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Open Source Links

Tue, 2006-09-19 03:53 — Michael Tiemann
There are many resources (good and bad) on the web offering information, advice, and interpretation concerning Open Source. The following are references that we, the OSI Board, have found useful, either for informing ourselves or for helping others begin their education about open source. And as you explore these links, be mindful of these words attributed to the Buddha,
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense..."

For additional resources, please visit the OSI Community Wiki.

Rich References

Books

Open Source Software

Open Source Conferences and User Groups

  • OSCON. Note that O'Reilly Media put on many other conferences, most of which have strong open source components and/or constitutents.
  • FOSS4G. Free and Open Source Geospatial Information Systems conference.
  • Blender Conference. There are other regional versions of this conference that can be found at the blender.org website.
  • The Ottawa Linux Symposium. A premier event for hackers to discuss implementation experiences and chart the future of Linux.
  • The Wizards of OS conference in Berlin.
  • The FISL conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
  • The FOSSSL conference (and other events) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
  • There are hundreds of conferences per year all over the world that advertise "Open Source" as a topic. Alas, these have varying degrees of quality and felicity and the OSI does not vouch for (nor recommend against) the ones not listed in this section. Check to see whether an OSI-affiliated speaker is listed as presenting if you wish to hear the OSI's thoughts or positions.
  • User groups tend to focus on software or groups of software used in a particular context: Linux users in Northern Virginia (NOVALUG), GIS developers and users who formed the Indian Chapter of OSGeo, or the dozens of topic-specific users of the R package and its extensions. There are many thousands of user groups, and the best way to find the one that's right for you is to search the web, find the mailing lists, and make contact.

Research

Many more papers about open source can be found at MIT's Free/Open Research Community.

Packaged Open Source Software

Hundreds, if not thousands, of companies now sell commercially packaged and supported open source software. While many open source software packages do run on proprietary systems (Apache is quite popular on all operating systems platforms), Linux distributions provide a complete (and in some cases, exclusively) open source environment suitable for hand-held, desktop, server, and high-end enterprise/cluster/mainframe use.

The OSI website is built with and runs exclusively open source software, including Apache (web server), Drupal (content management and blogs), the PHP scripting language, the MySQL database, to name a few of the more well-known packages.

Comments

Mon, 2007-04-02 09:52 — ordnas

Reports of tOSSad EU Project

The EU funded tOSSad project has created a collection of 15 documents, comprising over 600 pages, that sheds a light on the general economic and social benefits of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS). The reports propose ways to overcome national barriers of F/OSS adoption, discuss how to improve the usability of F/OSS, outline a F/OSS curriculum for educational purposes and offer hands-on tips on setting up a Linux laboratory for schools: www.tossad.org.

Fri, 2007-03-30 04:30 — cjones

Open Source Licensing Compliance

Companies using open source components into their products should establish, communicate and enforce policies governing its use and administration. Maintaining a good balance between many benefits of open source and the related risks and compliance issues is critical for both software product companies as well as IT departments. The key to succesfully implement clear, effective procedures to implement the open source usage policy is to take advantage of business applications available in the market.

Using open source detection products, companies can find out any open source software code in their product after the fact; after it has already been incorporated.

Lecorpio (http://www.lecorpio.com) provides a workflow based open source management application to proactively manage the process of submission, review and approval of open source requests, check license compatibility and associated obligations, and manage compliance with license obligations throughout development and distribution of the product. With the continued acceleration of adoption of open source, developing and maintaining an open source compliance program is critical for every organization.