By the numbers: Open source highlights from May

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Opensource.com

Here's what was hot, what you may have missed, and what the chatter was all about last month.

We published 47 articles, several from our awesome community moderators and many from the rest of our wonderful open source community of contributors.

Hot topics

Open data

One of the biggest news items last month came with the "Default to open data" announcement from The Whitehouse. There is a lot of buzz and energy around open data and we had multiple perspectives from our community on the topic.

First, we took a closer look at the open data Executive Order. Then, we took a look at how this might impact local government. We also added some thoughts from public policy entrepreneur David Eaves. And I quote, "This is, quite frankly, a big deal."

If you're new to open data, see why adding in the visual components can really benefit citizens and have a postive impact on economic development at the local level.

Starting the conversation

We had some great conversations on openness in the workplace,open source code and business models, and software patents.

You may have missed...

Open*education: The open education landscape is set to grow as Stanford University announced plans to team up with edX to build an online learning platform.

Book reivew: Kendra Mack has a review of the book, Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture by media theorists Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. The book explores the idea of "spreadability" and how sharing media has become a need and expectation in our networked culture.

Open source projects: Have you heard of Froide? The next version is out. It's an open source, Python-based platform for running Freedom of Information portals. Translation: it allows you to make requests to public entities by email and track responses, as well as, customize your instance to fit a campaign for government transparency.

We added a short video highlighting some of the work from the Kramden Insitute. They refurbish old computer hardware and parts, install the educational Linux distribution Ubermix, and give them to students.

I discovered a new podcast series called "The Dave and Gunnar Show" and did a short review on Episode 10, Go Ugly Early. It's two really sharp dudes talking about open government and other newsworthy items.

BONUS

Open source resources and tutorials

We added some great resources to this site last month:

Simon Phipps has an article that is a blueprint on migrating to open source and gives you some things to consider during your planning.
One of our community moderators, Phil Shapiro, has an interview with Nicholas Sceusa, a 3D animation expert and Blender enthusiast.
On the technical side of things, our community moderator Luis Ibanez wrote part two of his Node.js with M tutorial.
Mark Johnson from OSS Watch contributed an article about different open source hardware projects such as ColorHug, Remote Care Package, panStamp, Stellar Computer System, and Cellular Automata—and I'll be honest, I didn't know about any of these before I read the post.

Give us your feedback! We'd love to know what sections you liked, what information was most interesting, and what we didn't include that maybe we should for next month. Thanks.