open source - Page number 44

Last Friday, while the first true revolution of the Web 2.0 era was reaching its climax in Tahrir Square, I was watching events unfold from within the U.S. State Department in downtown Washington D.C. I had the privilege to attend the two-day Tech@State: Open Source conference, an event organized by the Office of eDiplomacy, a relatively new wing of the State Department led by one of most cutting-edge and dynamic teams in the federal government. » Read more

I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a sensational headline. But if I put the word “equilibrium” in there, you might not have reached this point.

Last year while presenting at a technology and disabilities conference, I answered a question about participatory government, gov 2.0, so on, in a way that reverberated in tones of heresy on the faces of some people.

I said something to the effect of: “There are people who don’t want to participate. We have a representative democracy and people paid to run things, and in many cases I want them to do their jobs and let me do mine.”
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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

A few years back, a good friend recommended I pick up a copy of Designing Brand Identity: an essential guide for the whole branding team by Alina Wheeler. Now in its 3rd edition, it's a beautiful book, well designed and easy to read or to use as a reference. » Read more

After last September's Open Hardware Summit, today version 1.0 of the Open Source Hardware Definition was released.

Last summer, people and groups that included Bug Labs, MakerFaire, Creative Commons, The New York Hall of Science, and littleBits gathered to plan the first Open Hardware Summit. The event was held with the goal of creating the Open Source Hardware Definition announced today, similar to the OSI's Open Source Definition regarding what is and isn't open. Today's release marks a big milestone for those efforts. » Read more

Open source software is becoming a dominant force in the software world and the world in general. Unfortunately, many universities still teach computer science without any mention of this recent advance. In the fall of 2007, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) set out to change this.

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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

Unless you've been living under a rock, or don't really care about U.S. sports, you probably know that the Green Bay Packers are the champs of Super Bowl XLV. What you may not know is that despite hailing from a town of a little over 100,000 people, the Green Bay Packers are one of the most popular teams in the National Football League. So popular, in fact, that the current waiting list for season tickets informs new registrants that they might receive their tickets by 2074.

The Green Bay Packers have remained a successful franchise for multiple reasons, » Read more

Leadership in most organizations is top-down. The CEO tells the VP, who tells the director, who tells the manager, who instructs his employee to do work. Culturally most people are conditioned to think that's expected. But open source communities rarely work that way, and that's one of the oddities people discover upon getting involved in open source--and often they need a period of acclimation to get used to it. It’s also certainly one of the strengths of open source communities, as well as one of the least understood functions, even among those in communities of practice. » Read more

I've been involved with a fair share of open source activities, game-related and otherwise, and by and large I have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It all started with an overly ambitious open source game. It never went anywhere, yet I treasure the time I spent working on it. This project sent me head first into the marvels of collaborative open source--and game development, without any training wheels. It’s an experience and an education that comes highly recommended, but is not without its hits and misses. Getting it right the first time ultimately comes down to chance, but if nothing else, sharing my experience might improve your odds. » Read more