…formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.
The OSI Board met in San Francisco, CA USA on November 11th and 12th, 2014 with a focus on strengthening the organization’s
current outreach efforts and building new bridges between open source communities. The Board was excited to review five
new applications for Affiliate Membership as well as implement several new
initiatives to help drive Individual Membership through
the recognition of various roles and levels of access among our community. This included new Individual
Membership discounts for students, volunteers working on OSI supported activities, those already members of OSI Affiliate
organizations, members of Free Software Foundation and complimentary memberships based on need.
In addition, the Board was happy to review several new potential corporate sponosors.
The social highlight of the week was an informal get-together with OSI members, affiliates and sponsors at a local
watering hole. Several local open source community members attended, including from Apache Foundation, Creative Commons, FreeBSD,
Google, HP, Linux Foundation, OpenHatch, Mozilla, Y Combinator, Wikimedia and WordPress.
Fosters community and development for the BigBlueButton web conferencing system tuned for on-line learning. BigBlueButton enables sharing
documents, webcams, chat, audio and your desktop.
Supports long-term development efforts of the TYPO3 content management platform and including organizing events,
managing international standards, education and certification, as well as communication across the community.
A charitable organization founded to further the mission of the WordPress project: to democratize publishing software.
Member Profile: Joseph Potvin
Why is open source software important to you?
My very first experience structuring and sharing an application the free/libre/open way was in 1999. I was working as a project
manager at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), where we planned and developed from scratch a richly-featured
distributed decision workflow management application. Within months of posting the full version 1.0 online under the GPL we received an
offer from The World Bank to send IDRC some funds to advance it with new functionality, enough that we called it version 2.0. Well,
I’ve pursued my career in this way ever since, in both commercial and public sector roles. For a decade and a half as an economist and
project manager, all of my professional work has been free/libre/open in motivation, substance and form. Shaped by that first experience,
it’s never been a mystery to me how to make a living the free/libre/open way. So I try to help others understand this too.
Amongst the many insights I’ve gained from free/libre/open source software communities, perhaps the more critical is how to design for
project resilience. That’s to say: how to ensure that projects can outlast organizations, withstand austerity budgets, and bring
coopetition into a highly competitive playing field. I’m busy applying this way of working within other domains besides software. But
these always include one or two subprojects to extend or refine various free/libre/open source software applications.
Why did you join the OSI as an Individual Member?
Well, like many people, I wear different hats, being involved with diverse organizations. Joining as an individual member enabled me
to interact with the OSI community wearing any of my various hats.
In addition to being an OSI Individual Member, are you involved in any other open source projects or communities?
My current doctoral disseration at U Québec involves extending the multi-region variant (regiO) of an economic model (Lagom) on the
MASON platform (Multi-Agent Simulation Of Networks).
All four layers are fully free/libre/open. I’m planning to contribute new capabilities to accommodate multiple currencies, to
represent projects as supply-chain segments, and to include an additional type of agent in the model, the “project manager”, who
can control costs by, in part, exercising choice over all attributes of payment. Such granularity of control over payments could become
possible through the W3C’s current efforts through the Web Payments
Interest Group. That W3C-convened community is negotiating towards a
specification to standardize how browsers handle web payments. In my modeling extensions, the project manager agent will be provided
with the ability to chose from amongst various benchmarks to calibrate algorithmic pricing in trade. Operationalizing this involves a
number of somewhat separate free/libre/open sub-projects, in which I’m collaborating with some economists from different schools of
thought in order to create simplified versions of each of their preferred value benchmarks, in addition to my own Earth Reserve
benchmark. Each of these indices will rely only on real-world open data sources, which should facilitate independent validation,
wider use and further experimentation. I also collaborate in the (newly formed) OpenChain industry alliance for source code license
compliance management at the supply-chain scale.
How do you hope the OSI can further promote open source use?
Let me preface my answer here by outlining my particular way of perceiving the OSI’s role. In my view the OSI and FSF have mutually
complementary roles which, being an economist, I distinguish as supply-side and demand-side perspectives on the flow of knowledge. By my
interpretation, the Open Source Definition seems to emphasize how suppliers may organize so that their interests are served when the
flow of knowledge can out-perform the restriction of knowledge. On the other hand, the Free Software Definition seems to emphasize how
users may organize so that their interests are served when they can be empowered by learning from the flow of knowledge at the
individual and community scale.
