FOSS - Page number 7

Last week, India became another major country to join the growing, global open standards movement. After three years of intense debate and discussion, India's Department of IT in India finalized its Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, joining the ranks of emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa and others. » Read more

One of the hardest things about trying to bridge two worlds--for instance, open source communities and academic institutions--is all the stuff you don't hear on a daily basis when you're working remotely. Sometimes it takes several rounds of garlic bread and pasta for people to begin articulating what's blocking them from teaching their students how to participate in FOSS communities. Sebastian Dziallas and I sat down last weekend at the 2010 Frontiers in Education conference with a group of professors from the Teaching Open Source community. "What are the biggest blockers that you're facing in doing this," we asked, "that people in the open source world just don't know about or understand?" Here are their answers.

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What can you do with a boardroom, a projector, and a wifi access point? A movie night, you say? Nope. Just a few tools is all it took to get Mel Chua and Jan Wildeboer (from Red Hat) and Pierros Papadeas (from Fedora) together with local organizer Michael Adeyeye from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. The event? A week-long workshop on the principles of open source communities and how to employ these in university-level teaching--in Cape Town, South Africa. » Read more

Next week, we'll be live blogging from POSSE South Africa on opensource.com, and you'll get to witness some of the bridge-building between academia and open source.  You and others like you can take away lessons that help universities evolve in a world where open source is a major focus and enabler of the future.
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I believe that, over time, Jaspersoft’s distinction will be less about it being an open source software company and more about its abilities as a great business intelligence software company. I expect declining distinction for our open source-ness will partly occur because the success of open source software and the benefit it brings the community and customers become better accepted and understood each year (and, therefore, less unique). I also believe that the most valuable aspect of the open source model will long endure, way after the sheen fades from the download, forum post, or roadmap voting. That is, the principles of open source software are its most distinguishing characteristic and will eventually reach not just all technology companies, but all other industries as well.

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The Open World Forum began this morning in Paris with several keynotes that were universally optimistic about the future of open source and the importance of openness.

Jean-Louis Missika, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of research, innovation and universities, gave his vision of a more democratic world where information is shared more freely. He spoke at length about how openness and open innovation are changing the city of Paris. » Read more

I read Gary Hamel's piece, The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, with great interest. In it, he talks about the tensions that traditional, cubicle-land corporations will likely face as a creative, connected workforce comes on-line. I was particularly interested because, as a member of the higher educational establishment, I'm part of the pipeline, sitting in-between K-12 and the workplace. More importantly, I think that higher education faces many of the same challenges that the Fortune 500 does. So, with that said, I'd like to parallel Gary's piece, edging towards the extreme in my reflection (playing agent provocateur, perhaps) on the tensions between the Facebook generation and higher ed. » Read more

In 2007, Sean O'Sullivan, one of the founders of MapInfo, graciously made a donation to his alma mater, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY with the specific goal of creating a center for the promotion of open source among undergraduates: » Read more

One of the challenges of working in the space between academia and open source communities is translating the cultural and timescale differences. One approach to bridging the gap is to empower people already in the academic space–like professors--to navigate the free and open source software (FOSS) world and bring that knowledge back to the institutions they come from. The week-long POSSE Professors' Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE) workshop, sponsored by Red Hat, aims to do just that. » Read more