We’re delighted to be holding Joomla Day UK 2011 at Microsoft’s offices in London this weekend, and thought what better way to kick off the event than chatting with Ryan Ozimek, President of Open Source Matters. Ryan will be delivering the keynote on Saturday.

Tell us about your role at Open Source Matters

I’m the President of Open Source Matters (OSM), and help provide the leadership and vision for the organization, as well as play the role of one of the leading evangelists in the Joomla community.  I’ve had a chance to play this role for about a year and half, and I’m excited to have an opportunity to represent the project to the world.

How does this relate to Joomla?

OSM provides a few key functionalities for the Joomla project, including the management of our trademark, fiscal matters, events, marketing, and more.  Essentially, we’re the legal entity that helps provide some of the foundational pieces necessary to protect the community’s assets (trademark, brand, etc), while also providing assistance to the community to help spread the word of Joomla (events, press relations and marketing).

Why would someone new to web dev or design choose Joomla?

Joomla provides a terrific opportunity for those just learning Web development or design to take their first steps forward.  It challenges you to learn more, while also providing you the necessary parts to build a powerful site quickly and without much coding knowledge.  The community is close and extremely helpful for beginners, and you can find guidance and tutorials from the hundreds of thousands of developers that have built extensions (add-ons) for Joomla quite easily. Additionally, it’s a great community to learn new ways to meet the ever-changing trends in the Web development world, so you’re able to keep up with modern changes.

Where do you see Joomla in 5 years time?

The future for Joomla goes well beyond the CMS.  The CMS has been an amazing piece of software, built by the community and extended by the community, but has been focused mostly on Web publishing.  When I visit universities and talk to young people, they’re not that interested in building the next commenting system or blogging platform.  They want to use Joomla to build the next Twitter or Facebook.

The Joomla community in 5 years will be even more diverse than it is today.  With the advent of the Joomla Platform, we’re able to grow into worlds in which the CMS focus could never provide.

Joomla in five years will be more global, more social, and more mobile.  I’m not talking about the CMS.  I’m talking about apps that are built using Joomla that run on mobile phones.  Apps that can run from the command line interface.  Apps that enable our amazing community of developers to leap frog from building CMS extensions to building anything they can imagine…but using the core lessons learned from writing for Joomla.
Our future is bright, it’s bold, and it’s going to change the way people think about Joomla.

How has Microsoft contributed to the Open Source Matters project, and Joomla?

It’s been great to see Microsoft sign the Joomla Contributor Agreement, the same agreement that all contributors to the Joomla project sign.  That’s given Microsoft an opportunity to support the project in a variety of ways, including contributions of code.  I’ve been happy to see the contributions towards the support of new database drivers for Joomla, as well as strong support of our events (like this weekend’s event in London).  We’re always on the lookout for companies and organizations that can help us expand the reach of Joomla into new demographics, and Microsoft has provided us the support to do that quite nicely.

What are you most looking forward to at Joomla day UK?

I’m excited to share the knowledge that has been building around the world about the Joomla Platform.  There’s so much opportunity there, it’s amazing.  Most importantly though, I’m excited to meet with members of our community, new and old.  We’re a community focused on developing amazing software, but bonded together by a lot of Joomla love.  Joomla in the UK continues to grow, and I’m looking forward to continuing to grow the community here in London, and throughout the UK, by bringing together some great folks and saying, “you know what, there’s something special here, let’s keep growing this across the country.”

Keep an eye on our Twitter feed for the latest on the event, and click here to learn more about Joomla! on Windows.

Some people are still quite surprised that Microsoft works with the open source community – while the Ubelly guys try to attend as many user groups, drop-ins and dedicated get-togethers as well as we possibly can can (especially where beer is involved…) sometimes it’s good to reset and talk openly about our involvement and some of the cool stuff we’ve been up to recently.

So we’re genuinely delighted that there will be a good Microsoft presence at the J and Beyond Joomla! conference in Kerkrade 6th – 8th May. Grace Francisco will be attending from Microsoft HQ to talk about open source, and Jas Sandhu will be covering the cloud, IE9 and much more…

Open call for papers is now so get your thinking caps on properly!

here’s more info from the Joomla! guys themselves:

J and Beyond, an International Joomla! Conference in Kerkrade The Netherlands, is coming and the deadline for submitting proposals for sessions is on 4th March.

J and Beyond is not like any other Joomla! event, the entire programme of events is up to you the participants. Any and every participant has the opportunity to present a paper which can be either a presentation, tutorial or workshop. This is your opportunity to not only meet your peers but to share your ideas, experiences and projects.