This supply-side / demand-side duality is relevant in many domains of knowledge, not just software. Once the Free/Libre/Open Way
(FLOW) emerged a clear success through a quarter century of effort by many people working in the software domain, the core ideas started
proliferating rapidly elsewhere: free/libre/open source statistics, graphics, audio, hardware, money and so on. I and some others are
attempting to bring some of these ideas into metropolitan-scale transit, and into the capital infrastructure sector. In any of these
domains, I propose that both the supply-side and demand-side perspectives are indispensible.
So now back to your specific question: I hope the OSI can further promote understanding and experimentation with the principles of
open source supply anywhere that user empowerment coincides with suppliers achieving better performance though the easier flow of
knowledge.
Tony Wasserman was quoted in a FedScoop article, “NSA
releases first-ever open source software product.” Tony will be speaking on, “The Rise of Open Source” at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, on Dec. 12th, and on “How the Internet Transformed the Software Industry” at Fudan University, Shanghai, on Dec. 15th.
On the 17th, he’ll Keynote the International Conference on Mobile Technology and Applications in Hong Kong ” The Challenges of
Universal Connectivity”.
Openwashing: adopter beware”
As organizations who participate in the development of open source software reap the benefits and garner accolades
“openwashing” becomes more prevalent.– Opensource.com
Free and open source software are are the most important shared
goods of mankind. They make our new hyperconnected society possible and capable of evolving without the guidance of corporate
entities.
Marcelo Bartsch, Chile
Just want to help the OSI community, if I can, because I belive
it is time to gave back all the support they had given.
Martin Callinan, United Kingdom
Gledston de Oliveira reis, Brazil
Andrew DeMarsh, Canada
Open source software allows me to learn and improve myself without
worrying about extremely restrictive licenses.
Mike Finch
Ryan Gates, United States
I support Open Source Software.
Jeremy Graham-Cumming, United Kingdom
I believe that open source is a viable model for
software companies. It promises our society equal access to systems and software that have become an integral part of our lives. Common
standards allow us as a whole to drive, expand and improve our technological scope.
Sandeep Khuperkar, India
Jie Liang, China
I love open source and want to help it’s development!
Diana Matonis, United States
I began programming in 1986 where most software was in-house
and platform specific. Any updates were labor intensive and took too much time for the functionality gained. I wanted a standard so
we could easily move the code to another platform to be compiled and work without the headaches we would encounter. I worked to
this end. I saw the emergence of standard software packages which made life easier but then adding features specific to an organization
became virtually impossible or cost ineffective. Today I am seeing the divergence of software code wars. The only way to continue to
progress software code to be platform independent and have the capability to improve specific functionality is to have base codes as
open source. It’s cost and productivity effective in the end for all.
Konstantin Pastbin, New Zealand
I support free & open source movement.
Andersen Pecorone, Belgium
Daniel Pimentel, Brazil
Because I believe in open source and I’m an open source developer too.
Dawid Roets, South Africa
The knowledge of everyday users is limited to their own environments
and they are not aware of all the development changes, alternative methods and specific solutions. Open Source Initiative provides a
powerful community from across the globe to improve in the understanding and necessity of information.
Neil Sawbridge, United Kingdom
I believe this is one of the best ideas in computing today and
I’m really excited about joining!
Andreas Schreiber, Germany
I would like to support OSI because I’m involved in Open Source
strategy development. I give talks and trainings about Open Source licensing where I already promote using OSI approved licenses.
John Smith, New Zealand
Of a long association with and empathy for the Open Source Development
concept.
Rievoluzione.it System Integrator, Italy
Firstname Lastname, Country
Randy Thorton, United States
Open is the better way.
Plus another 6 anonymous members from Greece, Germany and the United States
Don’t forget, if you’re an OSI Individual Member you can request a Membership Card. These cards provide a variety of benefits from
our Affiliates and Corporate Sponsors. Email us today to get yours.
The OSi was able to meet several open source enthusiasts working across industry, government and education. Not only are do these organizations
use open source in for their advanced computing, but the develop it to advance computing.
Of course the big news announced
while the conference was underway was a $1,000,000 donation from Jan Koum, CEO and Co-Founder of WhatsApp.
OSI at the SC14 Conference Hall Agora (Artist’s conception)
OSI at Educause
Educause annual conference took place in Orlando, running September
29th through October 2nd. Several thousand delegates from North American and global higher education organizations were in
attendance.
OSI staff and open source supporters meet at EDUCAUSE
The Sakai Teaching and Learning community is seeking submissions for the 2015 Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) competition. The award recognizes
innovation and excellence in technology-supported teaching, academic collaboration, and student engagement. We look forward to
entries from those using the Sakai CLE and the Apereo OAE (Open Academic Environment).
