FOSS - Page number 6

Hi! I'm Mel. When I'm not doing Free Software and Open Source stuff, I'm a learning psychology geek. One of the questions I get asked a lot by fellow FOSS hackers is: Mel! Why don't people help me with my project? » Read more

One of the fun parts of blogging for PCWorld.com is getting reader response e-mails from all over the world. You never know who is going to read what you write. Sometimes they'll spot the blog post on the PCWorld Web page, or as a link in a tweet or even as a Google search result several months after the blog post was published.

I've blogged previously about Inkscape, the free vector drawing program for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows, so I was thrilled to receive an e-mail from Sheena Vaidyanathan, who teaches Inkscape to elementary school students in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Here is how Sheena explained her teaching to me: » Read more

Two years ago, I blundered into open source because I wanted my students to build educational games for the One Laptop Per Child community. Much of that history has already been told by opensource.com. I didn't expect this effort to be so sticky--for myself or my students--when we started. » Read more

At opensource.com, we often talk about ways to build and nourish communities. But sometimes what you do right is less important than what you’re doing wrong. We dug through our archives looking for cautionary tales that show how communities break down—or never begin to flourish in the first place. » Read more

Incredible work comes out of open source communities. But communities far removed from the world of software development often thrive following the same principles.  

Openness. Sharing. Collaboration. Transparency. Meritocracy. A common purpose.

Following are nine stories from nine very different kinds of communities. Yet all follow the open source way, in their own ways. » Read more

By nature of our interests and where open source commonly intersects the law, we post a lot about patents in the Law channel on opensource.com. And it's been an interesting year for patents.

In May, a verdict was delivered in favor of Red Hat and Novell in an infringement case based on bad software patents owned by "non-practicing entities." Rob Tiller's post on it, Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit, was the top article across opensource.com for the year. » Read more

Netflix gets it. They understand the power of open source.

Kevin McEntee, VP of Systems & ECommerce Engineering at Netflix wrote a blog post about how Netflix does more than just consume open source. McEntee highlights three key components of the open source way that typically equate to success. He doesn't refer to them this clearly, but the three components he's really talking about are: » Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear an appeal regarding the evidentiary standard for invalidating patents. The case involves a judgment against Microsoft Corporation in favor of i4i Limited Partnership. If the Court accepts Microsoft's arguments, it could be good news for the FOSS community. » Read more

2010 has been a fantastic year for open source. The progress that Malaysia has made with open source has caught the attention of governments of developed and emerging economies. I would like to share some of the opportunities, challenges, and future benefits that open source can continue to offer to economies such as Malaysia. » Read more

About five years ago I was hired by a software company that specialized in database security. Some of our software was used to protect databases in military assets and major banks. But a lot of development was very remote from top-secret weapons or classified information. For example, we wrote a small command line utility for driving virtual machines for integration testing. It helped us eradicate failures during installs and upgrades. Was I going to have to write that again at my next job? How could I share it with my friends working at other organizations? » Read more