Before submitting a paper please spend a moment or two to consider if it is appropriate. If you think it sounds like something you would be interested in attending then that’s a good start. A simple product demonstration is probably not the right presentation for J and Beyond, the attendees are more than capable of downloading software and checking it out for themselves. Think beyond the obvious and try to propose sessions that will truly inform, educate and engage with the unique audience at J and Beyond.

Some Ideas

Case Studies

Have you developed a unique site? Share with the participants at J and Beyond the challenges and difficulties you faced and how you resolved them.

Tutorials

Have you discovered a new library or perhaps developed an API? Articles and videos can only go so far, there is nothing better than an in-person tutorial to really explain the key concepts

Discussions

Is there a subject that grabs your attention? Are there multiple possibilities for the best way forward? Why not chair a discussion and together with other participants discuss and debate the options to perhaps reach a consensus.

Workshop

Sometimes there is nothing better than opening the laptop and getting down to some real code. Share your expertise and experience with your fellow J and Beyond attendees.

Working Methodology

It may be a business, design or development method that you want to share. Or have you discovered the perfect computer setup that drastically reduces your development time leaving you more time for the important stuff in life.

New Technology

Technology doesn’t stand still and neither should we. There are new coding methodologies, javascript libraries and platforms announced all the time. Share your experience and thoughts creating, developing or simply exploring the future.

Tickets for J and Beyond are on sale at only 149 Euros until 1st April.

It was very apparent at the Joomla Day UK 2010 over the weekend that Microsoft had no place at an open source event. Here we were talking about development project management, documentation process and how to attract great dev talent and there’s a Microsoft guy tapping away at his keyboard keeping tabs?! WTF!

Well that was my fear.

Truth is, it was kind of different. I’ve already posted a summary of the event but wanted to go into why we were there in the first place, and why the president of the Open Source Community Ryan Ozimek had a nice slide up adorned by a big, bad Microsoft logo. To do so let’s jet across the Ocean to the west coast of the USA and get to why Microsoft and eBay have more in common that you may think…

Joomla have a legally compliant and open method of accepting code into the product trunk, called Joomla Contributor Agreement (JCA).Code written by non-open source organisations can therefore become part of the open source Joomla product. Microsoft and eBay recognised the value for both parties in contributing to the effort – not only does Joomla benefit from world-class development expertise to take the product further, but Microsoft and eBay can offer value-add services to Joomla customers. Microsoft specifically has worked to put Joomla’s package on the Web Platform Installer (WebPI) so it works seamlessly out of the box.

So what does signing the JCA really mean? Aside from a gesture of ongoing investment and support (corporate speak over) it means providing test environments for Windows machines so IIS (Internet Information Services – a flexible web server that supports ASP.NET and PHP) works like a dream. Or as well as Apache at least. This opens the doors for Joomla to get companies who are used to IIS comfortable that their skillset can be applied to Joomla. In addition, code to get WinCache integration for the upcoming Joomla 1.6 release was also provided, meaning PHP apps apps run a heck of a lot faster on Windows Server. For eBay, they recently announced that they’d use Joomla to launch a community portal as part of their internal analytics platform.

So what does this really mean?

Well, open source CMS sites like Joomla foster a vibrant community which means you can take building blocks that devs worldwide have contributed and piece them together to make your specialist site for your particular function. Tapping into a wealth of ready-made modules, themes and extensions means you can pretty much create the solution without having to interact with code at all. It’s like knowing your restaurant is great at cooking, but because dessert choice changes depending on the fruits that are in season at that point in time, why not outsource that part to the guys who have the expertise and network to get you the very best?

Microsoft and eBay have recognized the value that Joomla can provide to their solutions, and in return have opened the doors for mass audiences to embrace on their existing architecture. I’d expect to see plenty more of this outreach in the near future.

Click here to read Joomla’s blog on the matter, or here to get started on the Microsoft Web Platform.

Did you know there’s an Open Source CMS based on Microsoft’s ASP.NET called Umbraco? I popped along to the first ever Umbraco festival last Friday to find out what the Umbraco community have been up to.

Founder Niels Hartvig set up Umbraco with the intention of making a CMS built on .NET that’s free and available to everyone. His vision is that the more you contribute, the more you get back, so the more people who use Umbraco the more it’ll be improved. His vision statement for  the next version of Umbraco (version 5) is ‘sustainable idealism’.

Alex Norcliffe, lead architect for Umbraco 5 gave a great session to confirm what Version 5 will bring to Umbraco developers. Basically the team is building the Umbraco framework from scratch to keep up with advancements in .NET like MVC3 and clean up the backend – although the existing version 4.5 is working really well, there’s an opportunity to use the experience gained since Umbraco v1.0.

