Say Hi! to the new GENIVI Development Platform

On Wednesday February 17th, the GENIVI Alliance released a QEMU image of the GENIVI Demo Platform ivi9 Beta version, together with everything needed (instructions, source code, recepies, etc.) to build GDP-ivi9 with Yocto. A few weeks later, on March 8th, the first release candidate was published.

Finally, last April 19th GDP-ivi9 was published targeting QEMU, Renesas Porter and RPi2. Check the release announcement and download the different images and source code from the GDP download page.

I joined the GDP project in November 2015, leading a small team of developers from Codethink with the idea of moving GDP from a demo platform towards a collaboration platform. In summary, going from +r-- to +rwx. 

What was GDP?

GENIVI Demo Platform was the compilation of middleware components developed by GENIVI integrated with Yocto or Baserock, based on poky, designed to showcase and test the work done by GENIVI's Expert Groups.

What is GENIVI Development Platform?

At GENIVI's 14th All Members Meeting (AMM) is was announced that GDP would change his name, from Demo Platform to Development Platform, reflecting the new spirit that has arisen during the delivery of the  GDP-ivi9 version.

The general idea will be to mature those GENIVI's modules that were developed as proof of concepts (PoC) and provide up to date software together with a SDK, to attract developers to participate as contributors, having GDP as their number one Open Source platform for automotive.

Find further information about GENIVI Development Platform at GENIVI's public wiki, in the GDP project pages. The name change, recently announced will be reflected in the wiki in the coming weeks. 

Coming actions

During the coming weeks, the GDP delivery team will focus on the following topics:

• Migration from the current infrastructure to Github.
• Confluence will remain as the project wiki and JIRA as the ticketing system. The same applies for the rest of GENIVI.
• Add to our current targets another board: Intel Minnowboard
• Define together with the GDP community the roadmap for the next GDP version.
• Create a first alpha of the new version including the latest GENIVI software.

Feel free to propose enhancements or new features to GDP. The only thing you have to do is create a subtask under the ticket GDP-154, describe it and explain the benefits and potential risks/challenges. We will discuss them through the mailing list. I am looking forward of seeing Plasma 5 as part of GDP.

GENIVI 14th AMM and other events to promote GDP.

After te release of the new version, GDP maintainers and myself have been concentrated in making sure GDP was ready for  GENIVI's 14th All Members Meeting (AMM), that took place in Paris from April 25th to 29th.

I participated as speaker in 3 sessions and my colleagues at Codethink delivered a couple of Hands on Sessions about GDE-ivi9. It has been a lot of work but a good finish line for this release cycle. We will publish the slides the coming days.

A few weeks earlier I presented the GDP project at the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC), that took place in San Diego from April 4th to 6th. It was my first time at this conference and I enjoyed it. I also participated at the Collaboration Summit, invited by AGL and the Linux Foundation. I will provide some more details about these events in a later post.

I plan to attend to QtCon to promote GDP among Qt/KDE developers and to the Automotive Linux Summit, that will take place in Japan, to spread the word about this open project for automotive. I have also confirmed my presence in June 2nd at the OpenExpo, in Madrid. It will be my first event in Spain in quite some time.

Summary

It has been a very busy 6 months but very productive. Leading a small but promising Open Source project, that might have a big influence within automotive in the future, working together with my colleagues at Codethink and GDP community members, has been very interesting. I am learning a lot about this industry...by doing.  

Some previous ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects (V)

Related to our topic, the most relevant internal factors /strengths and weaknesses) I can think of are the following:

Strengths

• Passion.
• Collaboration. Sense of community/identity.
• Worldwide project.
• Prominent FLOSS project. Well known brand.
• Leading technology. Innovative.
• Well defined product (software).
• Broad base of skills.
• Efficient development process.
• Economically sustainable.
• Internal communication.

Passion: KDE, like other community projects, is formed by people passionated about what they do and aboutfreedom.

Collaboration. Sense of community/identity: this culture make them extremely efficient and determined when decisions are taken, reaching goals that might seem impossible.

Worldwide project: KDE is a worldwide project, with active members all over the world, that speaks in many different languages and come from many different cultures.

