Open source news for your reading pleasure.
March 3 - 7, 2014
In this week's edition of our open source news roundup, we look at Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT) new minor in open source software, the Raspberry Pi's new graphics driver, and more.
RIT offers nation's first minor in open source software
We know how important open source culture is to education, from university FOSS festivals to teaching hacking at primary schools, but the Rochester Institute of Technology has upped the ante by launching an interdisciplinary minor in free and open source software and free culture. The 15-credit-hour minor, which is open to undergraduates, will include courses on business and legal applications of open source and will even get students involved in contributing to existing humanitarian FOSS projects.
Linux Foundation to create MOOC program for Linux training
To meet the huge worldwide demand for Linux talent, the nonprofit Linux Foundation has announced it will partner with edX, an online learning platform, and offer free community-based training materials to anyone with an internet connection. EdX's Massive Open Online Courses, previously only provided by the nonprofit's 32 member schools, provide a way for unlimited participants to collaborate in a community learning setting online. For more on MOOCs, read about their impact on the traditional business model of higher education.
Raspberry Pi celebrates birthday with open source graphics
2.5 million of the credit-card sized computers have sold since the first model went on sale two years ago, and to celebrate, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a cash reward to anyone who can port Broadcom's newly-open VideoCore IV graphics core to the Pi. Get Quake III running at a playable frame rate and you'll net a cool $10,000. For some inspiration, check out these two videos celebrating the many amazing projects created on the Raspberry Pi.
GoDaddy goes OpenStack
Whatever you think of their Danica Patrick Super Bowl ads, GoDaddy is undoubtedly one of the biggest players in personal and small business domain registration and hosting. Formerly a CloudStack house, GoDaddy announced yesterday that they will be joining the OpenStack Foundation. GoDaddy is already making code commits to the OpenStack project, and they are beginning to hire positions to work with OpenStack technologies internally, with a goal of shifting everything to OpenStack in the next 18 to 24 months. "GoDaddy had built a custom cloud platform based on CloudStack and other technologies that we judged to be inadequate to meet our needs," GoDaddy VP of Engineering Charles Beadnall said in an interview with eWeek.
Hat tip to Opensource.com moderator Robin Muilwijk for sharing some of these news articles with me this week.
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