Oh, and the Umbraco Windows Phone 7 application will be launched in November. Named Prodigy, it  allows you to manage your web content via the phone.

The day was rounded off with a session from our very own Martin Beeby – Martin’s keen on Umbraco because; “If it wasn’t for Open Source I’d never figure our how to do anything – it’s a great way to progress as a developer”.

Find out more about Umbraco here.

Microsoft makes a cool move: WebMatrix connects with most Open Source webtools (think joomla, drupal, mysql, etc.)

http://bit.ly/bzfVeI

Want to be able to allow users to upload pictures to our site without having to sign in first? Take a look at Yogile – a dead simple photo sharing site with a collaborative twist 

SugarCRM 6 Released, But Is It Open Source? Latest version splits offering for paying versus open source user, encouraging community to ‘Go Pro’ by providing new features to enterprise and professional users only

Joomla 1.6 Beta 5 Now Available – fixes 65 issues – but this version is for evaluation purposes only!

Microsoft Launches Outlook Facebook Integration – Facebook and Microsoft worked closely together to create a new social experience – the new Outlook Social Connector also allows users to connect with Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Windows Live Messenger contacts

Firefox 4 Beta 1 Now Available for Download – focus is mainly on improved speed, plus integrated Feedback button so you can report what features made you happy or sad

Microsoft Links Free SQL Database with ASP.NET – Free SQL CE database now works with ASP.NET web applications

Faster Apache Cayenne 3 for Java Framework. Four years after the last major Cayenne release, version 3.0 gives enhanced performance and ease of use

Introducing WebMatrix – the free Microsoft web development suite is now available in public beta, including web server, a database, a web framework, and a development environment – plus you can choose to build with open-source web applications

Set to be released in August, Ruby 1.9.2 on its Way. The first Release Candidate includes a new set of character encodings and a multiple random number generator

Microsoft Delivers Silverlight for Symbian – Developing for Symbian? Get your Silverlight tools from the Nokia Ovi Store

jCamp – JSOP 2010 is gearing up – Joomla! student outreach program links students and mentors from all around the world to work on a project for three months (during summer) under mentor’s guidance

Windows Phone 7 gets open source database – McObject’s Perst is an Open Source database management system and manages record-based data kept in WP7′s “Isolated Storage” area

Whether you are talking about virtualization, server infrastructure, productivity software, collaboration, or development, almost every major enterprise technology has had an infusion of open-source style thinking. For example, Microsoft virtualization technology not only supports a Microsoft stack, but can also manage a VMWare environment extremely well. Hosting Providers who want to offer services under both Windows and Linux do so with Microsoft Hyper-V because of its affordability and resilience as a mature solution. On the cross-platform development end, Silverlight has been a true game changer, invigorating the hearts and minds of the rank and file while also inspiring former outcasts, exiles, and zealots who vowed never to touch a piece of Microsoft technology again. This progress was executed first via the enterprise channels, but consumers and web technologists have also benefited from the effects of, to coin a great American Republican catch-phrase, “trickle-down” prosperity. Realizing that the latest technical platforms on the web truly balance the scale between huge enterprises and small businesses, Microsoft is expanding its goal around making Windows a great platform for open-source projects by actively investing in their development.

If you recall, 2009 was the year that “pigs flew,” because it was the year that Microsoft made a top-down showing in interoperability with everything it did. Some of the biggest gestures included becoming platinum sponsor of Apache Foundation, contributing GPL code to the Linux kernel, and open-sourcing many strategic .NET frameworks under BSD. If you want a more comprehensive list, check out my presentation below. There are many core developer-focused technologies listed.

Coming back to the present, 2010 is a big year as well because Microsoft is investing in making sure the free ecosystem of open-source technology, both competitive and complimentary, works well regardless of a customer’s choice in software infrastructure. Umbraco and Drupal, are two popular CMS systems that are free and have a very dedicated community of users. In the case of Umbraco, which happens to already leverage .NET, Microsoft wanted to make it better, easier and more capable than something like WordPress. Sure, SharePoint will always be the official CMS of choice for the hardliner salesman at Microsoft, but one shouldn’t have to abandon the entire Microsoft ecosystem just to use free technology. What better way to improve the product than to invest resources with one of the key developers for Umbraco? See his diary below.

Umbraco Microsoft and me: Video diary 1 from Darren Ferguson on Vimeo.