Prominent FLOSS project. Well known brand: KDE is one of the current leading free software projects in the world and its brand has a high value, not just because of the product delivered, but because of the clear identity behind it.

Leading technology. Innovative: KDE develop some of the most interesting technologies in the software industry for desktops.

Well defined product (software): KDE Platform, KDE Workspaces and KDE Applications form a whole product that give answer to millions of user needs all over the world.

Broad base of skills: KDE is formed by people with many different skills, experience and motivations. It is a rich community.

Efficient development process: to develop and deliver the product throughout 15 years, KDE have a

complex, efficient and innovative development process. Coordination.

Economically sustainable: KDE is todays an economically sustainable project. Budget control and management is efficient.

Internal communication: KDE has solid communication channels and procedures with high participation.

Weaknesses

• Weak marketing culture. Lack of experience.
• Lack of resources for non technical activities.
• Complex ecosystem.
• Complex decision making process.
• Diffuse points of contact.
• Self criticism.

Weak marketing culture. Lack of experience: marketing haven't been a priority in the past. We can do much better in this area.

Lack of resources for non technical activities: some non technical areas need more manpower.

Complex ecosystem: KDE is a big project with a complex structure. It is not easy to understand it when you come from traditional organizations.

Complex decision making process: because of its nature, some kind of decisions are hard to make in KDE. This is common to most community driven projects.

Diffuse points of contact: approaching KDE can be hard to do since we lack of globally defined roles. Some knowledge of how KDE work is needed to make the approaching process efficient, specially for non technical issues.

Self criticism: KDE has a strong sense of self-criticism, which is really good for internal processes, but harmful if it is made public continually focusing on weaknesses.

Once again, if you think some other elements must be added, feel free to make comments to this post.

What kind of variables do we need to study before writing down a migration project?

Before writing down a migration project for any organization, bussiness or public administration, it is critical to develop a methodology that ensures you have all the information needed to be able to design the correct procedure to switch PCs, users and network services from proprietary to software libre. To be able to design that methodology, one of the previous things you need to identify is which data you need to know from the pre-migration picture, how to collect it without having impact in the production process and how do you process it to be able to properly analyze it.

From my point of view these are the major variables (related with the workstation side, not the server side) that must be known. Most of them are obvious.

Hardware

Axioms:

• The organization that is going to migrate don't know the hardware they have.


• Migration is about machines.

We need to know the hardware of the PCs because of, at least, these major reasons:

• To determine if it is Linux compatible.


• If it is, which driver or module should be included in the Linux system to install (also which kernel).


• To determine if we have to install proprietary drivers. This have many legal implications.


• To determine the optimal parameters related with the monitor and the graphic card.


• To predict the most obvious performance limitations.


• To determine the peripheral drivers needed.

System and programs installed

Axiom:

• Nobody knows what is installed at 100%. You will have to find it out.


• Migration is not just about machines. It's also about applications installed

We need to know, at least, this information related with the software installed:

• The operative system, version and service pack. Probably we won't be able to migrate every app, so virtualization will be proposed.


• Applications installed and its version.


• Plug-ins, virtual machines (like Java) and other "not .exe" programs.


• Links to local and remote programs, specially those placed on the desktop. Users will want those in the new Linux system.

Everyday used apps

Axiom: migration is not just about machines and application installed but also about programs really used.


The fact that a user have many programs installed, doesn't mean he/she use them all. The determination of the applications that are really important for the user in his everyday work is required. The interactions (related with apps and data) with other users from the same or different departments, with customers or other companies, will give you clues to determine the migration procedures and the tools needed.

Most of the times, users only use a few apps frequently. If these frequently used apps are shared by some users, the risk increases. You need to know who introduces data in those apps, who stress them the most, who use them for just consulting data, who will use them in the future, if there are plans to change it... It's critical to find a good solution for those. So, the more you know about them, a better picture you'll get.

Data and archives

Axiom: data is as important as applications and machines

The data that must be investigated is, at least:

• Data related with their work.


• Personal data.


• Data related with special programs like browsers or e-mail clients, etc.


• Configuration data, for example, the e-mail client configuration information.


• Where is the data stored.

Users

Axiom: users are as important as data and apps in a migration process.

