July Issue of OSBR Available

The July issue of the OSBR is now available in PDF and HTML formats. The editorial theme this month is Collaboration and the authors include:

Joseph Wilson, co-founder of the Treehouse Group, explains how successful adaptation to market conditions comes from collaboration across traditionally demarcated fields of study.

Stephen Huddart, Vice President of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and Anil Patel, Executive Director of the Framework Foundation, propose the concept of Applied Collaboration Studios for the social sector.

Peter Deitz and Christine Egger from Social Actions describe how this organization applies open source principles to its products and processes.

Evan Andrews, an analyst at Sylvatica, discusses open analysis methods, software, and data that can be used to help companies become greener.

Norm Friesen, Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices at Thompson Rivers University, describes recent developments in the adaptation of open education resources.

Chris Tyler from Seneca College outlines Seneca's approach to sustainably involving students in open source communities in a course setting.

Andy Adler, Canada Research Chair in biomedical engineering at Carleton University, John C. Nash, retired Professor of Management in the Telfer School at the University of Ottawa, and Sylvie Noël, research scientist for the Communications Research Centre of Canada, introduce the TellTable open source system designed to allow single-user software applications to be managed in a collaborative manner.

The editorial theme for the upcoming August issue is Tech Entrepreneurship and the Guest Editor is David Hudson from Lead to Win. Submissions for this issue are due by July 20--contact the Editor is you are interested in a submission.

Upcoming July Issue

Here's a sneak peek of the upcoming July issue on Collaboration:

Evan Andrews from Sylvatica discusses open analysis methods, software, and data that can be used to help companies, the economy, and society become greener, faster.

Joseph Wilson from the Treehouse Group provides examples of how successful adaptation to market conditions comes from collaboration with people across traditionally demarcated fields of study.

Norm Friesen from Thompson Rivers University describes recent developments in the adaptation of open source and open content to educational practices and technologies.

Chris Tyler from Seneca College outline's Seneca's approach to sustainably involving students in open source communities that has proven successful in a course setting.

Andy Adler from Carleton University, John C. Nash from the University of Ottawa, and Sylvie Noël from the Communications Research Centre of Canada introduce TellTable, an open source system designed to allow single-user software applications to be managed in a collaborative manner.

Peter Deitz and Christine Egger from Social Actions describe how this organization applies open source principles to the its products and processes.

Stephen Huddart from the McConnell Foundation and Anil Patel of the Framework Foundation propose the concept of Applied Collaboration Studios to engender a quantum shift in the social sector’s efficiency, reach, and impact through the combined use of open source technologies, social process tools and collaboration platforms.

Happy Birthday OSBR!

Two years ago I was hired to launch a web 2.0 magazine to act as a resource on the business of open source. Since then we have published:

- 24 issues covering a wide range of editorial themes

- the works of 154 authors

I'd like to thank all of the guest editors and authors for their contributions. And the Public Knowledge Project for creating great open source publishing software.

Editorial Lineup

The editorial themes and guest editors have been lined up for the rest of 2009:

July: Collaboration, Stephen Huddart
August: Tech Entrepreneurship, David Hudson
September: Business Intelligence, Mike Andrews
October: Arts & Media, Anthony Whitehead
November: Co-Creation, Stoyan Tanev
December: Bootstrapping Startups, John Callahan

Submissions are due the 20th of the month prior to publication. Author guidelines are here.

Building Sustainable Open Source Communities

At OSCOMM 2009, researchers from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America came together to share early stage and ongoing research on building sustainable open source communities. Topics included ecosystem health, fostering participation, knowledge transfer, culture, and sustainable business models. OSS communities is a thriving area of research, with a high potential to impact practice. Expect to see articles from some of these international authors in upcoming issues of the OSBR.

OSCOMM 2009 is the 1st International Workshop on Building Sustainable Open Source Communities, held June 6 2009 in Skovde Sweden, co-located with OSS 2009.

Women in Open Source

The June issue of the OSBR is now available in PDF and HTML formats. The editorial theme this month is "women in open source" and the authors include:

Rikki Kite of Linux Pro Magazine discusses the editorial theme.

Cathy Malmrose, CEO of ZaReason, introduces women who make a variety of contributions to open source from all corners of the world. She also shares interviews with Belinda Lopez, Training Project Manager for Canonical; Brenda Wallace, well-know blogger from New Zealand; and Andreia Gaita, Mono/Moonlight developer from Portugal.

Cat Allman, Developer Relations Specialist for the Open Source Programs Office at Google, discusses Google's efforts to reach out to the F/LOSS community, and she talks about their efforts to mentor high school and college students through the Google Highly Open Participation Contest and Google Summer of Code (GSoC).

Angela Byron, Senior Web Consultant at Lullabot and former GSoC participant, explains how fostering a healthy community around open source projects leads to better code.

Emma Jane Hogbin, Web developer and consultant, shares her experience with giving back to the community and explains how it is helping her open source business expand and gain new revenue streams.

Audrey Eschright, developer for Elevated Code and co-chair of the Open Source Bridge conference, offers an example of how to organize an open source project to encourage community development, and she suggests some tools that can make collaboration easier.

Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, provides an overview of the community around the foundation and offers a look toward the future of the GNOME desktop environment.

Melanie Groves VonFange, an open source advocate, uses BSD as an example when looking at what role open source advocacy plays in increasing open source usage.

Selena Deckelmann, PostSQL specialist and co-chair of the Open Source Bridge conference, tells how the Portland open source community has increased participation by women and how other communities can benefit from their experiences.

Amanda McPherson, Vice President of Marketing and Developer Programs of the Linux Foundation, asks "So Are You a Contributor?". She also talks about Linux Foundation efforts to encourage a culture of inclusion.

A RESTful Implementation of Geospatial Web Services

Geoff Zeiss gave a presentation recently at Summercamp which further discusses the points he raised in his article A RESTful Implementation of Geospatial Web Services. A pdf copy of the slides from his presentation have been added to the Table of Contents for the issue the article appears in. The pdf is also available for download as a "Supplementary files" in the right frame of the HTML version of the article. The video from his presentation should be available from the FOSSLC website within the next week or so.

OSBR authors: if you have a presentation that supplements your article, send me a copy of your slides and I'll add them to the OSBR website. A pdf version is preferred--we can also host or point to video and/or audio presentations.

Geospatial Issue en Francais

Thanks to the translation efforts of Jean-Louis Duchesne, most of the articles in the March 2009 issue of the OSBR have been translated to French. The editorial theme for the March issue is "geospatial". The Table of Contents for that issue has been updated so you can easily access either the French or English versions.

If you're aware of any other translations or are interested in translating your article or another article of interest, contact me and I'll add a copy of the translated version to the OSBR website. Please include an attribution text in the translated language indicating who did the translation and if the translation is available elsewhere.