On the flipside, Drupal is a technology that uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, and is based on PHP. The motivations to invest here are not as clear up front, but it only takes a little digging to realize that Drupal developers are actually a tech-agnostic bunch and just want to make Drupal a great CMS platform. So here Microsoft has sponsored a team of developers to provide feedback and improve integration with IIS and Silverlight. The idea being that the use of great technology shouldn’t be an “either-or” decision.

Choice always wins. Customers shouldn’t have to be forced into a set of technologies, and the accomplishments of 2009 and the work being driven in 2010 shows that modularity will be a key strategy for Microsoft to help make it easier for customers to use the best technology for the job even if it means helping products that compete. Competition and “Co-opetition,” differ by only one character, but this single character has lead to an innumerable number of changes at Microsoft.

I’ve learned in my travels that geography plays a huge part in the sophistication of an audience.  I now understand that many of the people simply don’t have the time to explore new product offerings on their own time these days.  People are all too busy putting out the proverbial fires at their jobs.  In a lot of ways, this is the coolest crowd to present to because my ONLY job in the presentation is to educate and inspire them into imagining what could be possible with the technology.  One such question from a particular session was around building solutions that talk with ERP systems and other proprietary databases.

Two Longhorns, One Express Search Server *small*, Would You Like A Connector With That?

A connector is a type of add-in/plug-in that can be installed on most Microsoft server technologies.  Almost any mainstream server from Exchange, SharePoint, Windows Server, and now Search Server have connectors.  But what do connectors allow organizations to do?

No doubt, many of you reading this have heard of companies like SAS, SAP, FAST, Symantec, and IBM.  I could name dozens of others but my point is that these companies deal in dedicated proprietary Line-of-Business (LOB) products and applications.  Because many organizations have been using old legacy systems for a while, it is not a simple matter to just “rip ‘n’ replace” infrastructure.  This is where connectors come in.

Connectors allow modern systems to easily interact and communicate with closed systems in a structured way.  A simple example is with Exchange sending mail outbound via an SMTP connector.  Before this connector, Exchange had no way of interfacing with public email systems.  This concept also exists with searching.  If the primary goal of your organization is to find information regardless of where it is and what system it is using, AND if your infrastructure has a lot of niche databases and LOB systems, then you absolutely have to use supported connectors.  This is, of course, only if you think that all that information stored on your multi-million dollar solution is valuable.

What About Public Databases?

Increasingly, technology is infiltrating from the outside-in with consumer technology outpacing enterprise infrastructure.  A classic example of this is “search” and unified communications.  People use Google and MSN Live Bing for search.  People use Live, AOL, Yahoo for instant messaging and Skype for VOIP.  All this while most companies are still trying to figure out what an emoticon is.

Any CIO knows that to embrace consumer technology wholeheartedly in their organization is not practical for a few minor reasons, lets call them manageability, security, reliability, and compliance.  As the world becomes more connected, business will have to learn how to trust outside networks, or in other words, “federate” access and do it is a way that can be managed.

“Federated Search” in Search Server 2008 is a great example of how any business, small, mid-size or enterprise can control and manage how employees find information.  By giving workers a unified search portal pulling in results from the intranet as well as popular search engines likes Live, Yahoo, and Amazon, search habits can be analyzed to improve discoverability.

Make Investments in “Open” Technologies

When I say “open,” I don’t mean open-source.  Open, in the context of business, means that something is accessible, interoperable, and manageable.  None of these values rule out open-source technologies but since we’re on that note, I’ll say that these haven’t been key strengths in the Open-Source software community.  An open technology allows businesses to connect many complex processes and work-flows to operate like a well-oiled machine.  An open technology is something that is usable by the lowest common denominator in the organization.  An open technology can be built upon and improved in a way that is controlled, structured, and predictable.

Many people make mistake many commercial systems as being proprietary, when it reality, these systems must adhere to industry specifications and standards.  If these products didn’t then no one would buy them.  So when you hear people say that a product doesn’t follow standards, ask yourself are they simply referring to any standard or is it a particular one?  Just because software is proprietary, doesn’t mean it isn’t “open”.

From Vaxine on Flickr.

Driving back from the office on Tuesday I happened to catch the tail end of “Inside the Virtual Anthill: Open Source Means Business” on Radio 4. The program explored the “alternative way of working” that is open source development with distributed teams of contributors scattered across the globe, connected by the internet with little or no centralised direction or coordination.

The programme title is a reference to ant colonies where no individual ant directs the behaviour of others – that’s very un-ant-like apparently – instead ants are influenced by those around them. It’s a slightly leaky analogy as ants haven’t yet developed a sophisticated long-range communications infrastructure (sukz to be an ant, unable to watch silly cat videos). They can only be influenced by those in close proximity. The interconnectedness of the human equivalent shrinks the geography dramatically.

