Rails / Python show and tell
The nice thing about having a big basement is that you can lend it out to people. More about this event later - but much was learned. For now
The nice thing about having a big basement is that you can lend it out to people. More about this event later - but much was learned. For now
The presentations delivered at OSS watch are now available online
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2006-04-10-12/
For stylish use of powerpoint I suggest Prodromos Tsiavios' presentation on Creative Commons and it's relationship to Open Source software.
Next up is a presnetnation by Kit Blake of Infrae who will be talking about Open Source in a Company Business Model. He will be followed by Jim Farmer, talking about the comercialization of Open Source
Lecture notes follow
Continue reading "OSS Watch : Open Source in a Company Business Model" »
Will talk about the creative commons licenses and how they're used. Prodromos is a lawyer, so this will have a grounding in law. Will look at the regulatory structures and how they evolve.
Lecture notes follow
Continue reading "OSS Watch : Creative Commons and Open Source, Prodromos Tsiavos" »
Elliot Smith is going to explain to us how to choose open source software. This sounds like it could be useful...
Lecture Notes follow
Continue reading "OSS Watch : Walking into the Sunset - Elliot Smith" »
This is about how you can finance the development of small features in OS projects.
Lecture Notes follow
Continue reading "OSS Watch : Micropayments for Microtasks - Felix Klee, Linuxburg" »
In the spirit of yesterday's Dana Blakenhorn comment James Dalziell is not going to be 'pretending' during his presentation about the highs and lows of outsourcing a project. In this case the project is called LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) and it started life as commercial software.
Lecture Notes follow
Continue reading "OSS Watch : Highs and Lows of Open Source" »
I was a couple of minutes late so I can't tell you who the chap giving the very interesting talk on open source and economic research is. (checks website, it's Paul David, of Stanford and the OII) It seems like Stanford have been attempting to build an economic model of open source software creation. Questions are
Micro - where do resources come from, how are they assigned to tasks?
Meso - how are inputs allocated between projects, how does the system match the software to the needs of users?
What are the social costs of OS software? Is there an opportunity cost to participating in OS projects? Is this misallocation of scarce resources? What would it cost closed source vendors to do the same thing? Suggests that the replacement cost of the Debian distribution is about $14Bn
Lecture notes follow
Presentation from Stuart Yeades who said this was going to be a discussion, but it's turning into a good presentation. Here are the bullets on what made this letter good.
Don't fork
Don't pretend (via audience, see Dana Blakenhorn on this)
Running code : Projects succeed in almost direct proportion to the amount of effort it takes to get them to work the first time
Open Standards : Use them
Manage Expectations
Open to input / people
Other things you need : Need (demand), Luck, Hard Work, Skill
Where do open source developers come from?
> Ideally from the user community. Great because they have fantastic domain knowledge
> Raised from the academic community. Lecturers will allow students to submit open source projects as coursework if you give them feedback on the marking
> Convert existing developers
> Poach, share or borrow from other projects
How do you find good ones?
> What do you want people to be good at? Developers have very varies skills and it takes all sorts. You should encourage people to do what they are good at - and hoping that a balance emerges...
Useful things - TODO lists
A list of simple things that people can do is a great way to direct communities
It's also a great way to explain to people where a project is going
A light-hearted look at using Open Source in an insitutional context. From Andrew Savory of Luminas Ltd.
Lecture Notes follow
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Marco and I are at the Open Source and Sustainability conference at Said Business School Oxford to learn more about what Open Source can do for an organisation like Greenpeace. It's been organised by OSS Watch.
The big issue - Greenpeace has been involved in plenty of open source projects and uses plenty of open source software, but the dream of community driven software solving our problems has never quite happened. Maybe the people here can help us learn why.
What follows will be my 'lecture notes' I'll try and stitch it together with a overview and some analysis later.