International Free and Open Source Software Law Review

July 22nd, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

There is a new open access journal devoted to the law of Free & Open Source Software. We all know the basics of the GPL and other such licenses, but sometimes we get confused with the minutia - now we can keep up with the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review and learn about the legal aspects of the software we all love!

The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.

Open Source Attitudes and Adoption

July 21st, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

This from Actuate’s recent open source survey:

  • China reveals high adoption rates with a large majority of those surveyed (80.3%) using open source software. In all regions surveyed the main perceived benefit of open source software is no licence costs. However access to source code was uniquely given a 72.6% rating by Chinese respondents.
  • In North America two-fifths of respondents are already using open source (41.0%) with close to one-tenth of respondents either in the process of adopting or planning to adopt.  The proportion of respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors (56.8%) is nearly seven times higher than the proportion that disagree (8.4%). These results are even more positive than in the previous survey. 
  • Europe continues to capitalise on its early recognition of open source software’s potential, in particular France where over two thirds (67.0%) of the respondents already use open source software and Germany where the proportion using open source software has increased this year to 60.6%.  This contrasts with the UK at 42.1% adoption and the USA at 41.0%
  • Germany’s attitudes to open source adoption continue to be more positive than neighbouring UK.  For example the proportion of UK respondents who feel that the benefits of open source software outweigh the inhibitors has decreased this year to 47.0% (from 54.0% in 2008) whereas Germany scores 62.0% in favour of open source, a notable increase since last year’s survey.
  • The UK shows little change since last year with just over two fifths (42.1%) already using open source software.  Significantly the UK continues to demonstrate a degree of reticence towards open source adoption with almost a quarter (22.4%) still monitoring developments but not yet evaluating. 

In short - open source is everywhere :)

Teaching Open Source

July 20th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

Awesome!! I just discovered that there is a site devoted to those who teach open source.

TeachingOpenSource.org was set up in March 2009 to serve as a neutral collaboration point for everyone involved in Teaching Open Source, where we can:

  • Work out Open Source educational models, support and funding schemes, community relationships, and other issues.
  • Advocate for the changes that are necessary to further the goal of teaching Open Source.

The initial collaboration points were this wiki, the Planet, and the TeachingOpenSource Mailing List; these have been extended with the #teachingopensource IRC channel and a monthly conference call.

I’m off to read and learn more - share with those around you who are teaching open source - this might be a very handy tool.

Open Source Tutorials

July 19th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

I’ve been catching up on blog reading and learning about all kinds of great open source learning tools. In addition to yesterday’s post about teaching open source to students, I found this great list of tutorials for open source applications from OStatic. It includes tutorials for OpenOffice, GIMP, Linux and more. Make sure you share these tutorials when teaching your colleagues about open source.

Open Source Webinar

July 18th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

InfoPeople have an upcoming (July 21) webinar are on open source software in libraries:

Open Source Library System Software: Libraries Are Doing It for Themselves

The first webinar in this series presented an introduction to and overview of Open Source Library Systems (OSLS). This webinar focuses on how you can become involved in improving OSLS software – even if you’re not a programmer or a “techie”!

One of the great advantages of an Open Source Library System (OSLS) such as Koha or Evergreen is the ability to empower staff and optimize the user’s experience by getting involved in improving the software. This is in contrast to the traditional integrated library system (ILS) model where all the software development was done by “the vendor,” creating a condition of “learned helplessness” on the part of library staff. By making the transition to OSLS, you can shift the culture of your organization from “learned helplessness” to one in which everyone can contribute to enhancing their work environment.

Learn more on the official page.

Open Source Education

July 18th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

When I was in undergrad, my college didn’t have many options for computer classes. It has since adopted lots of open source (including Moodle - which I just love). I don’t know what portion of their curriculum includes open source, but I hope they come close to what’s being done at Seneca:

When I first became involved with Mozilla through working on a Mozilla Foundation accessibility grant, I quickly discovered the impressive open source educational work at Seneca College in Toronto, lead by David Humphry and Chris Tyler. Students on the computer science course get the enviable opportunity to work on projects that immerse them directly in some of the most successful open source development communities, contributing to programs such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office and Fedora (Linux).  These projects are not just academic exercises, rather they are strategic for the open source projects, and students contributions are accepted into the projects. As a result students get incomparable experience working on large code bases and in the process acquire the open source software and community development skills that are highly sought by companies all over the world.

