In the paper titled “Why and how-to contribute to libre software when you integrate them into an in-house application ?” (which is now available online), to be published in the forecoming proceedings of the OSS2005 conference (Genova, Italy, 11-15 july 2005), we draw from our experience on the projects PicoLibre and ProGET, to explain how in-house applications can be built around existing high level libre software programs. We also describe the issue of long-term maintenance of such in-house platforms, and we propose a strategy for contributions to external libre projects, in order to help solve the maintenance issue.
Feel free to comment on this paper in this post.
Update : the full proceedings of the conference have been put on-line. Check the details from http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/
I’ve started reading “How Open is the Future? – Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free and Open Source Software.”, edited by Marleen WYNANTS & Jan CORNELIS, and published by the University Press of VUB (Brussels).
This book groups excellent reference texts from authors that participated the CROSSTALKS seminar last year, explaining the phenomenon of Libre software and similar evolutions in the IT field.
More details about the book here. Note that this book is published under a Creative Commons license and is downloadable… but much easier to read more than 500 pages if you buy it at your preferred bookshop 
I’ve not completed my reading (by far), but can only suggest that you read it since I find great pieces in what I’ve already read.
Nous avons soumis un papier aux JRES 2005 (qui se dérouleront en décembre 2005 à Marseille), qui a été retenu. Titre : “Intégration d’applications logicielles libres pour la réalisation d’une plate-forme de travail collaboratif destinée aux enseignants/chercheurs du GET”
Update 14/12/2005 : le papier est paru (en ligne dans les actes sur le site des JRES) : l’article (PDF), et les transparents ( HTML et PDF).
