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Partnership Conference Series Program Coordinator & Host
Dr. Tamas Michel Koplyay

Eclipse Foundation
Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director

Open Source: Power to the Technology Consumer
Open source is fundamentally altering the economics of the software industry. Many observers are under the deeply mistaken belief that the momentum behind open source is the result of small groups of dedicated hackers. The reality is that open source is being used as the core of new business models in the technology industry, and that the momentum behind open source is largely the result of these corporate interests. But the real winners in this dynamic are technology consumers, who are seeing ever-reducing software costs and increasing investment protection.

QNX
Mark Roberts, Director, Product Management

QNX and Open-Sourced Tooling: A Case Study
Using the QNX Momentics Development Suite as a real-life example, this talk will focus on the benefits, obstacles, strategies, and opportunities associated with using the Eclipse open-source platform to build commercial Integrated Development Environments. The Eclipse-based example will be expanded upon, with general issues and concerns about commercializing open-source being explored.

Coffee Break

Nortel
Peter Carbone, CTO (Acting)

Insights From Research on Competing With Open Source
Peter will describe the insights gained from a research program undertaken jointly by Nortel and Carleton University. The research was anchored around the design and development of 10 master level theses. Peter will first describe five stages of open source readiness that apply to large suppliers of communications equipment and then highlight the differences between the passive use of open source to reduce costs and shorten time to market and the proactive use of open source to redefine markets. Finally, Peter will summarize the key insights learned from his experience leading an industry-university research program focused on competition that relies on open source software.

Move to the Middle
The software industry often is depicted as irreconcilably divided into mutually exclusive, rival camps of commercial and open-source providers. Market forces, however, are rendering this portrayal obsolete. Both models have proven beneficial to the software market, which has determined that they should coexist in healthy competition, and has even driven them to converge.

Traditionally, commercial software developers relied on licenses that protected ownership rights by limiting access to source code, while open-source developers employed licenses that restricted developer control in favour of universal access. However, the market now requires that each camp embraces each other's principles, driving adherents of both models toward neutral, hybrid ground.

For many open-source providers, this "move to the middle" is the adoption of certain commercial licensing and business strategies. These developers seek to emulate the success of companies that have attained stability by providing commercial enhancements or services for open-source platforms. They have also learned the lessons from other companies that abandoned early open-source efforts and from those organizations that proved unable to adapt to market demands and consequently met their demise.

For commercial software providers like Microsoft, this middle ground is represented by programs like the Shared Source Initiative, through which source code is made broadly accessible without forfeiture of intellectual property protections that have served as the linchpin of commercial software innovation for decades.

Unlimitel
Stephan Monette, President

Open source IP-PBX
Why enterprises, as well as, small offices and home offices (SOHO) are looking at open source IP-PBX systems in Canada. Stephan Monette will describe the major features of Asterisk, open source software, that are not available on proprietary IP-PBX systems developed and marketed by major global manufacturers.

Government of Canada
Joseph Potvin, Senior Economic Analyst, CIO Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat

Support For Collective Evolution of Assets That Are of Interest to The Government
Intellectual Resources Canada (IRCan) is an emerging inter-departmental and inter-sectoral initiative to rationalize public spending on custom intellectual assets, including software. It is being created to support collective evolution of assets across combinations of public sector, commercial, academic and civil society participants, while engaging the full spectrum of business methods and legislation, agreements, policies and guidelines. Through fiscal year 2006-07, IRCan will be piloted as a limited program led by Enterprise Stewardship, CIO Branch. Eventually, it is hoped that any federal department or agency will be able to draw upon the policy framework, business design, and systems infrastructure of the IRCan Initiative to support communities engaged in the creation and evolution of any intellectual assets under joint and collective copyright, that are of interest to the Government of Canada.

In this session, the business requirements of two open source project communities initiated by the Canadian Government will be outlined to explain the underlying purpose and strategy of the IRCan Initiative:

• "OPA" (Online Proposal Appraisal) is an open source (GNU-GPL) grants and contributions management system started in 1999 at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). For five years OPA has been used to run the largest international development research grants initiative at the World Bank.
• "ITERation" (IT for Expenditure Reporting Automation) is the first open source (GNU-GPL) solution to be initiated and shared by Treasury Board Secretariat. By facilitating more timely and auditable reporting from authoritative sources for any defined profile of investments or expenditures, ITERation should help federal organizations to meet the goals of the government's planned Accountability Act.