Wikipedia

Did the SOPA blackout work? (And was it really a blackout?)

Did the SOPA blackout work? (And was it really a blackout?)

Yesterday I posted screenshots of 127 websites that “blacked out” to protest the SOPA and PIPA legislation before the US Congress. Another site I came across reported that 7,000 sites had gone black. There was no citation, but I believe it if you include every blog that WordPress enabled to automatically go black and if you count all of those sites I posted screenshots of as “blacking out.”

I don’t. » Read more

8 Comments

The importance of Wikipedia

The importance of Wikipedia

Mirror mirror on the wall, what's the most important open source project of them all? » Read more

7 Comments

Webcast replay: Clay Shirky on open source and the cognitive surplus

Webcast replay: Clay Shirky on open source and the cognitive surplus

Micheal Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, moderated our October 2011 Open Your World Forum webcast with Clay Shirky. Tiemann and Shirky explored how the principles of open source are being applied to further advance our collective cognitive surplus. » Read more

0 Comments

Webcast recap: Clay Shirky on open source and the cognitive surplus

Webcast recap

Today Clay Shirky joined us for a webcast on how open source takes advantage of the "cognitive surplus"—the way we use our free time more constructively for a greater cause. » Read more

5 Comments

Opening the field of neurobiological research

What does it take to find a cure for Alzheimer’s? Can we spare returning soldiers from post-traumatic stress disorder?

The moon shot is on collaboration and sharing. And just as in the moon race, the challenge is far too great for a single group to undertake it alone.
» Read more

0 Comments

SXSWi: The open agenda

SXSW Interactive gets started this week, and there are a lot of sessions on the agenda with topics related to the open source way. Music collaboration, open government, Creative Commons... nearly every time slot has at least one session I want to tell opensource.com readers about. Below is my "open agenda" for the week with a quick summary based on the abstracts available. I know there are things I'm missing--feel free to leave comments with sessions you think should be on the list or places I should check out. » Read more

0 Comments

This one goes out to the fence painters

I’m always looking for interesting new communities to highlight here on opensource.com. Over the past year, I’ve covered everything from Wikipedia to OpenIDEO to The White House and am, frankly, overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of new community-building efforts going on out there. » Read more

2 Comments

Open business funding: New ideas for a new economy

Starting a business is always a bit of a gamble. But investing in a start-up is practically a guessing game.

“A lot of venture capitalists will tell you that for early stage investment they don't have any real way of knowing which businesses will succeed,” said Marc Dangeard, head of Entrepreneur Commons. “They might invest in thirty businesses of the same type for the one that will thrive.”

Faced with the difficulties of venture capitalism and start-up funding, Dangeard decided it was time to “take the ego out” of venture capital. » Read more

0 Comments

The four capital mistakes of open source

How do you develop a successful open source business that lasts? Of the more than 250,000 open source projects on SourceForge, few will be successful at that goal. But one way they might think about how to do it is by doing it in reverse: What should an open source project or business not do? » Read more

6 Comments

Does WikiLeaks damage the brand image of wikis?

Over the past few weeks, the world has been consuming the newest set of revelations via WikiLeaks. The uproar caused by the release of the first set of diplomatic cables from a batch of 251,000 in WikiLeaks' possession is enough to take your breath away.

A disclaimer: in this post it is not my intention to analyze the positive or negative consequences of the actions of the WikiLeaks organization—there is plenty of that coverage, just check your favorite news reader every five minutes or so to see the latest. » Read more

8 Comments