OW2Con 2011, November 23-24, Orange Labs, Paris.

www.ow2.org.

OtaSizzle - an Open Platform to Transfer Technology from a Research Project to Practice

Olli Pitkänen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT Aalto Universitywww.hiit.fi/olli.pitkanen

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Four faces of OtaSizzle• Research: Study social (mobile)

interaction services by combining qualitative research with a large-scale experimental platform for data acquisition and analysis - instrumented for detailed data collection on use and behaviour in real-life environment

• Campus: Develop - and enable development – of mobile social interaction services for – and by - Aalto students, faculty, and personnel –> locally & situationally relevant services

• Innovation Ecology: Provide an open platform to users, developers, content producers, and research projects on campuses

• Federation: Replicate the platform to partners worldwide

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Research themes

• Service use, appropriation, and diffusion in social networks

• Service innovations by end users– users as developers in “ecosystems”

• Privacy / publicity & identity management (social, technology-assisted)

• Enabling technologies for mobile social interaction services

• Scalability (technical, social)• Distributed platform and service

development and architectures– Need for local adaptation– Complementary contributions by nodes (e.g.

Beijing, Nairobi)

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The Sizzlelab platform – and the types of users

Researchers

Users

Developers

Developers

Why Campus?Local community, common needs, campus & university life

related services, shared physical environment – and“unleashed” innovation potential in population

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Profile

Listings

Favors Items

What can people do for others?

How can people help each other?

What items can people borrow?

What is sold or given away?

Example of a Sizzle Service: Kassi – Exchanging Favors and Items

Developing OtaSizzle international networkEnable research on use and development of ”locally relevant” services in

environments with a large variety of everyday life needs, in different technology, business and cultural contexts.

Sizzle Virtual Center of Excellence: Developing a globally distributed LivingLab with partnering universities

International Sizzle -> a Networkd LivingLab for joint development, distributed experiments and comparative studies

Several user studies havebeen conducted and Kassi

has been taken into use witha local community

The Sizzle ”core node” where platform is being developed, user studies have been conducted and

services developed.

Interlinked platform & service development.ASI has been taken into

use and modified to support SMS messaging.

Code camp has been organized together with

Nokia.

Interlinked platform &

service development.

A localized version of Kassi.

Extensions for sensors and IoT

are being developped.AaltoApps

adoption for local ecosystem.

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Example of Localized Service – Kassi in China

• A localized version of the Kassi service has been developed and released by the BUPT team in August, 2010

• The adaptation and cultural differences of such social media service are being currently studied

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Open Source – no legal rights? No legal problems?• Open Source refers to the practice of licensing computer

programs etc in liberal terms

• It does not mean that IPR (copyright, patent) is voided, but licenses are based on existing copyright– The copyright holder grants the others a right to use, modify,

and redistribute the copyrighted work

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Copyright

• A creative work is automatically protected by copyright

• In Europe, copyright is still the main legal protection of software although patents have become important

• Copyright does NOT protect facts, ideas, plot, algorithms, etc., but merely the original expression

• It is possible to transfer copyrighted technology with open source licenses

Patent

• An invention that is new, includes an inventive step, and is susceptible of industrial application can be patented

• Application is needed, expensive, time consuming, difficult – patenting is an investment that needs to be carefully considered

• Third party patents may prevent from using technology even if it is open source licensed

User information

• Open data is increasingly important– (eg applications that avail of open geographical data and maps)

• Personal data are protected by privacy and data protection laws– Cannot be open at large, individual consent is usually required if

data are transferred to third parties

• No open source licensing models

Open Source Technology Transfer

• For research results, IPR protection (patents, copyright) is important – sometimes

• Open source is often the best way to distribute research outcome– Supports the needs of academia and researchers

• Commercial companies may favour proprietary rights, but it is also possible to do business on OS basis– Kassi – Avoin Interactive being a good example

• IPR is not the most difficult legal area, but privacy and data protection – no open source personal data– It requires special attention not to violate users’ rights