Mark Your Calendars! The Open Apereo 2015 conference is May 31 – June 3 in Baltimore, MD. Here are just a few reasons to
attend this great event:
Share your great work with the community.
Learn and collaborate with your peers.
Hear about the exciting news and developments of your favorite Apereo projects (Sakai, uPortal, uMobile, CAS, Bedework, and more!).
Of course, there’s much more to the Open Apereo conference. Stay tuned for call for proposals, keynote, program, and registration
details. We look forward to seeing you in Baltimore this summer!
The Debian Project
Each year for the past 14 years, Debian has held an annual conference
for developers and users. Next year, DebConf15 will
take place in Heidelberg, Germany in August of 2015. Nine companies have already committed to sponsoring the event by mid-November, and two
more have joined since: credativ, sipgate, Matanel Foundation, Google, Fairsight Security, Martin Alfke / Buero 2.0, Ubuntu,
Mirantis, Logilab, Netways, and Hetzner. Should you know of an organisation that would like to become a sponsor for the event,
the DebConf team invites you to please have a look at the sponsorship brochure
which has all of the details. Looking forward to a great conference!
OW2
OW2 has published the slides and video
recordings from OW2con14. You can also find all the videos of the session
OW2 organized at Open World Forum as well as some press coverage
about OW2 in the Paris Open Source Week. And a kind reminder to those of you who had the good fortune to attend OW2con’14 in person,
please take 15 minutes to complete the
satisfaction survey.
The European Commission’s Public Consultation on Cloud Computing and Software report will be published within the next
few days. OW2 and OCEAN Project advocate a “Proactive Open Source Strategy for EU-Funded Collaborative Software Projects”, our
contribution is published here
.
The OS2 is pleased to announce that two new members have joined the OW2 community, long-time supporter of free and open source
software, the City of Paris has joined OW2 to help promote
its CMS software Lutece that was recently accepted into the OW2
codebase while the TIS innovation park in Bolzano joins OW2 to help
develop awareness for innovative use of free and open source software throughout the South Tyrol region.
The Sahana Software Foundation is dedicated to the mission
of saving lives by providing information management solutions that enable
organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters. We develop free and open source software and provide
services that help solve concrete problems and bring efficiencies to disaster response coordination between governments, aid
organizations, civil society and the survivors themselves, such as:
Reuniting separated families through registering missing and found persons
Tracking and managing requests for help from individuals and organizations
Tracking organizations and programs responding to the disaster, including the coverage and balance in the distribution of aid,
providing transparency in the response effort
Enabling relevant sharing of information across organizations, connecting donors, volunteers, NGOs, and government organizations,
enabling them to operate as one
Sahana software was originally developed by members of the Sri Lankan IT community who wanted to find a way to apply their talents
towards helping their country recover in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The word “Sahana” means
“relief” in Sinhalese, one of the national languages of Sri Lanka. Our community has since grown to include experts in emergency and
disaster management as full partners in the software development process. This is extremely unique in the governance of software projects,
and a unique strength of the Sahana Software Foundation.
The Lanka Software Foundation (LSF) was the first owner of the intellectual property making up Sahana software, and under its
stewardship, Sahana software grew into a global free and open source software project supported by hundreds of volunteer contributors
from dozens of countries and it supported national and local authorities and relief agencies in their response to numerous
arge-scale, sudden-onset disasters. In early 2009, the directors of the Lanka Software Foundation decided to allow Sahana to spin off
into its own organization. The Sahana Software Foundation was established in 2009 by an initial board of directors as a non-profit
organization registered in the State of California to serve the needs and requirements of a diverse group of customers.
Today SSF supports three main products:
Eden: Eden is a flexible humanitarian platform with a rich feature set which can be rapidly customized to adapt to existing
processes and integrate with existing systems to provide effective solutions for critical humanitarian needs management either prior
to or during a crisis.
Vesuvius: Vesuvius is focused on the disaster preparedness and response needs of the medical community, contributing to family
reunification and assisting with hospital triage. It also provides client and staff registration capabilities for temporary sheltering
and other emergency operations.
Legacy Products: There are several other versions of Sahana software that are no longer under active development, but remain a rich
part of our project’s history. These systems were used in the response to many disasters and adopted by government agencies and
humanitarian organizations for disaster preparedness programs – many of which are still in use today. The most notable of our legacy
products is Krakatoa, the direct descendant of the original Sahana code base developed following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
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