Sharing and Freedom: the Philosophy Spreads Beyond Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-20 16:34:19 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-20 16:35:01 UTC
Open Source City
An open source city, according to Jason Hibbets, project manager in Corporate Marketing at Red Hat, in his book ‘Foundation for an open source city’, is a blend of open culture, open government policies and economic development. It is an ecosystem made up of: a culture of citizen participation, effective open government policies and open data initiatives, open source user groups and conferences, and a hub for innovation and open source businesses.
Jason Hibbets is working to convince local governments to adapt open source ideas in their day to day operations. His book, “The Foundation for an Open Source City,” attempts to be a step by step guide for implementing open source ideas into government policies and solutions, based on his own experiences. He uses Raleigh, North Carolina, where he resides, as his example. He calls it the worlds first open source city. In a way, the small southern capital is his laboratory.
Optics
Optical technology is viewed as still, and likely to remain, a set of technologies in ferment - highly proprietary, tied up in intellectual property, fast changing and just not the sort of area you might try to discipline into open source standards - not at this stage..
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New user-vendor forum set to define and promote OpenFlow-based, merchant-optical networking solutions
Automobiles
“Today we manage a global community of engineers, consumers and designers that co-creates the product with us,” says Rogers, CEO of Local Motors. “Co-creation is about sharing ideas and working through the same problem together.”
Nicolas Perrinn is a firm believer in crowdsourced ideas, open source development, and fan-funded projects. What’s truly innovative about Nicolas’ choice of projects however is its scope — because Perrinn isn’t just talking about building an open source hybrid electric race car. Perrinn is talking about building an open source hybrid electric race car and pitting it against the best that industry giants Porsche, Toyota, and Audi have to offer.
Perrinn myTeam offers schoolchildren, students, engineers, enthusiasts and fans unprecedented access to contribute and share data and ideas for top flight Le Mans hybrid race car.
Libraries
Pew Research Center released a new study on Thursday showing that library users are more social than people who do not go to libraries. The report questioned 6,000 Americans, ages 16 and up, and found that more than two-thirds of Americans are actively using libraries. Along with actively using the library, users typically are more social than those who do not use the library. Library users also tend to be more active.
Sharing
The most popular items in Berlin's first "borrowing shop" are the electric drills. At least one of the local people who have registered with Leila – a little shop on Fehrbelliner Strasse, north-east of the city centre – seems to be continually fixing shelves or hanging pictures.
It's a transparent gun design powered by an Arduino board with colour-changing LEDs and a built-in screen to log essential information such as your kills, health, ammo, and anything else you might need. The Skirmos guns communicate via radio and infrared optics lets your game extend beyond the walls of your local laser tag death arena.
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The Shuttleworth Foundation has done me the honour of appointing me as a Fellow, starting today.
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It’s this ability to create communities that makes us different from our predecessors. As exemplars I look to my own immediate circle of electronic communities: Wikipedia, Mozilla, Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative Commons, Open Rights Group, Blue Obelisk …
Maps
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Back in 2005, a study in Nature concluded that Wikipedia — at the time, a free upstart just eking its way into the Google results — was about as good a source as the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. Though it found Wikipedia had slightly more factual errors than the older reference, the study gave the website a major commendation when it needed one.
Open Data
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So, with much help from various community members, I am pleased to say we are starting to gear up for Open Data Day 2014 on February 22.
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Mapbox makes it easy for anyone to leverage the work of the hundreds of thousands of open source cartographers from all around the world who make their work available on OpenStreetMap (OSM). Contributing back to the community is part of their mission as well. With several FOSS projects in their inventory, Mapbox has already made a serious impact in the OSM community. Their efforts revolve around two development areas: parsing data and contributing data.
Open Hardware
Chris Clark is the IT director at SparkFun Electronics in Boulder, Colorado. He talked with Opensource.com community manager Jason Hibbets, late last year during the All Things Open conference about open hardware.
With traditional computer vendors' hardware sales in the proverbial toilet, one has to wonder: Where will data center hardware innovations come from? Worry not -- the fine folks at the Open Compute Project held the OCP Summit V in January 2014 in San Jose, Calif., and there was no lack of ingenuity on display.
A programmable test and measurement instrument which runs open source software developed by start-up Red Pitaya can be bought from RS later this year.
If you fancy owning your very own open source Enigma replica a new project has launched over on the Kickstarter crowd funding website that might interest you.
With this short guide we release today, we will explain you how to use your Arduino Yun to do something that was never accomplished before with a board of such family.
