Microsoft vs OpenOffice in Pesaro: first, let's recap
Pesaro is a town of about 100 thousands people on the northern adriatic coast of Italy. Its Public Administration has been facing lots of critics from Free/Open Source software supporters because, in the last five years, it changed twice the same, important part of its ICT infrastructure. Both those changes bring consequences and open issues, both for the critics and for Pesaro, that have had little or no coverage at all so far, especially outside Italy (1). Before talking about them, however, it is necessary to summarize what happened.
What do USA special forces and Mexican drug lords have in common?
Apparently, they both don’t know enough of how the Internet and digital (meta) data work.
The Free Software icon that we need the most. Fifteen years ago
Today, while cleaning up old backups, I found a text file named as this post, which I saved on November 17th, 2000, but never used. Cannot remember what I was planning to do with it, but here it goes. A bit naive, surely dated (just look at which Free Software companies I was suggesting to go for help…) but still interesting, considering how things stand today. Here it goes, unchanged:
Hacker proves with Open Data that Microsoft license costs don't matter
(no, not really but…) In December 2014, italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi annunced soldipubblici.gov.it, a Web portal that provides official Open Data on public spending (“Soldi Pubblici”, that is) in Italy. Within a few hours, an italian Hacker,
Why you are very often wrong when you copy a full web page somewhere else online
If and when the author (including me, I routinely do that on OTHER websites I run, or contribute to!) of some web page, video etc.. tells you that you can copy it all elsewhere, by all means DO it. In all other cases, including “sharing” them on Facebook or similar networks, or sending the full thing via email, you do a serious disservice… not just to that author but, **above all, **to all the people with which you “share” that stuff.
It's time for Open Data in and from (not "ABOUT"!) schools
Preface
This essay expands a proposal on Open Data in schools that I made in 2011, which requires very little, if any, funding and central authorization/coordination to be implemented. As of this writing, I know of no other proposal of the same kind, with the exception of this 2012 presentation from New Zealand. Also, I have not heard of any large scale implementation, or had occasion to do any real work on this topic. However, I am even more convinced now than in 2011 that the idea has a great potential.