Political awareness should be raised that open source could be an important leverage to catalyze this software industry

So as a conclusion: data should be open and available for anybody, and open source software should become a human right.Europe is the right size to experiment with these concepts and support the open government, but also create a strong economy based on co-creation and open principles.Several experiments are already going on, and we should work further on them to improve our lessons learned.

Thank you for your attention!

Thank you for your attention

Any questions?

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