03.20.14

Sharing and Freedom: the Philosophy Spreads Beyond Software

Posted in News Roundup at 11:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Open Source City

• How to be an Open Source City

  An open source city, according to Jason Hibbets, project manager in Corporate Marketing at Red Hat, in his book ‘Foundation for an open source city’, is a blend of open culture, open government policies and economic development. It is an ecosystem made up of: a culture of citizen participation, effective open government policies and open data initiatives, open source user groups and conferences, and a hub for innovation and open source businesses.

• Is Your City Open Source?

  Jason Hibbets is working to convince local governments to adapt open source ideas in their day to day operations. His book, “The Foundation for an Open Source City,” attempts to be a step by step guide for implementing open source ideas into government policies and solutions, based on his own experiences. He uses Raleigh, North Carolina, where he resides, as his example. He calls it the worlds first open source city. In a way, the small southern capital is his laboratory.

• How to get started in civic hacking

Optics

• Open source for the optical domain

  Optical technology is viewed as still, and likely to remain, a set of technologies in ferment – highly proprietary, tied up in intellectual property, fast changing and just not the sort of area you might try to discipline into open source standards – not at this stage..

• Open Source Breaks Optical Barriers

• Open Source Optical (OSO) effort launches, touts OpenFlow compatibility

• Software Takes Center Stage as Vello Systems Leads Industry’s First Open Source Optical (OSO) Effort

• Vello leads industry’s first Open Source Optical (OSO) effort

  New user-vendor forum set to define and promote OpenFlow-based, merchant-optical networking solutions

• Vello Systems forms Open Source Optical forum to encourage growth

• Vello Starts Open Source Optical Forum

Automobiles

• Crew assembles three open source vehicles over lunch

• The World’s First Open-Source Car

  “Today we manage a global community of engineers, consumers and designers that co-creates the product with us,” says Rogers, CEO of Local Motors. “Co-creation is about sharing ideas and working through the same problem together.”

• How you can be part of an open-source Le Mans racer

• Open Source Hybrid Electric Racer Headed for LeMans

  Nicolas Perrinn is a firm believer in crowdsourced ideas, open source development, and fan-funded projects. What’s truly innovative about Nicolas’ choice of projects however is its scope — because Perrinn isn’t just talking about building an open source hybrid electric race car. Perrinn is talking about building an open source hybrid electric race car and pitting it against the best that industry giants Porsche, Toyota, and Audi have to offer.

• World’s First ‘Open Source’ Race Team To Tackle Le Mans In 2015

• British open source project eyes Le Mans 2015

• ‘Open Source’ Race Team offers opportunity to get involved in 2015 Le Mans Race Car Project

  Perrinn myTeam offers schoolchildren, students, engineers, enthusiasts and fans unprecedented access to contribute and share data and ideas for top flight Le Mans hybrid race car.

• ‘Open source’ team aims for Le Mans

• Open Source Race Team Headed for LeMans 2015

Libraries

• America is About to Lose One of Its Best Public Resource: Public Libraries

• Library Users Are a Social Group

  Pew Research Center released a new study on Thursday showing that library users are more social than people who do not go to libraries. The report questioned 6,000 Americans, ages 16 and up, and found that more than two-thirds of Americans are actively using libraries. Along with actively using the library, users typically are more social than those who do not use the library. Library users also tend to be more active.

Sharing

• Berlin ‘borrowing shop’ promotes the benefits of sharing

  The most popular items in Berlin’s first “borrowing shop” are the electric drills. At least one of the local people who have registered with Leila – a little shop on Fehrbelliner Strasse, north-east of the city centre – seems to be continually fixing shelves or hanging pictures.

• Makers are the new industrial revolution

• White House to host Maker Faire, new options for Android developers, and more

• Creative Commons enables the return of the game Glitch
  

• Open-source Skirmos aims for advanced laser tag gameplay

• Skirmos: open source laser tag anywhere, any time

  It’s a transparent gun design powered by an Arduino board with colour-changing LEDs and a built-in screen to log essential information such as your kills, health, ammo, and anything else you might need. The Skirmos guns communicate via radio and infrared optics lets your game extend beyond the walls of your local laser tag death arena.

• I have been awarded a Shuttleworth Fellowship to change the world; my first reactions

  The Shuttleworth Foundation has done me the honour of appointing me as a Fellow, starting today.

  [...]

