Government Open Source Software Resource Center

The Government Open Source Software Resource Center "is a resource aimed at providing information on Free/Open Source Software for stakeholders in (and interested in) all levels of Government. The content of the site is not aimed at any specific geographical area, and aim to provide an extensive, global resource."

They have started a list of researchers who are currently studying the use of open source within government. If you are a researcher, contact info for adding yourself to the list is provided at the website. They also have a LinkedIn group for researchers in this field.

One of the listed researchers, Karsten Gerloff, will be featured in the December 2008 issue of the OSBR and will discuss his research results thus far.

Team Camp Ottawa

CodeFactory in Ottawa is hosting a Team Camp next Thursday. According to the StartupOttawa blog post, this event is for you if you are:

• Someone with an idea that you would like to turn into a web or software business


• Working full time but, wanting to take the start-up plunge part-time before the BIG leap


• A student looking for start-up experience


• You have experience with start-ups and just want to lend a hand

Contact details are also listed in the post.

The founder of CodeFactory, Ian Graham, wrote a Q&A for the October 2007 issue of the OSBR regarding the supply and demand side of commercialization.

Preliminary Results from the Open Source Census

OpenLogic released the preliminary results from their Open Source Census on Monday. The findings cited in the release include:

• Government and financial services companies show the highest use of open source per machine scanned.


• Europe shows the highest usage of open source, with the United States lagging behind.


• There is a significant amount of open source software used on Windows.

OSBR readers may remember OpenLogic from the licensing and support issues.

I find the last bullet interesting as I encourage the use of open source on any platform--in other words, meet the user where they are rather than force them to make a drastic change in operating system use. Some useful resources for introducing Windows users to open source applications include:

• OpenDisc


• OSSwin

And for Mac users:

• Open Source Mac


• FreeSMUG

Open Educational Resources

Yesterday's post was about the reasons why corporations embrace open source. Today's is about the reasons why educational institutions choose to give away their "product" (courses, knowledge, and research) for free.

Jan Hylen provides some answers in the appropriately named article
Why Give Knowledge Away for Free? The Case for Open Educational Resources. His article highlights the findings from a study carried out by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation and discusses the reasons for producing open content as well as the associated problems of licensing and sustainability. For further research into these problems, see the conference report on Open Education 2007 and Jordan Hatcher's article on the Open Data Commons Project.

Commercial Open Source

While the term open source is becoming mainstream, there still is confusion regarding why some companies choose to pay their employees to work on open source projects or release some of their own products as open source. How exactly does contributing resources to something "free" help the bottom line?

This blog entry from Cleversafe compares the emerging field of dispersed storage with the open nature of the TCP/IP protocols. It also outlines their business model which includes commercial offerings as well as contributions to the open source ecosystem they established. Their model seems to be working as yesterday the Wall Street Journal awarded the company with a 2008 Innovation Award in the Software category for its innovative approach to storing and archiving digital content.

Many of the articles in the OSBR provide some insight into why companies contribute to open source. In the most recent issue, Nortel's CTO describes some of the many open source projects that receive Nortel contributions, including OLPC, Hyperconnectivity, Open802.11s, SIPfoundry, and Curriki. We'll be seeing more articles like these in the upcoming editorial themes of "Building Community" (October 2008), "Enterprise Participation" (January 2009) and "Commercialisation" (February 2009).

Technical Difficulties?

One of the reasons why we chose to use the Open Journals Interface (OJS) to publish the OSBR was the reading tools it provides to users who are logged in. These tools appear in the right frame of every article, and allow readers to view the article abstract, author's biography, and indexing metadata as well as notify a colleague, email the author, and add a comment.

We've received feedback that some readers are unable to access some of these tools and are trying to pinpoint the cause so that we can add a "technical hints" link to the website. If you are unable to access a tool and have double-checked that you are indeed logged in, leave a comment or send an email which indicates:

• your browser type and version


• your operating system version

We suspect that it may be a security setting in some browsers, so if you change a setting (most likely java/javascript related) and functionality changes, please let us know.