Libre Software Communities and Universities: talk at La Laguna University

On September 19th I planned to give a talk in La Laguna College, Tenerife, Canary Islands. The idea was to promote involvement in Free Software Community projects, like KDE, among students and teachers.

Due to a problem on my trip to Tenerife from La Palma (my mom's car decided to stay in La Palma instead of taking the ship to Tenerife with me) I had to cancel the talk the day before.

Since I visiting my family for Christmas in the Canary Islands, I will be able to give the talk next Monday, December 19th, at 18:00 hours (local time), at the ETSIIT of La Laguna College. Once again, the Libre Software Office of La Laguna College organices it.

You can check the slides of this talk, which I also did in Malaga's college a few weeks ago.

Libre Software Communities and Universities

View more presentations from Agustin Benito Bethencourt

Link to the official announcement done by the ULL Free Software Office.

Remember that this college have about one thousand KDE desktops deployed in their computer labs for students. Their maintenance is done by the Free Software Office (ULL's OSL).

OpePyME (OpenSME) is the most relevant Free Software applications catalog for companies published in Spanish. It is also a OSL project. Their technicians receive the requests, test the applications, categorize and publish them in the catalaog. They also have a Linkedin group (OpenPyME) with almost 800 members to answer questions.

My experience in an install party.... after so long.

Yesterday I went to an Install Party in Málaga. It's was back in 2005 when I attended to the previous one. It took place in La Casa Invisible, a well know place because of the activities organized there related with free software, and free culture, among others. I friend of mine, Gabriel Ochoa, was the main organizer.

I went there with a friend of mine who wanted to try GNU/Linux for the first time in her PC. Since the Party goal wasn't to install Ubuntu, I didn't push my friend to install KDE. It would be unpolite. But it wasn't necessary.

I took my netbook with me (Acer Aspire One, the first model with 512 MB RAM and 8 Gb HD) with Debian + KDE (Plasma Netbook) and it was a huge success. Nobody knew about it so I ended up explaining to a couple of people how to install it.

It was my first experience with Unity and I must confess that I liked it, which it is not a surprise since I'm a big fan of clean desktops and shortcuts. My friend loved it to. Somehow the Party took me back to previous days where I used to screw up my computer trying all kind of things, since I had technicians hired who fixed my computer every time. Oh man, poor guys. I used to torture them so frecuently ....

So my conclusion is that we need a lot of promo actions (no news here right?) because our desktop is pretty and attract a lot of attention instantly. Here in the south of Spain GNOME and Ubuntu are very popular so there's a lot to do. My second conclusion is that Unity is a good competitor so I guess we have a third player in this business. Welcome Unity. Let's kick some proprietary desktops ass.

KDE eV Sprint in Berlin

The KDE eV Sprint started yesterday for me, waking up early for preparing all my stuff. I had to unpacked my winter cloth since this autumn has been soft in Malaga and I haven't traveled much lately. My plane to Madrid arrived so late that I had to run to take the one to Berlin, so obviously, my bag didn't make it. So Berlin received me with 0ºC and I had no clothing. Not a good start.

On Friday night most of the attendees to the eV Sprint met the developers from the Mobile sprint. Albert, Aleix and Pau from KDE Spain were there. Unfortunately I couldn't make it since I decided to buy some cloth for the following day. Thanks God my bag was waiting for me when I came back to the hotel on Saturday night.

Day 1 of the KDE e.V. Sprint was very productive. We pretty much accomplished every task planned. The second day (Sunday) we worked on more complicated tasks. As usual, we ordered pizza to finish everything on time. Both nights we ended up eating Arabic food (From a Syrian and a Persian restaurant). The overall Sprint went well. On Monday, Stuart Jarvis and myself worked during a few hours in the KDE office in Berlin. We had Italian food at lunch (no German food this time although we did had some German beer).We had the chance to talk to KDE Interns and also with a FSFe employer. As you probably know, we share the office with them. I liked the place, by the way.

On Monday afternoon I had a coffee with Gil Forcada, who just moved to Berlin. At night I had dinner with Pedro Jurado Maqueda, a long time KDE contributor from Seville, Spain, that is also working in Berlin as System Administrator. Thanks Pedro for your hospitality.

As expected, it was a busy and productive long weekend. I'm already looking forward to see many of the attendees again at FOSDEM 2012, in February.

KDE Organizational Network Program structure

The Organizational Network Program is divided into three subprograms:

1. KDE Organizational Network Program Guest: basic level
2. KDE Organizational Network Program Membership: intermediate level
3. Patron Forum

    Depending on the evolution of the network, more levels can be added. Each level with take into consideration the nature of the three basic targets. Each subprogram offer different kind of networking activities and implies different requirements and commitments.