  It’s this ability to create communities that makes us different from our predecessors. As exemplars I look to my own immediate circle of electronic communities: Wikipedia, Mozilla, Open Knowledge Foundation, Creative Commons, Open Rights Group, Blue Obelisk …

Maps

• Open Source Sochi Maps Beat Google’s Versions

  Back in 2005, a study in Nature concluded that Wikipedia — at the time, a free upstart just eking its way into the Google results — was about as good a source as the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. Though it found Wikipedia had slightly more factual errors than the older reference, the study gave the website a major commendation when it needed one.

• In Sochi, Open Source Maps Beat Google’s

• Google Maps’ open-source rival gets huge boost as Telenav buys OpenStreetMap leader Skobbler

Open Data

• What are you doing for Open Data Day 2014?

  So, with much help from various community members, I am pleased to say we are starting to gear up for Open Data Day 2014 on February 22.

• The drive to open data provides opportunities for tech community

• How open source cartography pays the bills for one company

  Mapbox makes it easy for anyone to leverage the work of the hundreds of thousands of open source cartographers from all around the world who make their work available on OpenStreetMap (OSM). Contributing back to the community is part of their mission as well. With several FOSS projects in their inventory, Mapbox has already made a serious impact in the OSM community. Their efforts revolve around two development areas: parsing data and contributing data.

Open Hardware

• Has open hardware finally made its big splash?

  Chris Clark is the IT director at SparkFun Electronics in Boulder, Colorado. He talked with Opensource.com community manager Jason Hibbets, late last year during the All Things Open conference about open hardware.

• Try your hand at these open hardware projects for beginners

• Open-source server, hardware additions energize Open Compute Project

  With traditional computer vendors’ hardware sales in the proverbial toilet, one has to wonder: Where will data center hardware innovations come from? Worry not — the fine folks at the Open Compute Project held the OCP Summit V in January 2014 in San Jose, Calif., and there was no lack of ingenuity on display.

• Red Pitaya open source test instrument to be sold by RS

  A programmable test and measurement instrument which runs open source software developed by start-up Red Pitaya can be bought from RS later this year.

• Open Source Enigma Replica Project Launches On Kickstarter (video)

  If you fancy owning your very own open source Enigma replica a new project has launched over on the Kickstarter crowd funding website that might interest you.

• Using REST with Arduino Yun

  With this short guide we release today, we will explain you how to use your Arduino Yun to do something that was never accomplished before with a board of such family.

3D

• Why The Blueprint of the 21st Century Should Be Open Source

  Today, we have 3D modeling software that can pack an exponential cache of information, render designs visible with incredible fidelity, and make those designs easier to adapt. BIM technology (building information modeling) has entered the workplace, too, improving coordination and productivity of all trades involved in project construction, effectively revolutionizing the manufacturing sector. This is technology that, like CAD, has undeniably been pushed forward via the open development and integration of components.

• 3D printed hand brings the crowd to their feet

  Earlier this year, I shared my story about open source designs and my 3D printed prosthetic hand to a room of 4,600+ at Intel’s Annual International Sales Conference in Las Vegas. I joined Jon Schull on stage, the founder of e-NABLE, an online group dedicated to open source 3D printable assistive devices.

• Measuring Open Source Hardware 3D-Printed Material Strength

  The word “open” is certainly a buzzword in 3D printing, but what does that really mean? While many are tossing around this phrase, few actually practice an open business and product philosophy. Open source hardware (or Libre hardware), notably led by the RepRap project, is experiencing rapid, cross-industry adoption. This philosophy empowers engineers, makers, builders, and creators with unprecedented freedom to change, update, and modify their products over time.

Misc.

• Call to all open source communities: Emphasize inclusion

  As a woman in open source, I have found that the values of community, open development, and flat organizational structure appeal equally to both men and women. The ability of local organizers to freely define what type of culture they are building allows them to adapt in order to appeal to the surrounding culture, while striving to improve access.

• Crowdsourcing the OpenStack Summit agenda

• Beginners in Open Source Week

• Get more eyeballs: 5 steps to using design in your open source project

  At the Open Technology Institute (OTI), we’ve been working on opening our user feedback process as a way to improve our internal processes and collaboration, engage our user community more, promote non-developer contributions, and think more broadly about how open source process plays a role in the Commotion Wireless project, a free and open-source communication tool that uses mobile phones, computers, and other wireless devices to create decentralized mesh networks.

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