3D
Today, we have 3D modeling software that can pack an exponential cache of information, render designs visible with incredible fidelity, and make those designs easier to adapt. BIM technology (building information modeling) has entered the workplace, too, improving coordination and productivity of all trades involved in project construction, effectively revolutionizing the manufacturing sector. This is technology that, like CAD, has undeniably been pushed forward via the open development and integration of components.
Earlier this year, I shared my story about open source designs and my 3D printed prosthetic hand to a room of 4,600+ at Intel’s Annual International Sales Conference in Las Vegas. I joined Jon Schull on stage, the founder of e-NABLE, an online group dedicated to open source 3D printable assistive devices.
The word "open" is certainly a buzzword in 3D printing, but what does that really mean? While many are tossing around this phrase, few actually practice an open business and product philosophy. Open source hardware (or Libre hardware), notably led by the RepRap project, is experiencing rapid, cross-industry adoption. This philosophy empowers engineers, makers, builders, and creators with unprecedented freedom to change, update, and modify their products over time.
Misc.
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As a woman in open source, I have found that the values of community, open development, and flat organizational structure appeal equally to both men and women. The ability of local organizers to freely define what type of culture they are building allows them to adapt in order to appeal to the surrounding culture, while striving to improve access.
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At the Open Technology Institute (OTI), we've been working on opening our user feedback process as a way to improve our internal processes and collaboration, engage our user community more, promote non-developer contributions, and think more broadly about how open source process plays a role in the Commotion Wireless project, a free and open-source communication tool that uses mobile phones, computers, and other wireless devices to create decentralized mesh networks.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- `We're under attack. But the attackers smile at us and hire PR firms to spy, mislead etc.
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- To Microsoft, Africa is just "someplace" to get intensive, hard-working human 'resources' (tech labour) at 2 dollars 'apiece' as in per person per hour
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- Links for the day
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- Corporate autocrats do not want counterparts or alternatives to even exist
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- "Richard Stallman will give a talk, in French, Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society at Centrale Supelec in Saclay, on May 15."
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- it always means that something has failed - not that they'll openly admit it
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- another talk, which he has only just announced
- Pace Up, Distractions Down
- We've made our curation process faster and more efficient
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- a sharp rise in GNU/Linux usage
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- twentieth anniversary of the site
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- The unfortunate thing is, anybody who has an opinion on this lawsuit will inevitably be framed as "pro-Trump" or "anti-Trump"
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- Support for harassment and abuse victims
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
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- It's not like Microsoft paid them good salaries
- Software Enshittification or Freedom? It's not a hard choice!
- Reprinted from Alexandre Oliva
- Links 09/05/2024: More Microsoft Layoffs on the Way
- Links for the day
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- Hundreds are being laid off by Microsoft in Nigeria, based on yesterday's reports
- [Meme] Blame the Robots or the 'Hey Hi' (AI), It Always Works in Today's Media
- Companies do not have financial troubles! They have "efficiencies"...
- News Reports Say Many More Microsoft Layoffs on the Way, Rumours Say Red Hat Also Imminently a Target
- Microsoft is slipping out of control
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 08, 2024
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
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- the computing/computer industry being occupied by people who lack suitable background
- The Demise of Computer Science Education
- Education is essential for the future; without it, whole nations will perish
- [Video] Prisons for the Minds and for Tech Workers
- Today's video talks about what happens to workforces (across disciplines) in recent years
- [Meme] Struggling to Leave Its Nazi Past Behind
- digital arson
- Microsoft Declines to Talk About How Many People It Has Just Laid Off
- Hours ago in IGN: "Microsoft did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable. IGN has asked Bethesda for comment. Microsoft declined to expand further when contacted by IGN."
- Microsoft Windows in South America: From 99% to 87%
- the latest from statCounter
- It's Rather Obvious Why They Try to Silence Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Daniel Pocock
- Some of them already sent physically menacing messages to Daniel Pocock
- IRC Network of Techrights Turns 3 (or 16 if We Count the Freenode Days)
- In a few months IRC turns 36
- Sedating Oneself (and Shareholders) With Fuzzy Buzzwords and Pointless Acquisitions
- IBM trying to buy time
- Clickfraud Spamnil Ran Out of Clickfraud Budget, Apparently
- sooner or later charlatans and frauds run out of steam
- Techrights Gets Under the Skin of Bad, Corrupt, Immoral People (That's a Good Thing)
- Journalism is the lifeblood of democracy and free societies
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- Microsoft has been faking its financial performance for years
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 07, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, May 07, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- [Video] Leaving Microsoft Behind for the Sake of National Security
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- GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Now at 6% in France, According to statCounter
- numbers from statCounter