Fabrizio Balliano

IP Innovation LLC sued Red Hat and Novell (yes, Novell) for patent infringement about multiple workspaces (you’re right, this is unbelievable).

Is there Microsoft hand? We can’t say that but we know that IP Innovation LLC has just recruited some Microsoft executives…

Please read the complete article on Groklaw.

Back in 2003, with CreaLabs we started the e-Socrates project, creating the first Italian portal promoting the free e-learning philosophy, because we truly believe that knowledge must be free.

Some days ago Simone Brunozzi told me about an idea he was working on, a community made by students and teachers, together creating documentation that would be grouped in books, maybe printed, obviously released under a free license. Hey this is just a small resume about his idea, please visit his blog for further information!

This evening, driving back home after work, I was thinking about Italian high schools, let’s talk with some numbers (examples):

• every 2 years every student has to buy 10 books, 40 Euro every book
• 40 * 10 / 2 = 200 Euro/year
• let’s think about 2 million of Italian students (actually there are many more, but let’s take some margins)
• 200 * 2,000,000 = 400,000,000 Euro/year

Let’s imagine what my country could do with only half of this amount every year… with 200,000,000 Euro/year Italy could pay a huge team of teachers that would create all the books for the next year. All this books should be released under a free license and freely available for everyone to download. Many low cost print services could be used for who students that want a paper copy of the books (I think that a paper copy could be given to any student for free).

Amouts are higher than what I wrote because in Italy there are more that 2,000,000 high school students… what a better world could be…

Maybe I’m not the first having his idea, it seems so obvious…

with the help of Google, creating a company named gBox. This will only be a time-limited experiment to check the market but it’s always a good thing.

Original news on Digg and Last100.

Ubuntu trademark is clear, and the iloveubuntu.com website (intentionally not linked) is violating it, hope Canonical will make that great joke stop.

UPDATE: this post would be a provocation, ’cause you know I’m a bit sceptic about free software and trademarks. I also know about ie7.com and many others, same story here and there. :)

Introduction:

We (CreaLabs) are Ubuntu affiliate because of:

1. some Ubuntu promotion/spreading activities
2. 2 ubuntu derivative distros: ubuntu italian iso, ufficio zero
3. Ubuntu Customization Kit

We constantly and actively support open source and free software with many projects (check crealabs.it for the list).

All of these projects were created and are maintained for free.

The new condition

Ubuntu affiliate program changed, actually some points of the new programs are not clear to me but I read

The other tracks have distinct revenue requirements for progression through them. These numbers are not being made public, but will help you understand the reasons for the tiers.

[cut]

The figures are the revenue that flows to Canonical from sales that you make. These sales can be made up from the range of Canonical services and future product offerings.
These may look initially high, but we have set the bar for the highest level quite high intentionally. Any partner that reaches gold tier has really earned it.

We have based the tiers on revenue to alleviate any potential entry fee to the programme.

I can’t really understand if we’ll have to pay to remain affiliate or not… anyway I hope more info will be given us.

The idea

We said “hey, if we’ll have to pay, let’s try building some real business on Ubuntu, so we can remain affiliate”.
Working on UCK the idea was easy, build a website where people can customize their Ubuntu adding software, language support and many other things and get their brand new shining DVD at home for a price.

I wanted to call that buildyourubuntu.com. It seem to us that’s really a good name, you can understand what the service do and that’s what we want.

A good business must have a good name, a good business would bring us revenue and we would give part of them to Canonical (we haven’t decided prices and revenues yet) for the affiliate program and would keep alive our free projects and maybe build other new free services.

The problem

Ubuntu is a trademark, we can’t use that name without a license.
We write to Canonical trademarks team.

The answer

After 3 weeks we get a “NO, you can’t use that name for your business, you could for a free service but not for a business one”.
Why? Because it could seem too “official” meaning “related to Canonical”.

Our delusion

How would you call a service that build a custom Ubuntu for you? Oh I don’t want to hear flickr/scriptaculous clones please.

