Disclaimer: The product I will mention isn’t exactly open-source, so it may be outside the scope of this blog. But since it might accomplish goal #1 of this committee, I’m going to risk loss of limb and post it: E-junkie.

E-junkie is a nice and neat shopping cart driven by PHP and is used by some very respected designers. It’s also free for non-profits! Perhaps this is something that could benefit the Bookstore.

A few others that look promising:

• freeCSScart
• Shopify

This is old news, but not an old concept. Google uses MySQL on a number of their products, but those products require some features that do not exist in MySQL in its current state. Rather than waiting 2 years, to pay umpteenthousnds of dollars for an upgrade, because MySQL is opensource, Google just writes their own additions to the package. And since MySQL was open-source to begin with, why not open-source their changes and let anyone have them? That’s exactly what they did:

We think MySQL is a fantastic data storage solution, and as our projects push the requirements for the database in certain areas, we’ve made changes to enhance MySQL itself, mainly in the areas of high availability and manageability.

[Via Google Code]

We use MySQL on a number of our web products:

• The Support Wiki
• CSP magazine
• FreshlySqueezed
• blogs.csp.edu
• Our internal support tracking
• A number of internal statistics and availability applications

Why?

• MySQL is free
• MySQL is highly scaleable
• MySQL backups take seconds to execute or restore
• MySQL runs on linux, mac, or windows servers
• MySQL’s server requirements are minimal, to the point of being a joke (4 MB disk space; 1 MB Ram)
• Did I mention it’s free?

The OLPC Game Jam is a game design and programming event designed to encourage (simultaneously) experimentation and innovation in the game industry and kick off development of open-source games for the OLPC platform (the XO). A group of game developers will get together over a three-day period to make as many innovative games as possible for the laptop, which is being distributed to children in developing countries around the world.

[Via Game Jam - OLPCWiki]

I love codefests. We should have more of them around here. Get a whole bunch of people together who are interested in having some of the same kinds of tools; code it up; release it to the public. I think I want to setup a EDU Jam for MN Private Colleges.

Would you come?

What would you want to make?

There is an interesting article on Slashdot regarding a collection of open source tools (OS4ED) and applications that could be used to free institutions from having to use costly pay-for solutions. They describe it as a solution for K-12 schools, but I don’t see any reason why this couldn’t be implemented at a university level. It describes a package of applications that could replace Banner. Currently the system focuses on a student information system, and a data warehouse solution, but plans to increase its offerings.

(Via Slashdot)