EDUCAUSE | Open Source Policy

Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge

ckeller — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:40:19 -0500

Given the abundance of open education initiatives that aim to make educational assets freely available online, the time seems ripe to explore the potential of open education to transform the economics and ecology of education. Despite the diversity of tools and resources already available—from well-packaged course materials to simple games, for students, self-learners, faculty, and educational institutions—we have yet to take full advantage of shared knowledge about how these are being used, what local innovations are emerging, and how to learn from and build on the experiences of others. Opening Up Education argues that we must develop not only the technical capability but also the intellectual capacity for transforming tacit pedagogical knowledge into commonly usable and visible knowledge: by providing incentives for faculty to use (and contribute to) open education goods, and by looking beyond institutional boundaries to connect a variety of settings and open source entrepreneurs.

Intellectual Property and Cyberinfrastructure

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:47:25 -0500

The development of a new generation of cyberinfrastructure promises to increase and facilitate globally distributed scientific collaboration as well as access to scientific research via computer networks. But the potential for such access and collaboration is subject to concerns regarding the intellectual property rights that will be associated with networked data and with networked collaborative activity. Intellectual property regimes are generally problematic in the practice of science, because scientific research typically assumes practices of openness that may be hampered or obstructed by intellectual property rights. These difficulties are likely to be exacerbated in the context of networked collaboration, where the development and use of intellectual resources will likely be distributed among many researchers in a variety of physical locations, often spanning national boundaries. Such issues may be addressed by a combination of public and private approaches, including amendment of U.S. law to recognize transborder collaborative work, and adoption of clarifying contractual agreements among those who are collaborating via cyberinfrastructure, including cautious adaptation of “viral” licensing from the open source coding community.

Seeking Open Infrastructure: Contrasting Open Standards, Open Source and Open Innovation

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:05:28 -0500

While “open” normally has connotations of public goods, the idea of “open”–ness has been used for decades as a competitive strategy by firms in the computers and communications industries. Phrases like “open standard,” “open source” and more recently “open innovation” have been used to refer to these strategies.

What do they have in common? Which ones really are “open”? What does “open” mean, anyway?

The author discusses the issues faced in the creation and adoption of cyberinfrastructure, contrasting firm strategies for three types of “open”–ness in the context of their respective business models.

Important Announcement: EDUCAUSE-Sakai Statement on Blackboard Patent Pledge

cluckett — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:31:55 -0600

Since early November 2006, EDUCAUSE has been engaged in ongoing discussions with Blackboard regarding their assertion of patent rights and the concerns raised in a letter to the Blackboard leadership [PDF 38.9 KB] EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins sent in October on behalf of the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors. Other groups, including The Sakai Foundation, have also been engaged in discussions on this matter.

Today, February 1, 2007, Blackboard announced a non-assertion pledge that directly emanates from these discussions. The boards of directors of EDUCAUSE and The Sakai Foundation have agreed to and have issued a joint statement [PDF 41.2 KB] about this pledge.

Open Source 2010: Reflections on 2007

drupal — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 11:37:56 -0600

Has the vision proffered for "Open Source 2007" been realized? Will 2010 mark continued progress in the collaborative development of applications software—perhaps one of the most potent tools for addressing the challenging trends confronting IT in higher education?

Considering Open Source: A Framework for Evaluating Software in the New Economy

drupal — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 09:38:47 -0600

Open source software and the community source movement are raising questions for administrators about whether and when to adopt or devote resources to software development projects, provoking questions of sustainability, future directions, and total cost of ownership. This research bulletin frames the issues an institution should consider with respect to adding community source products to the portfolio of software, infrastructure, and services that constitute the IT environment.

Software and Collaboration in Higher Education: A Study of Open Source Software

drupal — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 12:01:46 -0500

In recent years over a dozen open source software (OSS) projects have been launched among higher education institutions with the aim of meeting the community's needs more effectively and at less cost than do commercial options presently available. There is, however, a concern in the community that its adoption is hindered by uncertainty about future support for and improvements in the software. The creation of a new organization, which we refer to with generic term "OOSS" (Organization for Open Source Software), has been proposed to address this need. This concept has received significant interest from the community and from a group of senior college and university administrators. There is a desire for further exploration of the need for such an organization and for a clearer definition of what its mission and areas of activity would be.

Paul Courant, Professor of Economics and former Provost at the University of Michigan, has agreed to lead a study in collaboration with Ithaka. Michael Carter, a consultant with decades of experience in academic computing and instructional technologies with major universities and leading companies in the technology sector, is also assisting in this effort. The goal of the OOSS study is to evaluate the landscape and market environment for open source software (OSS) created by and for the higher education community, to assess the need for an organization to promote the support and adoption of these OSS projects, and to define this organization's mission and service model, should we determine that such an organization is desirable.

Open Source in the military

StuartYeates — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:31:29 -0500

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics recently published the "Open Technology Development Roadmap Plan", another step towards moving the military to open standards, if not open source. This is going to be a long road, given that they can't even publish their own objectives in an open standard. The document makes the business case for open source: it argues how the DoD can do it's job better using open source. To quote from the report:

[Open source software] and open source development methodologies are important to the National Security and National Interest of the U.S. for the following reasons:

Enhances agility of IT industries to more rapidly adapt and change to user needed capabilities.
Strengthens the industrial base by not protecting industry from competition.
Makes industry more likely to compete on ideas and execution versus product lock-in.
Adoption recognizes a change in our position with regard to balance of trade1 of IT.
Enables DoD to secure the infrastructure and increase security by understanding what is actually in the source code of software installed in DoD networks.
Rapidly respond to adversary actions as well as rapid changes in the technology industrial base.

It also mentions that China wants to become an open source leader. Are they hoping that military types who won't respond to issues of effectiveness, cost and fitness for purpose will be motivated by "us and them" competition?

...and there lies the key problem with open source in the military, the fact that by releasing software as open source you enable it's use by your potential future enemies. This makes open source a very tough sell in this environment. I'm convinced that the sale can be made, based purely on technical grounds.

OSS Watch Sustainability Conference Day 1

StuartYeates — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 03:09:48 -0500

Candlelit table
Originally uploaded by Stuart Yeates.

Day one of the OSS Watch went very well, rihgt up to the conference in the dining hall at Exeter College, which dates from 1618. The dark, wood-panelled part you can see at the far end of the hall is the choir gallery, dating from when all the Oxford colleges were primarily religious rather than primarily academic institutions.

Whatever drawbacks Oxford may have as a place to live, a place to work or a place to hold events, there is not lack of history and no lack of architecture.

An Interview with UNC's José-Marie Griffiths

mpasiewicz — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:54:00 -0600

In this 29 minute recording, we'll hear from José-Marie Griffiths, Dean and Professor of the UNC School of Information and Library Sciences. She's also the principal investigator of The Future of Librarians in the Workforce study and we'll hear about her activities on that front. We'll also learn about her session at CNI's Fall Task Force meeting about a recent report from the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.

See also:

The Louis Round Wilson Academy
- a very interesting group represented there
ibiblio

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2005 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org