Working in the parallel universe of the Internet, a loosely coordinated, global federation of digital tribes built a new kind of democratic culture. This culture is embodied in free and open source software, the blogosphere and hundreds of wikis on specialized topics. It can be seen in remix music and amateur videos, the flourishing social networking sites, and new types of “open business” models.
These innovations are not primarily creatures of government or the marketplace. They represent a new “commons sector” — a realm of collective wealth generated by ordinary people through their own resourcefulness and sharing, largely outside of the money economy.
From an essay by Jim Whitehurst for Educause.
Open source is now recognized in institutions of higher education as a viable technology solution that provides superior value at a fraction of the cost of proprietary applications. That’s a good thing—but that’s not all it can do. Open source can be a transformative force in education. In particular, it can transform computer science curricula. Academic institutions that are consumers of open source need to reverse roles and shift gears to “preach what they practice” and place higher emphasis on integrating open source into the classroom.
Open source is an increasingly important skill set that many of today’s computer science graduates are lacking. This is not because students aren’t interested in open source, but because very few colleges and universities currently offer open-source classes. In addition to eager students, there are many professors who are very interested in teaching open source in their classrooms and labs.
via Open Source: Narrowing the Divide between Education, Business, and Community | EDUCAUSE CONNECT.
A Creative Commons video directed by Jesse Dylan.
more about "A Shared Culture ", posted with vodpod
Mozilla contributes $100,000 to fund Ogg development – Ars Technica
Mozilla has given the Wikimedia Foundation a $100,000 grant intended to fund development of the Ogg container format and the Theora and Vorbis media codecs. These open media codecs are thought to be unencumbered by software patents, which means that they can be freely implemented and used without having to pay royalties or licensing fees to patent holders. This differentiates Ogg Theora from many other formats that are widely used today.
via Mozilla contributes $100,000 to fund Ogg development – Ars Technica.
Lawrence Lessig recently appeared on The Colbert Report to explain the ideas in his new book, Remix.
Update: Ha! Viacom took down the YouTube link.
I should have linked directly to Comedy Central, I guess.
The Fedora project has many avenues to participation. Art is just one of them.
Fedora 11′s artwork process is going to work a little differently than our artwork process has worked in the past. Rather than having multiple theme concepts competing with one another and dividing artists’ time and energies, we’re going to try having one theme concept (inspired by the release codename) that everyone works together on. We’re hoping to produce higher-quality artwork in a more timely manner this way.
The Concept
We first need to works towards a solid visual concept for the F11 theme. We’ll need to have this defined by Februrary 1, which gives only about 3 weeks so we need to move fast.
The Fedora 11 codename as announced 10 January 2008 is Leonidas. What is Leonidas?:
- A ship in the British Royal Navy <= this is the meaning upon which the selection of the codename was based
- The king of Sparta, an ancient Greek militaristic society, as portrayed in the popular recent movie 300 which has a very distinctive visual style.
- A maker of Belgian chocolates
- many others!
Since the Royal Navy ship definition of Leonidas is the one upon which the codename was based and is themeable, we should go with this one so we have a solid focus and move more quickly.
Quicktime | Real
Real Stream | Ogg Theora
Truth Happens is no more. Long live opensource.com.
A Better Commons Builds A Better Society
Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use in the UK
Feds Could Save Billions with Open Source