    The general idea from KDE perspective is that the differences between the first two subprograms, Organizational Network Program Guest and Organizational Network Program Membership are low, while the Patron Forum is a little more that the top level subprogram, that include some extra services.

    The KDE ON can also be described as a business opportunity KDE offers to organizations related to our project, linked to our community and our software.

The KDE Organizational Network Program is based in networking

    KDE Organizational Network Program is a networking based service associated to our community and our software with the idea of building a network of organizations around us that, through a structured program, build new relations among them thanks to the creation of an adequate environment. That environment will be possible to build because of:

• The involvement of KDE members with experience in two areas:
• Community management and development.
• The field where the organizations belong (Education, business and non-profits).
• The experience KDE have in key areas like
• building communication channels.
• community decision making procedures.
• mentoring programs.
• organizing events.
• Existence of a Core Group of organizations already interested in building such a network. Most of them have a very strong relation with KDE actually. Some of them are Patrons.
• KDE support to the Program.

    KDE Organizational Network Guest/Member Program are networking (sub)programs, while the Patron Forum is an institutional/political/commercial program, so it has a different nature. Each subprogram is described in following sections.

    KDE  ON Guest/Member subprograms must be seen as a two stop journey to become part of KDE. By becoming a Guest, the organization will have the opportunity to build relations with KDE, other Program Guests and Members. Every networking activity will have a digital nature.

    If the evaluation is positive, KDE will offer to the organization the chance to become a Member of the Program. If the organization accepts, it will participate in further activities. Several of them are physical.

     KDE  ON Guest/Member subprograms are designed for three different type of organizations:

1. Education
2. Business
3. Non-profit

    Some of the activities and procedures are common to those three, but some will be different.

Please remember that this articles is just the latest of a series (7 more articles). Please read the previous ones to fully understand the ideas proposed above.

All the above are personal ideas, even though they are written in third person. Do not take this as a KDE strategy or Plan. They are not.

What is the KDE Program?

Executives find valuable to become part of a common network that allow them to open their organizations to new markets, more opportunities in current markets, new products, services and talent. KDE can offer them such a worldwide network formed by many organizations.

In order to do it, KDE build a structured Program based on the following global principles:

• Networking as a major value to build self-sustaining cooperative system.
• Meritocracy and compromise.
• Mentoring.
• Single contact point for every organization.
• Think global, act locally.
• Scalability, depending on the organization dimension and expectations.
• Building the field first, creating the rules, and then, let the players play.

The KDE Program(*) is the result of our determination to create a global network formed of organizations committed to KDE related principles, technologies, products and services. It also is:

• A structured project to add value to KDE, while increasing market opportunities for every member through coordinated networking  activities.
• A way for KDE to connect with end users through new organizations.
• A new approach for supporting KDE in a way every member gets, not just the result of our work, our software, but also the knowledge that allows us to create it, so they can learn and add it to their production process.
• A channel to introduce KDE into new markets through a worldwide network of organizations that actively contribute to it.
• An opportunity to recognize and reward those organizations that have historically supported KDE.
• A new approach to take free software communities beyond their current influence area.
  
  
  (*) Remember that I am still looking a good name for the Program

KDE Program: Mission and Goals

The last weeks I've been putting some effort in thinking about how KDE (and any free software community) can build a network of organizations taking in consideration the weaknesses and strengths KDE (or any other FLOSS project) have.

I wrote a few posts about previous ideas I thought it should be taken in consideration before putting effort in defining a formal design for a Program that leads us to the discussion and execution of an action plan.

Now the idea is to define the Mission and Goals of such a program. In order to understand why of the following ideas, I recommend reading previous posts about this topic in my blog:

Some preious ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects (I, II, III, IV and V)

Mission

Since we develop and publish KDE for free (as free beer), organizations usually do not understand well where our value is and how can they take advantage of it in a way our ecosystem is nourished, which is essential to keep the wheel spinning. Most organizations, especially corporations, associate value with money. This classical, product oriented, point of view must change in order for us to be recognized as we think we deserve. We can improve the way we communicate our value associating networking (as a service) to our software.


So the KDE Program Mission is:

1. Helping organizations to know us, what we do and how we do it, so they appreciate the value of KDE and support our action.
2. Giving them something valuable associated with our software, affordable for KDE, that allow them to increase the chance to grow.

Both ideas can be summarized:

The mission of such a project is to create a global, sustainable and structured network of organizations that shares KDE principles and interests.


KDE Program Goals

Major Goal

The major goal of the KDE Program (KDEP) is to establish the conditions and develop the actions needed to create a network of organizations committed to KDE principles and goals. This network will evolve in an ecosystem by increasing the relations among them and with the KDE community.

This network/ecosystem will be defined to grow, not just in number but in value, satisfying its members shared goals.

