24ºC
24ºC in Geneva, Switzerland. And it’s April… yes, one month ago it was snowing, and now I’m experiencing some days which wouldn’t be left behind the portuguese summer.
Today I had the privilege of attending a colloquium on “Making a Business out of Open Source”, by the JBoss Founder, ex-CEO, and currently “retired” Marc Fleury. Fleury has a good point on the subject, based on his own experience with JBoss (which was recently acquired by Red Hat). He seems to believe that the most profitable licensing model is the proprietary, when based on the premise of a large user base. However, he believes that hybrid models are the ones which can cope most easily with the problems of distribution channels, and at the same time guarantee both intellectual property preservation and freedom to the users. Regarding this point, he noted that, as most people don’t know, (FL)OSS doesn’t mean “for free”.
It was a pleasant colloquium, in the line of what CERN has provided in the last months (Mark Shuttleworth was the previous one, but, unfortunately, it was on the precise day I arrived at CERN).
Regarding hilarious things, we’ve been asked to stop at the customs, between Geneva and St. Genis, and an agent carefully verified our shopping receipts (just a pile of DVDs, Pedro’s new sports pants, and a football [yes, an european football]). The funny part was… we were travelling by bike. Yes, it is a bizarre situation.
And life goes on… I’ll travel to Portugal from 26th April to 1st of May. It will be a good time to stay with my family (which misses me, and I obviously miss as well).