Users are an important part of the migration. Maybe the most difficult one to analyze and satisfy.

Leadership

In any group, there are people that leads the rest in every single area. It is needed to determine which users are leaders when you talk about computers. Relations between users within a group should remain the same after the migration process. Changing the hierarchy after the migration means adding a new problem.

To maintain those relations, you have to identify and study those leaders and their relations with the rest of the employees. They will demand more attention from the migration team. If they collaborate, you will have a lot of help when problems begin to show up. If not, they can become your biggest problem.

Knowledge and skills

It is important to find out which users have a better understanding of the Windows system, who knows about linux or, at least, if there is anybody that uses (or know something about) software libre apps under Windows. It is easier now than before to find people that knows what software libre or GNU/linux are. Some uses a Mac or a linux distro at home. For those people, switching to linux is going to be easier. Detect them.

Another interesting variable to know about is the skill users have using computers. There are people that knows a lot about Windows. Those will have a greater resistance since getting the same skills unsing Linux will take them time and a lot of effort. In one second they will go from being independent to not knowing anything about the operative system they will be using. In order to define the education proccess they will have to go through, you need to know the actual picture.

Complains and suggestions

How many people uses gmail at work because their corporative e-mail sucks?

Listen to what every worker has to say about the tools and services they use. Ask them about their wishes. Every single worker has a little clue to make the company more efficient. Be aware of their demands to reduce their resistance to switch to software libre. Tell them the truth. No not increase artificially their expectations about the new system and tools.

Interactions

Axiom: migration is not just about machines, applications, data and users. It's also about interactions among these four variables. They are not independent.

The administrative structure of an organization sometimes is not exactly ported to the data, services or applications structure. Workers usually end up finding their way to do their job, overpassing imposed restrictions or corporative rules. They get paid for finishing their job, not for changing the rules. Many times is the technical team that allow them (or even help them) to brake some technical corporative rules, since they understand workers' point of view much better than corporative procedures or general politics.

How many executives use different tools and services than the rest of the workers? Sometimes this happens because of a good reason. But it is usual to see organizations that have people in command that do not give the technical department the credit they deserve, so they do not follow their advices. They do not respect the corporative rules either.

These special cases complicates the migration process since general procedures, politics (or even apps), are not followed by all the organization. It is necessary to understand what's going on (the workers vision) in every department in order to be successful. If you write down the migration project based exclusively on what technicians and directors tells you....you will probably fail.

Companies are not isolated. They interact with other companies and customers. Those relation must be analyzed, specially if software is involved. IT providers are specially sensible to any change. You need to count on them in order to determine the migration process. This can be a tough problem if those providers work with proprietary software and do not follow open standards. There is no unique solution for these cases.

Since no lost of production is desirable, the migration process is determined by variables like schedules of the organization, bussines high or low season, employees rotation, etc. You must take care of those also. You won't migrate a toy store during Christmas, right?

The final picture

You need to know what should be final picture from everybody's point of view. This is important not just to determine where is the final point, but because an evaluation must be done after the process is finished. A lot of parameters must be analyzed in order to make a fair evaluation. Costs, resources and time are important variables to follow, but not the only ones.

Risks

One of the obvious things I've learned during the last few years is that a migration process is not just a technical process. This is easy to say but hard to understand. The first impulse is to throw yourself in a technical spiral of solutions, trying to define the requirements as fast as possible, to find out the best product, install it, configure it and teaching users how to use it. On the server side, you can make mistakes and turn back to the original situation without being killed (at least sometimes). But on the PC ...

The following risks have to be taken in consideration before writing down the migration project:

• The loss of data.


• The loss of functionality.


• The reduction of performance of the new system.


• The lost of interaction capabilities (with other users or services). I'm ignoring this one in this report since usually is related with the middle-ware or the back-end as much as with the PC.

The loss of data

You can loose data because of three major reasons:

• You didn't save it before installing the software libre system or you lost it during the process.


• After the installation, the data is not fully accessible or usable.


• The data was transformed into new formats and part of it have changed.

The loss of functionality

This problem is due to the change of applications and services involved in a migration process to software libre. Is also common in other processes, but in this one is critical.

