Open Source
Lockheed Martin goes open source, people freak out.
I was really pleased to read the announcement that Lockheed Martin’s social networking platform, EurekaStreams, was released as an open source project today. Lockheed is a very conservative company, and while they’re happy to use open source internally and on projects for their customers, this is their first experiment with actually running a project themselves.
Creating online community the open source way
I presented “Creating online community the open source way” at the Triangle Drupal Users Group (TriDUG) on the evening of Thursday, July 22 and thought it would be a good idea to share with a broader audience. For this post, I'll use the opensource.com online community as my case study.
Opensource.com is a community for exploring how open source principles like collaboration, transparency, and meritocracy are influencing innovation beyond technology--shaping education, law, business, government, and everyday life. Opensource.com is a platform to share, discuss, and discover how people are applying the open source way, even if they don't call it that.
Many people are familiar with how the
Managing clouds and the death of formality in business
I've been toying around with a new hypothesis. Here it is:
Formality in business is dying.
Now I am not talking about Blue Jeans Friday and Bring Your Pet to Work Day all of the sudden cropping up everywhere. I've seen very formally-run businesses where people showed up in jeans with their dogs or whatever. So much superficial informality.
What I'm talking about is a fundamental shift of business culture and management practices from formal to informal in many innovative companies. What do I mean? Let's take a step back.
Going to LinuxCon? Let's have ice cream.
August 9, the Monday night before LinuxCon, let's get together. How's ice cream sound?
LinuxCon is happening at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. Right across the street, there's an outdoor Ben and Jerry's cafe.* We'll meet there. How's 6:30? I'll see you then.
And if you're not attending LinuxCon but happen to be in Boston, feel free to join us anyway. You can get off the T at Silver Line at World Trade Center or Silver Line Way.
Poll: Which industry would you improve using the open source way?
Tell us what the missed opportunities are, that could be improved, based on your vote.
Patching democracy with open data
America held its first billion-dollar political race in 2008 – DVR use soared (no surprise there). A new lineup of over-produced ads and under-researched hit pieces have yet to hit primetime, and accountability advocates are already worried about November.
New Zealand rejects software patents
Recently the NZ govt announced that it was to remove software from the list of items that can be patented. This decision came after hectic lobbying from the open source community on one side and the proprietary vendors on the other side.
Interview with Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin
We got a chance to send a few questions to Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. We wanted to explore open source principles like transparency, community, and collaboration in his world. And we got a chance to ask him about the Open Source World Summit in China--and why both Microsoft and the Linux Foundation want people to pay for Windows.
Collaborating on patent examinations
The willingness to collaborate brought us free and open source software. Now we continue to see that willingness to collaborate permeate our government agencies. A prime example is the Peer To Patent program developed at New York Law School by Prof.
Fear of failure? Embrace it by failing fast.
This is the third in a series exploring the things I have learned from the open source way during my journey with Red Hat.
One of the key tenets of the open source way is “release early, release often.” This means rather than keeping an idea or project "secret" until it is perfect, you go ahead and share it or make it available to others. You get it out there, let people play around with it, test it, expose its weaknesses, you allow peer review.
Open sound series: Part 3 - Ampache
Building a community is core to all open source projects. In fact, an open source project that lacks a community is likely missing the point of being open source. So what happens when your open project is designed to create communities?
MIX: Gary Hamel's experiment in reinventing management the open source way
Of all of the people talking or writing about the future of business right now, no one has more street cred than Gary Hamel.
Fortune cookie says: To succeed, you must share.
The last time you ate Chinese food, you probably weren't thinking about open source development. But according to Jennifer 8. Lee, author of “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,” the food on your plate arrived there in precisely that way.
General Tso's chicken? Unrecognizable to its creator, let alone the General's relatives. Swap out the butter and vanilla for sesame and miso in that most famous of Chinese desserts, the fortune cookie, and you have something that closely resembles tsujiura senbei, a Japanese fortune cracker. Americans will be sad to learn that much of the rest of the world—including China—is rather unfamiliar with this delicacy.
LeBron James: A management innovator?
LeBron James is an amazing basketball player. But is he also a management innovator? I couldn’t help but ask myself that question as I watched the news reports last week that three of the biggest professional basketball stars have chosen to play together in Miami. Early reports indicate that each of the players will take a pay cut in order to play together.
Crafting an open web qualification
For working in the open web, people need to know more than one technology. They need to learn, hack, and be creative. Mozilla is driving a project to create a broad, university-style, comprehensive course of study: Mozilla's Drumbeat Open Web Developer degree. Currently, they're calling for tutors and mentors to join the discussion about what this might look like.
Oil spill doomsday debunked. Did peer review journalism fail or succeed?
If the news hasn't reached you, the world's going to end in about six months. Hug your children, get your affairs in order. Well, scratch the affairs. Nobody's going to be around to care.
Reminder: Our Life needs you. Write for us.
Here on the Life channel, we've realized there are a lot of stories about everyday life that are using open source principles—collaboration, participation, sharing, transparency—what we call the open source way. But we can't find them all. And we certainly can't tell them all. That's where you come in.
Participating in a gift economy: Are you giving enough?
Open source communities are often compared to gift economies. You participate. You solve shared problems. Others do the same.
In many ways, you give to get.
Bilski and software patents
The Supreme Court case of Bilski v Kappos was billed as a case over business methods, but at its core it was over an application for a patent on software, and the denial of that application sets a good example that may lead to the denial of other software patents.
Do you aspire to build a brand community or a community brand?
In my day job at New Kind, I spend quite a bit of my time working on brand-related assignments, particularly for organizations interested in community-based approaches to building their brands.