Operations Guides, Dashboards, Water Cooler, Fact & FAQ Lists, Making Plans.

(via lifehack.org)

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?

Can you really call yourself open source if you haven’t opened the source? I don’t think so. There’s a flood of “open source” companies selling things that work on open source but which aren’t open source themselves. I think these are proprietary products, not open source. That’s been the attitude that helped me select talks for OSCON–I only want open source products talked about. My rule of thumb is that the audience should be able to download, compile, and use the software that is talked about.

[ via Is “Open Source” Now Completely Meaningless? ]

One of the most confusing things about open source is what open source means. Is it free? Does it only work with Linux? Can you change it? Does it have to be software?

It seems there are many projects which are free, and user/developer friendly, but now are not actually sharing their source. These might be the people who are causing the most confusion. When I consider whether to test or use a new piece of software, I am primarily concerned with whether or not I can download the whole code. Whether or not I would even consider digging around under the hood–not to mention, contribute to the code–doesn’t matter. I just want to know that I could tweak things, and give those tweaks to others.

This may not be directly related to Open Source, but I am sure that it has implications on Open Source technology, particularly in the realm of Open Source hardware. Researchers are now looking into the possibility of “scrapping the Internet” as it is known today and rebuilding it from the ground up to include better security and reliability.

(via Businessweek)

I have been interested in Sunbird as a calendaring alternative mostly because I have been very happy with Firefox.  Today I downloaded the 0.5pre (beta) from the nightly builds installed on my computer and managed to get it to synchronize with Google Calendaring.  Through the GDATA Provider.  This is an amazing thing.  There are some bugs with this.  Right now it does not handle recurring events, but it synchronizes nice and fast for single occurrences.  This also will work with the most recent pre-release of Thunderbird and Lightening.

The use of Open Source at CSP hasn’t exactly been a long standing tradition, but I say “It’s about time!”

While I’m not particularly involved in any Open Source projects, I have seen the benefits of using Open Source technology. I can see the benefits to CSP in terms of finances, innovation, and information exchange.

Here are some of the things that I would like to see implemented:

• Move to an e-mail and calendaring system that actually supports open standards (unlike Microsoft Exchange) that will allow easier and more efficient information sharing.
• Move from a 90% Windows Server environment to a 90% Linux or other Open Source server environment.
• Move to an open standard for documents making it easier to share information.
• Use open authentication standards for securing information such as OpenLDAP and OpenID.
• Move all of our web servers to Apache and away from Microsoft’s IIS to put CSP in line with 80% of the web servers on the Internet.
• Reduce CSP’s dependence on Microsoft and other expensive closed-source technologies.
• Improve programming language skills (i.e. Python etc.) to allow CSP to fully participate and contribute in Open Source communities and projects.
• Lastly CSP should take a positive stance toward and even generate policy supporting the use of Open Source technologies and initiatives, thus providing a “thoughtful, and informed” educational environment for all involved.