open source - Page number 12

If you’re neither a scientist, nor active in the open source community, it can be difficult to properly understand why people write open source software. Why would people just give away the products of so much hard work? » Read more

Recently, I created and launched a new website for the Sunlight Foundation called Scout. It's the product I'm the most proud of building in my three years there. It is essentially a search and notification engine for government action. Simple idea, simple presentation, and it's easy to compare to Google Alerts—but there's a lot underneath the hood. » Read more

Open Source for America launched a petition Thursday to "Free the Code," an effort to encourage the U.S. federal government to release custom-developed, taxpayer-funded software as open source by default.

"Free the Code is an initiative to start a national conversation on taxpayer investments in software and information technology," said John Scott, co-chair of Open Source for America's steering committee. "Specifically, we’re interested in how publicly-funded software code developed by the government, which isn’t already covered by a proprietary license, should be made available to the wider public."

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In the last 15 years of my career I have worked at several open source software companies, each with its own unique approach to software delivery, packaging, branding, and sales. Two things have become clear to me: » Read more

Meet David A. Wheeler. He's a Research Staff Member for the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and a well-known speaker, author, and expert on open source software and security. He helped develop the Department of Defense's open source software policy and FAQ and has written other guidance materials to help people understand how to use and collaboratively develop open source software in government. He has a Ph.D. in Information Technology, an M.S. in Computer Science, and a B.S. in Electronics Engineering. We hope you enjoy getting to know David. » Read more

A brief tweet from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) recently invited you to see her newly-decorated apartment and head-to-toe fashions. The problem? It wasn't her apartment. The link led to the website of a staffer in her press office and was promptly deleted from Twitter fifty-seven seconds later. Looks like someone got their social media accounts mixed up.

That might be the end of the story, except the gaffe lives on through Politwoops, an archive of deleted tweets from U.S. politicians hosted by the Sunlight Foundation. » Read more

According to Don Tapscott’s "Four Principles of an Open World" TED talk, we are experiencing one of the most significant times in human history. Through the Internet and other innovations, we are able to collaborate like never before, and that change is having a profound effect on society.

The world is becoming more open, and people are demanding a higher level of truth and transparency from major institutions, like government and corporate structure. As Tapscott explains, these institutions must evolve to adapt to this new “open world” or face failure.  The collapse of several powerful banks and the resulting economic struggle is one example he gives to prove that adapting is vital.  » Read more

Forty years ago, John Holt wondered whether an educational revolution as profound as open education could survive unless it became part of a wider and deeper movement of social change. Until open source and the concept of an open education began to take hold, John Holt's vision of an open education seemed to be a pipe dream. » Read more

In part one of this series, we talked about open government scoring another victory with the City of Raleigh's Open Raleigh initiative. We reviewed the technological components of the open data portal, including ESRI, Granicus, GovDelivery, and SeeClickFix. It's pretty clear that these tools and ways of thinking are having an impact on Raleigh governance.  But what about the other way around?  Is the open government initiative taking place contagious?  We hope so. » Read more

I just started a new job in marketing and social media at Red Hat.  This is my first time working for an open source company, and I didn’t know what to expect.  I knew what it meant for software to be open source, but I had no idea how the principles of open source could be applied to other areas of business.
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