Other goals

Other goals of the KDEP are:

• Present KDE as an attractive opportunity for organizations to become part of a global network that will benefit all of us.
• Increase the number of organizations involved with KDE.
• Improve KDE’s relationships with other organizations.
• Create new business opportunities for those organizations involved in this Program.
• Support local teams. Relations grow better in common environments.
• Open job opportunities for KDE developers.
• Increase the number of new developers so we make sure the new ecosystem can grow.
• Spread KDE principles and vision to other organizations.
• Feed KDE with third party experiences, knowledge, technologies, etc.

One of the things that is taking me some time is to look for a proper name for such a program. Any help is welcome.

KDE at the Libre Software World Conference 2011

Libre Software World Conference (LSWC'11) is the most important commercial event related with Free Software in Spain. It is organized by ASOLIF, the National Federation of SME's Free Software Associations. As you might remember, I was its Manager Director just a few weeks ago.


Last year it was organized in Málaga, Andalusia, and this year it will take place in Zaragoza. The regional Association from the region, CESLA, along with the Municipality, play a key role in the organization of the event.


This edition includes the Joomla Day and the Python Day, which will help bringing to the LSWC'11 even more people than last year, specially technicians, which I think is really good. The event will take place on November 9th and 10th.The following two days, Zentyal celebrates it first Zentyal Summit in the same place. Zentyal contributors , partners, users and employees from all over the world will meet there to take this Free Software Business Server one step further. A lot of good news will come out of it.

Representing KDE Spain, I will give a conference called KDE as a solution in business environments. It is scheduled on November 10th at 10:30 a.m. Although there are several activities at the same time, I expect a lot of people attending since it take place in the central room. That is pressure :-)

As you can see in the program, more than 70 talks and workshop are scheduled. More than 100 companies will be there and more than 500 atendees will participate those two days.

By the way, Microsoft is sponsoring the event.

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.

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

After the previous three articles about very basic previous ideas to take in consideration before designing an engagement program for organizations, we need to think about what are going to be the concepts to base our program on.

To have a better chance to succeed, we have to build our program on our strengths and not on our weaknesses. In order to identify those strengths, I've made a simple SWOT diagram.

This entry will describe the major opportunities and threats I see that might affect to our plan of building new ecosystems with organizations.

Opportunities

• Free Software culture expansion.
• Desktop – web relation.
• Free Software business models success.
• KDE has millions of users.
• KDE cross platform strategy.
• Software everywhere.
• Increasing market pressure over Universities to include free software topics.
• Free Software seen as strategical for by many countries.

Free Software culture expansion: more and more organizations are interested in crowd sourcing techniques and in collaboration processes like the ones we use for software development. Movements like Open Data, Open Gov. Free Culture, copy-left, Free hardware, etc. are strongly related to the free software culture. Some of those movements are interesting for many organizations. A community project like KDE can expand his influence to other areas.

Desktop – web relation: interaction between the desktop and the web, along with the irruption of small devices, can allow us to expand our influence to the web world, where many organizations are extremely interested.

Free Software business models success: more and more organizations, specially companies, are developing free software business models where upstream collaboration is seen as a good value.

KDE has millions of users: KDE have millions of users so we are a good target for organizations that wants to reach them.

KDE cross platform strategy: KDE is a multiplatform and multidevice project. There is a shiny future ahead of us if we keep pushing in the current direction.

Software everywhere: software is becoming strategical in many industries. Free Software is becoming popular is most of them. KDE has more and more open markets every year.

Increasing market pressure over Universities to include free software topics: since free software is getting popular in IT industry, the pressure over Universities and other Education organizations is much bigger than in the past. This mean that the cost for KDE to find potential contributors will decrease.

Free Software seen as strategical for by many countries: more and more countries are defining national IT strategies around free software due to political, social and economic reasons. This will open us new markets.

Threats

• Classic Free Software threats like software patents, closed formats, etc.
• Key players without a clear and stable strategy.
• Increasing our relations scope.
• Management.
• Resource dimensioning.

Classic Free Software threats like software patents, closed formats, etc: KDE and any action we take toward building new ecosystems with different types of organizations are permanently threatened by them.

Key players without a clear and stable strategy: because of different reasons, many stakeholders that traditionally or lately have been supporting KDE, change their strategy often. Although KDE has proven in the past to be good at isolating the impact produced by them, tensions might increase in the future.

Increasing our relations scope: KDE has been very successful at attracting technical contributors and other non-profits related with free software. It is not clear that we can extend that success to other type of organizations.

Management: KDE will face some management challenges in the near future due, among other factors, to the growth rate it is experimenting. Increasing the ecosystem to other type of organizations will stress even more the actual management resources.

