Open Source Junction (mobile) 2011

04/04/2011 16:32

These are annoted notes I took while attending sessions at Open Source Junction 2011, a great event focusing on open source software development and the mobile platform, and a great bunch of people who make you feel very welcome. These notes may be inaccurate or just wrong in places but I've tried to make sure they make sense. If you are developing open source software and/or web apps and/or native apps then check out the following stuff. Enjoy!

Hosted by: Oxford University Computing Service, OSSWatch at Trinity College, Oxford @osswatch @osjunction #osjmob11

Programme Details at:

http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2011-03-29_Open_Source_Junction/programme.xml

Day 1

“Failure is just re-packaged learning”, Ross Gardler, OSSWatch

The open source mobile apps context

Speaker: Rowen Wilson

‘Galaxy Crowd’ Astronomical Crowd Sourcing

Native Apps vs Web Apps - MIT does both at present

Open source mobile app case study: Webinos

Speaker: John Lyle

‘Webinos’ – A project between academia and business to provide a common mobile deployment platform – attracting a lot of EU funding; a cure for a fragmented mobile market. Hello@webinos.org

Mobile apps open development community

Speaker: Ross Gardler, VP Osswatch, VP Apache Software Foundation, rgardler@apache.org

There is only one way to do open source development successfully – Combine common aims and selfish motivation

Interesting proposition that by collaborating productivity can be increased. E.g. 3 people, 1 + 1 +1 people each giving 100% productivity without collaborating. Vs Each person giving 60% production and 40% collaboration with each other = %120 each. Needs 3 people for this model to work though.

Apache ‘Rave’ –http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/RaveProposal - linked to SIMIL (apache)

Open source mobile app case study: Mobile Oxford

Speaker: Tim Fernando, @timfernando

DAP technology - http://www.w3.org/TR/dap-api-reqs/ HTML5 proposes to access mobile native API features, e.g. camera, accelerometer, GPS

‘Erewhorn’ – oxford project - http://erewhon.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ - has become the Molly project

They looked at MIT Mobile Web platform (PHP) http://mobi.mit.edu/about/ http://mitmobileweb.sourceforge.net/, and also the oMbiel platform and decided to do their own thing

Mobile oxford http://m.ox.ac.uk – implements the following features and technologies:

• Employs browser detection

• Wireless Universal Resource File(WURFL) device detection from MIT http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/

• Displays Oxford bus service info via screen scraping

• Real time park and ride information, showing car park spaces

• Train times – arrivals/departures

• Telephone directory

• Library searching via Z39.50

• Universal Searching across all information sources using Google Search Appliance

• Running polls

• Short URL service

• 2D Barcode generation

• Evaluations

• Cycle routes (proposed)

• Walking Routes (proposed)

• Events listings (proposed)

Mobile Oxford has developed the Molly Project http://mollyproject.org/ which uses Django on top of Python to provide a framework for delivering mobile web apps similar to the MIT solution above. Bangor is currently investigating its use.

Listed on http://ohloh.net

Day 2

Watch out for the Transit Junction conference later on this year

The open source mobile business context

Speaker: Stephen Walli, http://outercurve/org, @stephenrwalli, http://stephesblog.blogs.com

Open Source Development: “Customers have money and no time, the community has time but no money.”

‘Crossing the Chasm’, book by Geoff Moore

Collaborating to make money from mobile open source

Speaker: Nick Allott, http://www.nquiringminds.com/, W3C DAP

http://www.phonegap.com/ - Open source HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native apps with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores.

http://www.boxee.tv/ - A lot of your favorite shows and movies are already available on the Internet. Boxee is a device that finds them and puts them on your TV. It’s easy to use and even better, there’s no monthly fee.

6 Models for making Money out of Open Source

1. Making money from services – give code away for free and charge for support – most common method

2. Same as 1 also selling consultancy

3. Same as 1, 2 also selling hosting of the service

4. Same as 1 but only allowing GPL licensing only allowing free use by academia

5. Upsell, give away free base product but charge for high performance code and advanced features

6. Make money from including advertising

Open source mobile app case study: Wookie

Speaker: Scott Wilson, Bolton University scottbw@apache.org, @scottbw

Wookie – Java Server Application http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/ to deliver W3C compliant widgets to mobile devices and desktops. Enables any application to use widgets. Made up of:

• HTML

• Javascript

• CSS

• Confix.xml

• Icon.png

All wrapped up in a .zip file and renamed as a .wgt file

CETIS Mobile Web Apps PDF – to disseminate,

WARP configuring access policies for remote services

Python, PHP connectors available. Mark Stubbs at Manchester working on .Net connector to use with SharePoint. Can run off a USB stick

ITEC Project http://itec.eun.org/web/guest iTEC (Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom) is a four-year, pan-European project focused on the design of the future classroom.

Open source mobile app case study: Transit

Speaker: Iris Lapinski, Apps for Good, CDI Charity

‘App Inventor for Android’ http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

‘Stop and search’ app on android store

Processes and tools for open development collaboration

Speaker: Sander van der Waal

DOAP - DOAP is a project to create an XML/RDF vocabulary to describe software projects, and in particular open source. http://trac.usefulinc.com/doap http://oss.ly/doap

SIMAL - Simal is a set of open source tools for building project catalogues from RDF/XML files. http://code.google.com/p/simal/

Open development IPR for app stores and beyond

Speaker: Rowan Wilson

Global Voices project

MySociety, Facebook Group

‘Linked Data’ project http://linkeddata.org/ Linked Data is about using the Web to connect related data that wasn't previously linked, or using the Web to lower the barriers to linking data currently linked using other methods.

Mobile Technology Glossary

DAP - http://www.w3.org/TR/dap-api-reqs/ HTML5 proposes to access mobile native API features, e.g. camera, accelerometer, GPS

Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL) device detection from MIT http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/

MIT Mobile Web platform http://mobi.mit.edu/about/ http://mitmobileweb.sourceforge.net/

Molly Project http://mollyproject.org/