The reduction of performance

Is common to think that Linux desktops are lighter than Windows but there are scenarios where this is not always true. Most of the times any reduction of performance is unacceptable. There are technical, economical but also psychological implications related with performance that have to be studied in detail.

Conclusions

So computers, apps, data, users and the interactions among these four variables must be carefully analyzed before writing down the project. How to collect and analyze this information is the first step of any migration process. I (and the hold team I've been working with) have spent most of the last 7 months collecting data, thinking about these risks, developing a methodology to do it and trying to find out solutions to be able to write down the best migration projetc possible for different public administrations from the south of Spain.

I've learned a lot.

Who did make me believe?

There are different ways to end up in the software libre community. I used debian at college but I really perferred windows at that time. Once I was working, I got in touch with free software again. I began to use it and promote it. It took me two more years to really understand, then truly believe, in what I was doing. A simple action convinced me that it is not just a matter of software, bussiness, community or innovation, but a matter of justice. It was reading a book.

My own red pill (remember Matrix) was Lawrence Lessig's book "Free Culture" (Cultura Libre in spanish). It is a must, It's easy to read and easy to understand but deals with really deep concepts and feelings.

Lawrence Lessig is giving a talk in Vitoria, Spain, next month. I've wanted to write this post to thank him for changing my little world.

Lawrence, you lost the battle, but we will win the war. ;)

What have I been doing lately.

A little more than four monthes has gone since I left Tenerife, Canary Islands, to work in La Axarquía, Málaga, in a migration to software libre project. Working with public administrations is different than working for private companies. Usually you have more time for finishing the projects but the administrative and management issues are more complex. Get away from problems and keeping focused on the job to do is the key for not getting frustated. The impact though will be enormous so it is worth it.

After surveying and interviewing hundreds of people, trying to figure out how they use computers and apps, we have almost done an inventory system we have made for this project (based on ltsp). Since it will be GPL, I hope more people use it, specially in migration to software libre projects, like the one I'm working on.

Since in summertime most of the public workers are on vacation in Spain, we will be able to check their computers easily. I hope we can make a good report with the data extracted. Then the technicians will concentrate efforts on testing how key private apps work when virtualiced (with XEN, VMWare, Virtual Box and Wine basically). This is important to define the migration project of the 31 municipalities involved (in fact it won't be that many since some of them do not want to migrate).

Between managing this project and the Gran Canaria Desktop Meeting, I have no time for almost anything else. By the way, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria (Gran Canaria's Gov.) have put me in charge of the relation with both, KDE and GNOME projects for the GUADEC+Akademy 2009 event. This was going to be my first Akademy with no specific job to do but, obviously, it won't. It will be another busy event for me. Maybe is better this way.

---

Last week it was announced that we will participate in the migration project of the Economics and Technological Innovation Department of Junta of Extremadura (Extremadura's regional Gov.). We are going to make the initial report of the current situation. That is, interviewing pubic workers, making an inventory of equipments and apps, defining by groups the knowledge of users related with software libre, etc. That is the milestone before the development of the migration project itself.

We are the only small company that will be working on this migration project so it has been a nice surprise for us. I'm travelling tomorrow to Extremadura for the very first meeting.

Can anybody give me the clue to work 25 out of 24 hours?

Windsurfers say.... No wind...no fun.

I say....no migration to soft. libre projects...no fun

I'm alive after all

I've moved to Málaga two monthes ago for a year and I'm quiet happy about it. I came here to manage the first step of a project that will migrate 31 municipalities from a region called La Axarquía, which is close to Málaga.

After planning and scheduling the tasks, we are inventornig the computers and services these minucipalities have. I'm also surveying how public workers use the propietary apps they have installed so we can define the software libre tools we will install and the teaching project we will have to define in association with the migration process. We are also building up the team that will be working with us and explaining to politicians from these municipalities what we are trying to do. Nice job, isn't it?

We will present the first results in October probably. During june we will be working on a public wiki, so everybody can check and collaborate on what we are doing. The information will be mostly in spanish but we will translate what is relevant to english.

I'm moving out of the Canary Islands to Málaga for a migration project

I've been quiet lately....