The point is, I think I can say we do fair play with free software, it’s not right to avoid us the possibility to create a new original service that would also bring money to Ubuntu itself.

Sure we can call that service “BuildYourOs.com” or “BuildYourDistro.com” or “BuildYourLinux.com” but:

1. it’s not clear: you can’t understand we’re ONLY talking about Ubuntu
2. it’s simply ugly, if you work in marketing tell me if I’m wrong
3. Linux is a trademark too thus you must gain a license to use the Linux name

Is my love for Ubuntu ruined?

Actually I don’t know, I’m feeling really sad right now.

If you don’t know it, read the beginning of the story.

This is the 3rd week I’m waiting for an answer, will someone ever answer me? Also Mark alert seems not to gave me priority.

It seems to me that the “startup” term is loosing his meaning.

I love Ubuntu but I’m starting to think that Canonical only like free (as in beer) (mine are ubuntu italian iso, ufficiozero, UCK) contributes and not commercial services (the one I’m requesting the trademark license for).

Aitech-Assinform says on PI:

l’open source è solo una delle possibili opzioni per le amministrazioni, le cui scelte non devono essere dettate da ideologie ma da considerazioni di tipo tecnico, applicativo e strategico.

English translation (by me)

open source is only one of the options for the public administration. The choice shouldn’t be suggested by an ideology but by technical and strategical considerations.

Just 2 thoughts:

1. Public means public, a service for all citizens. Public Administration MUST choose with ideology and ethic in mind
2. Open source IS a technical and strategical requisite

Bolzano (Italy) passed to free software, I’m really glad about that, Italy WAKE UP!

Here you have a 7 minutes documentary (in Italian) about that transition, trying to explain a bit what the “free software” is

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITzX7zRgOkA]

Good initiative but please, PLEASE, stop talking about free software just saying that’s “free as in beer”, please put more attention on FREEDOM and LEGALITY.

From the Free Software Definition

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price

Piracy… long story, troubled discussions but the point is that we have laws and we must respect those laws, stop! Copying proprietary software is a crime? USE FREE SOFTWARE!

I hear people say “until I can crack, I crack” oh damn how is it possible to think something like that?

In the last free days Italian government signed with Microsof to build 3 research centers in Italy, Microsoft investment will be off 1 milion dollar in 3 years (can I say nothing?) but none told about Italian investment.

What will those centers do? Build innovations with Microsoft products thus enhance Microsoft business.

I’m not against Microsoft, a company do its best for its purpose, that’s all.

I’m really in anger with Italian government, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION MUST USE FREE SOFTWARE, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION MUST DO THE BEST FOR THE COUNTRY AND FOR PEOPLE enhancing local business before taking money outside!

Free software for PA not only would bring a better cultural and ethical education, but would create work for all local activities (and we have SO MANY IT workers here)! Results: better economy, better occupation, enhancement of competence level for Italian IT workers, BEST SOFTWARE TO GIVE BACK TO THE FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY.

Dell (ubuntu-pc) and Intel (ubuntu mobile) have just signed some sort of partnership with Canonical/Ubuntu, but I’m asking myself why now and why Ubuntu?

I think the answer is composed by two parts:

1. Ubuntu has a solid company behind (and also a big community, but NOT ONLY a community)
2. Ubuntu was created in the name of freedom (I hope the trademark issue will be resolved in the near future)

We also had other big Linux companies such as Red Hat and Novell but the real difference between them and Ubuntu is freedom, Ubuntu has always released every part of its system as free software, unlike the others did.

Well, actually there’s also debian which lies behind Ubuntu and that’s a good thing but I don’t really think Dell and Intel cares about debian

I think Dell and Intel care about interacting with a big company and not just with a community, wich would not help maintaining a solid relationship with business based target, but they also care about trusting in the products, and what’s better than free software? Free licenses give partners a major stability about the future for fund investments for the many reasons we all know.

That’s why Ubuntu wins the race, now all the others should adapt their business and re-enter the race