open source - Page number 14

For an audience composed primarily of open source programmers, developers, and system administrators gathered at SouthEast LinuxFest, Robin Miller's message might be tough to swallow.

"You cannot be a 'Linux sysadmin' in today's world," he said. "Not if you want to maximize your income and job satisfaction."

It's an odd statement to hear in a presentation entitled "Using Linux to Boost Your IT Career," which Miller, the former Slashdot editor known affectionately as "roblimo," delivered June 9, the second day of the conference in Charlotte, NC. » Read more

The Kickstarter funded collaboration between Kimiko Ishizaka and MuseScore has released their new recording and score of Bach's Goldberg Variations into the public domain using the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing tool. This is just one of the ways in which Kickstarter, which has pumped over $36,000,000 USD into the music industry since its inception, is revolutionizing the business of music. OpenSource.com first reported on the project in April, 2011, during the fundraising phase. » Read more

What started with a unanimous vote to adopt an open source resolution eventually became a long-term commitment to the open source way. How many of you have had an elected official attend a citizen-lead event? Probably some of you. But how many of you have had your entire city or town council attend an unconference?

At a recent open government unconference, all city council members—including the mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina—attended some or all of the event. Their attendance wasn't a requirement—and it wasn’t a political drive-by. It was genuine, natural. And some of them got knee-deep in the “code,” competing in the civic hackathon. » Read more

I believe that the future success for businesses to attract and retain top talent relies on a more open management and leadership approach. The workforce is evolving and the new employee is part of a major change affecting not only how we hire and who we hire, but how our companies operate on a basic level. It’s especially prevalent in the new generation entering the workforce. » Read more

Promoting a culture that supports failure is a foreign concept to most people, but not for the panelists speaking about open government and business at CityCamp Raleigh. According to the panelists, who range from vice presidents of corporations to chief information officers of Raleigh government, there is a general consensus that failing faster provides a quicker path to innovation. » Read more

I love listening to open source gurus explain open source to those who have never encountered it, and especially to those with little computing background. In conversations with folks who may have never heard the term 'source code,' open source advocates don't typically have recourse to related words like 'Linux,' 'copyleft,' or 'binary blobs.' That comfortable vocabulary suddenly fails them, leaving them frustrated and stammering. » Read more

There’s a Southern expression that goes, "Says easy, does hard." In this case, it’s easy to say that your company is focused on collaboration and ideas. But many executives conflate the terms "collaboration" and "consensus." Seeking consensus and creating a democracy of ideas is not what we at Red Hat would call collaboration. In fact, it’s a misstep. Rather, managers at Red Hat make it a practice to seek out ideas from those who’ve shown that they typically have the best ideas—those who have risen to the top of our meritocracy. » Read more

Last week while I was in San Francisco for the Open Source Business Conference I stopped by to visit  Code for America. I arranged some office time a few weeks ago when I was planning my travel. This wasn’t just another office tour; this is where web geeks, city experts, and technology industry leaders are making a difference. This is where civic ideas are transformed from sticky notes and whiteboards to code. » Read more

From the beginnings of human literature, there has been an instinct to identify with the community, the collective, more than with any individual author. Many of our most valuable texts have been created by social groups and belong to those groups. Multiple, anonymous authorship brought China its cherished Classic of Poetry, gave England Beowulf, and even accounts for parts of the Christian Bible, such as the book of Hebrews—author unknown. The Bible, by the way, tells not one definitive account of the story of Christ, but four that contain conflicting details. So despite the current celebrity mystique surrounding the individual, named author, it's safe to say that at the core of human civilization lie values of collaboration, shared experience, and shared ownership. And certain movements in literature today remind us of those values. » Read more

A couple of years ago I wrote a Globe Op-Ed "A Click Heard Across the Public Service" that outlined the significance of the clerk using GCPEDIA to communicate with public servants. It was a message - or even more importantly - an action to affirm his commitment to change how government works. For those unfamiliar, the Clerk of the Privy Council is the head of the public service for the federal government, a crude analogy would be he is the CEO and the Prime Minister is the Chairman (yes, I know that analogy is going to get me in trouble with people...) » Read more