I'm moving out the Canary Islands, where I've lived my entire life (except for one year I lived in the US). A friend of mine, Ramón Ramón (yes doubled Ramón), has called me to help him in a migration project to free software of La Axarquía, a group of municipalities close to Málaga, where Akademy 2005 took place, in Andalucía, Spain.

I will keep working in some of the projects I'm in right now in the Canaries, like trying to bring Akademy to these islands in 2009. I'm also going to be directly related with Grupo CPD as much as I can.

This is the first time such a migration project takes place in Spain. It is financed by Andalucía's regional Gov. and the company ITD was the one chosen to do it (they have contracted me as freelance) and Emergya, a free software company from Andalucía, is also involved.

My role will be to make the previous evaluation of each municipality and make the design of the migration project. That should take a year.

In Andalucía, GNOME rules, so it will be tough to introduce KDE, but now we have another warrior to try it. I leave a place where KDE is the most popular free desktop (Canary Islands) by a region where GNOME is, by far, the most popular.

Anyway, since Windows is the target...everything will be fine :)

This is a new milestone in my professional career so I'm excited about this new challenge. I hope we can do something that have impact in this region of Spain. We have the willing, the knowledge and the people to do it. If the politicians and the public workers of these municipalities want, we can make the difference moving from propietary to software libre.

What a nice project...isn't it? I feel lucky these days.

ReciclaRed, a software libre edu project in the Canary Islands

ReciclaRed finished last December. During a whole year 20 students have been working hard to install and configure 14 computer labs in some public schools placed in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Canary Islands, Spain, as part of a project financed with EU funds through the Canary Islands Employment Department of the Regional Government.

This project was assigned to FUNDESCAN, a well known local foundation. Grupo CPD, the company I work for, was the technological partner. For ReciclaRed, a director, some teachers and one administrative were employed.

Beside cabling and building up the network of every computer lab, the students recycled hundreds of computers donated by public administrations and private companies and configured them as thin clients, using software libre to do so.

Students also learned to install and configured distros like Debian, Kubuntu or CentOS. All thin client systems had KDE as the default desktop with KOffice and KDE-Edu apps installed, among others. Software like LTSP, XEN, Mediawiki, Joomla, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc were also used.

This project wouldn't be possible with propietary software and it has been a clear success story with local media coverage (check this article in spanish). Some wiki pages written by the students and teachers has been already published. The rest will be public soon (with free license).

Why software libre and not free software

Reading Richard Dale's post about, among others, this issue, and after having a conversation about this with some of the people invited to II Jornadas de Software Libre conference, celebrated last week in Tenerife, I want to describe some arguments that make me say that we should stop talking about free software and begin to talk about software libre.

• Free is an english term that has two major and popular meanings, free as free beer and free like liberty. Libre in spanish has this second meaning only.


• Software libre is a mixture of an english word (recornized already in the spanish dictionary) and a spanish word. So it is a good international mixture.


• Libre is a simple word easy to identify in many languages and, above all, easy to pronunciate for non spanish people.


• software libre cannot be confused with open source any more since we have taken away the relation with the concept free as free beer. In spanish there is no confusion about this as there is in english.


• Libre is easy to write. Free is not, since many people make mistakes with the two final e.

Neutrality vs Justice

A friend of mine has written a couple of good articles about Technological Neutrality, a term that is getting popular among some politics here in Spain (I assume it is also becoming popular worldwide). Check them out (they are in spanish. Click here and here). This concept makes me upset as well as Open Source. To me, they are the same song.

Beeing neutral has nothing to do with justice. There are tons of examples in history that reflect that sometimes beeing neutral is inmoral, specially when you are in front of an unequal battle, like the one we are fighting is.

What the free software community is demmanding from public administrators is justice, not neutrality. How can somebody be neutral between a software solution that do not follows standars, do not allows interoperability with other apps, and another solution that does, allowing other programs to interoperate? How can somebody be neutral when some companies not allow users to choose the tool they want to work with?

Open formats and standars are the only way to ensure technological justice. This has nothing to do with beeing neutral, the way propietary software companies want to sell this concept. This is not a battle between software libre and propietary software. It is a battle that deals with freedom. Nobody should be neutral when freedom of choice is been haunted. I'm Not. That's why I think Technological neutrality is a shame at this point. I want Technological Justice.