fedora

There is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer. Some of the most amazing projects in the world have seen the light of day only because of the contributions of these selfless individuals. The same holds true for hundreds of open source projects from Fedora to Mozilla to WordPress. What motivates these people to become part of an open source project? Not money, or at least not only money. What benefits do these "unpaid workers" reap from their participation in such projects?

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When I spent some time going around North Carolina recently visiting POSSE professors, I had a realization: We encourage professors to be productively lost, to go out and feel immersed in a community, admit that they can't solve all of the problems themselves, and act more as a facilitator in the classroom. That helps them identify the right questions to ask--and the right places to ask them--online.
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Day I, Friday, November 4, 2011

I arrived early on day I of FUDCon Pune 2011 to help with the registration desk. We had different counters for speakers and volunteers, and for delegates. Fedora banners were placed at various seminar locations on campus to indicate where the talks and sessions were being held. » Read more

Koji is an open source build system. While many are familiar with Koji because of the Fedora Project's use of it, Koji is a generic system that is used by different groups around the world. » Read more

On opensource.com, our community is very important. This is why we started the contributor spotlight earlier this year. But we wanted to also recognize community members who contribute in ways other than writing articles--things like rating and commenting, voting in polls, and sharing our collective work on social media. So this is the first of our community spotlight posts.

Meet Peter Borsa. He's a student at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. He is passionate about Drupal and Fedora. We hope you enjoy getting to know Peter and finding out what he thinks the biggest challenges to openness are and why he chooses the open source way. » Read more

I'm a junior in high school and still learning what open source is all about. I recently visited Red Hat to find out more. Although it was my first time working in an open source environment, I quickly learned from my interview with Max Spevack about the importance of maintaining a strong relationship with an open source project's community. » Read more

Three Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) students recently gained recognition for a Humanitarian Free and Open Source (HFOSS) proof-of-concept project, Open Video Chat (OVC).  OVC put a functional video chat program written designed for deaf students on to the OLPC XO 1.5 computer. This is the story of how it got started and where it can go from here. » Read more

When people think "free and open source software," a lot of different programs come to mind. One may think of Mozilla's popular Firefox browser, which is for many the first free software package they've used. The Linux kernel, which powers everything from phones to the world's fastest supercomputers, may spring to mind. GNU/Linux operating systems such as Fedora, Debian, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux may feature prominently in one's thoughts, or these days, so may Android. However, one class of applications will not immediately come to mind when most folks consider free and open source software—music production software. » Read more

Here at PyCon2011, there are quite a few open source rock stars in attendance. Software hackers of various stripes, developers from the corporate and community realms, and many other technically savvy and interested folks. » Read more

In the first session of FUDCon talks this past weekend, Diana Harrelson reported on her anthropological study of the Fedora community, which she used to find ways to sustain and grow an open source development community. She studied the group from the Fedora 12 launch through the Fedora 13 development cycle while she was a master's candidate at the University of North Texas. (She now has that degree and is working towards a PhD in human computer interaction.) Here's are a few of her findings, much of which certainly apply across open source communities, not just to Fedora. » Read more