Resource dimensioning: overload takes any organization through many non desired consequences like quality decrease, internal tensions, expenses, management inefficiencies, etc. Like in any community project, properly resource dimensioning and control is specially difficult, since our community is formed mostly by volunteers.

Isolation from the free software-business relation: KDE, like other free software communities haven't been in the past very interested in the business side of free software. We are more technical focused. The increasing economic success of free software will force us to put energy into this area to avoid isolation.

Yes, there are probably many more, but I hope most of them are somehow included in these ones. Otherwise, feel free to add more through comments to this blog post.

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

In order to fully understand this post, you will need to read the previous two of this series Some previous ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects (I and II).

As every community, KDE has members with key positions within some organizations. Some of these can be considered already part of our network of companies. A little group of them can even be considered part of KDE ecosystem. But they are just a few. There are hundreds of organizations out the re that agree with our principles, that use our technologies, that deploy it, support users, teach the tools we use or develop......Many of them would be willing to collaborate with us, or even build a strong relation. 

Free Software communities have a lot to teach to organizations. We are great examples of how a complex product can be developed openly. Just a few organizations out there can compare their products and impact with ours. So why it is so hard for us to involve more organizations in our free software projects?

To answer this question, I will go back to some questions made at the end of the first post of the series:

1. What do we want from organizations?
2. What can we offer them?
3. What do they want from us?

1.- What do we want from organizations?

I haven't done a wide research among KDE members, but it is not hard to point the most popular answers, depending on the type of organization we are talking about (remember that we are focusing in three different types):

• Education related organizations:
• KDE promotion among teachers and students.
• Collaboration with KDE and local companies in KDE's development.
• Collaboration with KDE through P&D projects.
• Including community driven development process and KDE tools in their programs.
• Corporations/SME:
• Funding KDE.
• Adding resources to the project.
• Hiring KDE members and promoting they have time to contribute to KDE
• Sponsoring our events.
• Support our marketing actions.
• Coordination in technical and strategy decisions related with KDE.
• Participate in the testing/QA/support phases of the KDE software life cycle.
• Share contents related with KDE.
• Non profits:
• Advise/consultancy
• Improve our relations with Govs., other non-profits, representatives from no IT sector, media, etc.
• Funding KDE.
• Adding resources to the project.
• Sponsoring our events.
• Support our marketing actions.

Please feel free to add a comment if you thinks there's something missing.

2.- What can we offer them?

• Our software (product)
• Services:
• Consultancy in many different areas related with software development, tools, design, etc.
• Networking with organizations and people around the world.
• Exposure.
• Branding.
• Content creating related with our software.
• Technical support.
• Training.

There are some services could be also some services that, even though we can offer them, the resources needed in case of success do not scale, for example. I mean that some services can only be offered with guarantee under certain circumstances.

3.- What do they want from us?

The most common not pure technical request usually are:

• Many organizations related with KDE frequently come to us looking for technical support. 
• We have had in the past requests to associate our branding with different kind of organizations. Partnership programs are becoming popular among free software projects lunched by a company or a commercial consortium. 
• Sometimes we recieve request from companies that encourage us to change our schedule, giving priority or claiming for certain new or past features.
• Since KDE is what they see/use, sometimes they assign to us bugs that are in fact somebody else's responsibility. Distros share with us this problem.
• Contents are a common request from organizations. Howto's, User Guides, etc.
• Translation is also a common request. Even though we make a huge job in every release, it is impossible to launch our software and our contents in every single language.
• Consistency is another request. Since in KDE you can run all kind of applications, not just KDE ones, it is impossible to manage every problem related to this.

Like in the definition process of every strategic plan (that is exactly what we are doing), these answers must be prioritize for every type of organization. The above are not in order.

In a simple world, matching what we can offer with what organizations want (for every type ) give you a good idea of where to point our strategy. But there is another important question that we have to answer before making any conclusion.

What do we want to offer?

Every Free Software community have its own culture based on strong principles, as explained in the second post of this serie. So there are certain services that we CAN offer but, for different reasons, we DON'T WANT to. Some other services are very hard to scale.

Many of the people/organizations that approaches us really don't understand who/what we are. Note: we have to do a lot more in this area... So for them some things seem obvious and they are not. In this discussion related with services, that statement is also true.

I assume that KDE would want to offer, in addition to our product, services that share these characteristics:

• Aligned with our culture.
• Adds value to our product and the receiver, but also to our community.
• Scalable.
• Require more manpower on areas we are stronger. This mean that what we should offer must lay on our strengths, not our weaknesses.
• Not required high availability, wich means that should not lay on specific people. KDE contributors are not full time employees in most cases. 

The following step is defining the ideas and concepts that will support the Program that can take us to building a Network of organizations that could evolve in the future into a healthy ecosystem.

All the above are my points fo view, even though sometimes I use we.