This from a post on open source education at the OSS Watch team blog. Do you know of any educational institution that’s teaching this much (or more) open source? If so I’d love to hear about it.

Get to Know LibLime: Cookie Wolfrom

July 17th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard
Cookie

What’s your full name (middle name too)?

Cecelia Jacqueline Wolfrom

What is your official Job Title?

Customer Support Specialist

Did you (or do you) have a nickname?

Cookie (I’ve not been called Cecelia since grade school)

What’s your favorite color?

Teal

What’s your favorite food or meal?

Fresh Maine lobster

What’s your favorite word (keep it clean)?

Peachy, as in “that’s just ‘peachy!”

Are you a dog or a cat person?

At this time in my life I’m a cat person. They require a lot less work than dogs.

Lexi

Do you have any pets?

I’ve recently adopted a beautiful long hair black and white kitty named Lexi who is the new ‘love of my life’.

Why did you want to work with LibLime?

When I learned that LibLime offered a hosted solution for Koha it made me realize that it would now be possible for libraries without the technical skills to set Koha up on their own, to move to an Open Source ILS. Along the way, I became so impressed with LibLime, that I decided I wanted to work with them.

What did you know about open source before taking on this job? What have you learned since taking the job?

I’d done a lot of research on the open source concept and spent about 3 years traveling to different library conferences talking to groups about the benefits of Open Source - from operating systems, word processing, web page development, and through to an ILS system.

I’ve learned and been amazed at just how quickly enhancements, bug fixes, etc. can occur in the open source environment. This is great for the users, but it certainly requires me to stay sharp to make sure I don’t miss anything! (I’m having the time of my life doing it though, I know it helps keep me young!)

What’s at the top of your wishlist for the next version of Koha?

I’m too busy keeping up with all the improvements in each latest version that I’ll leave that wish list to the librarians who are out there using it on a daily basis.

If you had all of the skills, time and money, what open source application would you like to develop?

A way for people to help people one-on-one around the world - to be nicer to the planet and each other - so many resources and too little time to search site by site.

What are your top three favorite websites?

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Help both my daughters pay off their homes, as well as set up a tidy college fund for my young grandson. For me, I’d love to do some traveling abroad and maybe buy a newer home. I then would take whatever was left to help find the small niches that don’t usually get funding for projects for one reason or another and help them.

Are you an organized desk person or a messy desk person?

I start each day as an organized desk person but can’t say that always carry through each day, so mostly yes, but sometimes ‘no’

Anything else you want our readers to know about you?

My first job ( college internship) was working for UNIVAC, a division of Sperry Rand Corporation in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. If you’d like to see a little history of the computer industry, you might find this Wikipedia link interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I - we’ve sure come a long way since then…….

The soul of open source

July 16th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

I’m with Matt Asay when he asks and answers:

Has open source come to include so much that it’s somewhat meaningless? If so, should we return to the free-software roots that defined its infancy?

Personally, I think the bigger the tent, the better it is for open source. Even a tent that includes a wide array of open-source leeches, an issue taken up by Bill Snyder in InfoWorld.

I like the big tent (and even, increasingly, the “leeches”) because the broadening is largely driven by the same motivation: finding ways to feed one’s family by writing more open-source software.

That, after all, is really the reason for the term “open source” in the first place: make it more relevant so more people could create sustainable businesses around it.

Purists might think that open source should be applied to an elite few (and I do hate that Microsoft can now be used in the same sentence as open source) but the fact of the matter is, the more people promoting, using and selling open source the better it is for open source.

We live in a time when people expect openness and the ability to participate in development, so why not build the biggest tent ever for open source?

Koha Social Networks

July 15th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

Did you know that Koha is all over the social interwebs? If you haven’t seen them, check out these pages:

Open Source Bookmarks

July 14th, 2009 by Nicole C. Engard

For those of you who read this blog through an aggregator, you may not have noticed that I have my recent open source bookmarks on the right hand column of the page. Since I have found so many awesome resources (mostly today) I thought I might want to share them in a post. These are in order of bookmark - I have no preference based on the ordering below.