The program sets to one side the question of “free software” (perhaps refreshingly recognising the distinction between “free software” and OSS (open source software)) and instead focuses on organisational aspects, the adoption of open source approaches by commercial software companies and the application of open source techniques to fields beyond software development (eg Wikipedia, mining for gold and solving challenging problems).

Mike Shaver, VP of Engineering for Mozilla Corporation gave his definition of open source:

“the components of the software … are available for others to see, and importantly also to change and make their own.”

Seems like an entirely reasonable definition. No mention of “free as in beer”, no suggestion that only open source software is “open” software (ie software you can extend, enhance or interoperate with). Whether a particular piece of software makes a great basis for the world-conquering uber-app you’re about to create is independent of whether or not it’s proprietary. The same is true of paying for it. Some proprietary software is free just as some open source software is paid-for. (I’ll now take credit for clearing up that issue once and for all and the internet can now get on with life)

The question of WIFM (What’s in it for me?) cropped up a couple of times. Why do people devote time, energy and expertise to these various pursuits? Interestingly (and a little sadly), in the case of Wikipedia, a good number of people apparently devote themselves to trying to “ruin it for the majority” by engaging in vandalism or becoming pre-occupied with “edit wars”.

It makes you wonder if similar behaviour occurs in other fields. Are there rogue open source contributors out there trying to ruin it for the rest of us? If not, why not? Wikipedia’s immediacy makes it an easy target (there’s talk of change). Does a stricter review process weed-out such undesirables from other fields? Is the higher barrier-to-entry acting as a disincentive? Or is the population of software developers simply more warm-hearted, law-abiding and well-meaning than the general population? I suspect not.

There was an interesting foray into other applications of open source techniques including the story of Goldcorp told by founder Rob McEwen. Goldcorp offered a challenge to the community: we’ll share all the data we have on our gold mine if you tell us where we’re likely to find more gold. There’s not much incentive there for people so a prize fund totalling over $500,000 was offered (that’s the WIFM box checked). It was a controversial but successful experiment with over 1400 downloads of the dataset and significant finds at the locations suggested by the winners. Perhaps there is something in this. Local government too was mentioned as a rich seam of potential for open source collaborative working. Often similar projects are duplicated over and over in each county / state. it seems to me though, that what’s preventing that from happening today is some centralised direction and control, supposedly the antithesis of open source.

Professor Thomas Malone of the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life talked of the evolution of business from the traditional, large-scale hierarchical organisations of today to more networked, decentralised and democratic organisations of tomorrow. He argues that you can achieve the economic benefits of large organisations while also enjoying the more human benefits of small organisations such as freedom, flexibility, motivation, creativity and cites Wikipedia as an example: “An amazing organisational invention”.

I’m happy to accept that Wikipedia is an amazing organisational invention. But a blueprint for future businesses? For one thing the argument is based on a false premise: that traditional organisations can’t support freedom, flexibility, motivation and creativity. I see plenty of all those things around Microsoft and we’re not unique in that. Those things can survive and even thrive in a large organisation.

But if I build my business on the open source model, what about practical issues like revenue and remuneration. I’m assuming we’re not talking of a utopian vision where everyone works for the common good and shares in the fruits of their labours. Software development costs a lot of money. Someone, somewhere has to pay. Firefox (250+ employees at Mozilla Corporation and upwards of $50M in revenue from Google in 2006) and Linux (the 4-500 IBM employees mentioned in the programme you can be sure are being rolled into those IBM hardware costs and service agreements) aren’t free. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a different form of payment.

I’m assuming our business is in business to make some money and the people that do work for us have families to feed. How would that work? Who would determine how people were rewarded? Who would be the arbiter? Who would do the “back-room” work that’s essential when people are “in employment”? Who would decide the relative value of these different functions? Surely we’re already starting to introduce some of the infrastructure that supports today’s traditional organisations (and perhaps, the argument goes, inhibits them). I see no way around this. What I do see is both models embracing aspects of the other.

We see a move in “traditional” organisations to become more decentralised, less dependent on location and embracing new ways of working while at the same time the open source examples given in the programme (such as Mozilla and IBM) actually use a hybrid model with some centralised, controlled resources supported by a broader community of contributors. Perhaps in 10 years time we’ll find ourselves unable to make the distinction and wonder what all the fuss was about?

You can listen to the programme in full on BBC iPlayer (UK only).