  • All for Good
    Inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service, a group of individuals from the technology, marketing and public sectors came together to build an open source application that allows you to find and share volunteer activities.
  • VirtualBox
    VirtualBox is a powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
  • Fluid Project Wiki
    An open, collaborative project to improve the user experience of community source software.
  • Fluid Engage
    Fluid Engage is a new project that will create an open source community that will provide curators and educators within museums and galleries the necessary supports, tools and resources
  • MacLibre | Open Source Software Distribution for Mac OS X
    MacLibre is an Open Source Software Distribution for Mac OS X. It’s simple, intuitive with applications you need. It brings a new way of software installation on your Mac.
  • Three Open Source E-book Readers Worth a Look
  • Over 40 Free, Must-Have Open Source Resources
  • The EveryBlock source code
    EveryBlock.com is an experimental news Web site that provides information at a “microlocal” level — by neighborhood or city block. It was funded by a grant from Knight Foundation, which requires the site’s backend code to be open-sourced. Here is the code.
  • Teaching Open Source
    This is a neutral collaboration point for professors, institutions, communities, and companies to come together and make the teaching of Open Source a global success.
  • Melody: Community Powered Publishing
    Melody is an open source content management system for bloggers and publishers where its community of users and contributors is its most important feature.
  • 40 Mac Freewares and Open Source Software for Web Designers | Desizn Tech
  • Sugar on a Stick - Sugar Labs
    A “Linux-based learning environment” that boots from a USB drive and is designed for children’s ease of use.
  • Free / Open Source Research Community (Home)
    In the spirit of free and open source software (F/OSS), we are attempting to establish a community in which information will be freely exchanged, so that we may further the understanding of open source and its implications outside the realm of software development.
  • SemperTool
    SemperTool introduces the first open source product: Subscription Management Database - SMDB. SMDB is an Electronic Resource Management system - ERM.
  • ILS Survey: Open Source vs. Proprietary
    This survey was conducted from October 30, 2007 to January 3, 2008. It was answered by libraries using the open source ILSs Koha (n=113) and Evergreen (n=119), and proprietary ILSs (n=129). The current version of Koha was 2.2.9 and Evergreen was 1.2.
  • Mac4Lin
    The goal of this project is to bring the Mac OS X user interface to POSIX Operating Systems (GNU/LInux, FreeBSD, openSolaris etc.).
  • Freeciv
    Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization.
  • Lupo PenSuite
    The Suite includes over 200 highly selected portable programs and games (7-Zip, Audacity, CCleaner, eMule, FileZilla, Firefox, Foxit Reader, GIMP, IrfanView, Miranda, Notepad++, Opera, Thunderbird, µTorrent, VLC and many more). Over 5 million users have downloaded it.
  • LiberKey
    LiberKey installed on your USB key (or mini external hard drive, a music player such as iPod…) can be connected on any PC. Immediately you have under hand all your familiar tools, without any installation on the host PC.
  • Open Source – Open Libraries
    Open Source – Open Libraries is a consortia of libraries, library systems, and other organizations committed to pursuing Open Source Software (OSS) alternatives for libraries.
  • OmCollab
    omCollab is a powerful, Enterprise 2.0 collaboration product completely built on open source software. It provides a web portal environment to create, share and search Microsoft Office content, files, shared bookmarks, blog posts and wiki articles across the enterprise. omCollab integrates some of the most powerful open source software applications into a single collaborative environment. It enables organisations to drive innovation, collaboration and community building.
  • Inkscape
    An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
  • Library a la Carte
    Librarians have enough to do and maintaining static HTML pages is tedious and time-consuming. The Library à la Carte tool enables librarians to easily and quickly create dynamic web pages that integrate Web 2.0 features, such as chat and RSS feeds, with traditional library content, such as catalogs and article databases.
  • LibData Project Site
    LibData is a library oriented web based application which provides authoring environments for subject pathfinders (Research QuickStart), course related pages (CourseLib) and general purpose web pages (PageScribe).
  • Senayan
    Senayan is an open source Library Management System. It is build on Open source technology like PHP and MySQL. Senayan provides many features such as Bibliography database, Circulation, Membership and many more that will help “automating” library tasks.
  • LimeSurvey.org
    The Leading Open Source Survey Tool
  • Weminaria
    Open source screen recording software, free video capture, video recorder, capture tool, desktop recorder, software tutorial, create software demo
  • EmeraldView
    EmeraldView is a lightweight front-end for the digital library software Greenstone.
  • Wubi - Ubuntu Installer for Windows
    Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Are you curious about Linux and Ubuntu? Trying them out has never been easier!
  • AmpliFeeder
    Open source lifestream platform