Facilitating a Digital Commons with Free and Open Source Software: Paving the Way for Generations to Come

Facilitating a Digital Commons with Free and Open Source Software: Paving the Way for Generations to Come Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Colloquium Associate Professor Research,Teaching and Service Information Systems Department The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica San Francisco State University Sept 18, 2008 San Francisco, CA 94132 USA

Introduction San Francisco State University ● Part of the California State University system – 23 campuses, 450,000+ students, 24,000+ faculty ● San Francisco State University – 8 colleges – 30,000+ students – Undergraduate: 24,000 + – Graduate: 6,000 + – Faculty: 1,800 + http://www.sfsu.edu/

About myself

Software Freedom Day ● Software Freedom Day 2008 – Celebrated by 600+ teams worldwide ● UWI Mona Team – Thursday, September 18, 2008 – http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/centralandsouthamerica/Jamaica – FOSS for Windows ● http://www.theopendisc.com/ – UWI SFD 2008 Flyer

Anecdote

Open Document Format fazverma.wpd > fazlollahivermadsi1994.odt futureproofed!

Commons ● Gardens ● Streets ● Light posts ● Bathrooms ● Libraries ● Internet Access? ● Software? ● Media?

Analog to Digital ● A paper book is analog – $$ for every extra copy – A copy of a copy of a copy ...degrades each time you make a copy – Last for a few hundred years ● An PDF book is digital – Near zero $ for extra copies – A copy of a copy of a copy ...is as perfect as the original – Last forever

Going Digital ● Thousands of books on a thumb drive ● Replicate freely ● Easy storage and retrieval ● Translatable – Language – Script – Audio – Video

Digital Repositories Paper Books Vinyl Records 01010101010101 1010100100101 CassetteTapes Digital Celluloid Movies 10010100001001 1010101001101010 Paintings Photos

DRM: Who's rights are these? ● Digital Rights Management – Protect copyrights – Do users have no rights? – Whose rights are being protected? ● Digital Restrictions Management! – What if Apple/Microsoft/Adobe/... went out of business? – Your book will no longer “open”

● sustainable ● long term ● representative ● accessible ● ... ● futureproof Digital Commons

FOSS: Free and Open Source A platform for building sustainable digital commons

Free and Open Source Software ● peer reviewed ● transparent ● meritocratic

Free and Open Source Software ● peer reviewed ● transparent ● meritocratic Academic Process

Free and Open Source Software ● Two viewpoints: – Free Software (http://fsf.org) – Open Source Software (http://opensource.org) ● FOSS: A public commons approach ● Who's involved: – Individuals – Community groups – Nonprofit foundations – Software corporations

Four Freedoms ● Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. ● Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. ● Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. ● Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

The Open Source Definition 1. Free Redistribution 2. Source Code 3. Derived Works 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 7. Distribution of License 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software 10. License Must Be TechnologyNeutral

Software Licensing ● Why is a license needed? – Public domain implies no control over intellectual property rights – License defines the terms and conditions for use of intellectual property ● Copyrights apply to expressions ● Patents apply to ideas – Copyright enforceable via a license

Contractual nature of license Rosen, L (2005) “...license is used to describe the legal way a copyright and patent owner grants permission to others to use his intellectual property.” Rosen, L. (2005). Open source licensing: Software freedom and intellectual property law. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

FOSS Licenses ● 72 approved licenses – 9 popular important – 3 special purpose – 5 miscellaneous – 8 redundant – 26 nonreusable – 5 superseded – 4 retired – 12 uncategorized

Categorization ● Reciprocal ● Academic ● Standards ● Content

Reciprocal vs Academic Reciprocal: significant changes to source code ● must be put back into the public commons ● Linux ●Academic: Academic/Government grant project. Putting code back into the commons is optional ● BSD Unix ● Solaris ● MacOSX

Who does FOSS?

Google

Oracle

Sun Microsystems

Microsoft

Free and Open Source Software Examples

Mozilla Firefox

Ubuntu Linux

SugarCRM

OpenOffice

Nokia Maemo

Openmoko

Android

Tuxpaint

Projects ● Research ● Teaching ● Service

FOSS: Policy and Implementation ● ICT Policy ● Infrastructure ● Availability of Software ● Software Piracy ● Localization of nonEnglish languages

ASEAN Singapore ● 10 countries in ASEAN Malaysia – Association of SouthEast Asian Nations Brunei D. ● UNDP: Thailand – “The vision is that developing countries in the AsiaPacific Region can achieve rapid Philippines and sustained economic and social Indonesia development by using affordable yet Viet Nam effective FOSS ICT solutions to bridge Cambodia the digital divide.” Myanmar Laos UNDP International Open Source Network: http://www.iosn.net/

Methodology Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 OSS adoption in ASEAN nations Indonesia Indonesia Singapore IT Infrastructure Malaysia Software Industry Thailand Geographic spread Adoption Survey Vietnam Local involvement Cambodia Government actions Laos Localization efforts Brunei Philippines Myanmar

Use of FOSS across ASEAN

Studies ● ASEAN group of nations – Data collection – Profiling – Policies ● Indonesia – Survey – Interviews

Policies matter... ...but implementation speaks volumes

Classroom: Unit of focus vocational or educational

Multimedia Applications ● The experiment – Software needed for the class: Approx. $200 – Will a student at a public university spend $200 on software for a semester? – Can FOSS tools adequately fill the need? ● Important: Choice of tool should be based on the curriculum and not the other way around.

Applications • GIMP – Bitmapped graphics • Blender – 3D rendering • Inkscape – Scalable Vector Graphics • Audacity – Audio editing and manipulation • Scribus – Desktop Publishing • Tux paint – Fun for kids...and grown ups! • Kino – Nonlinear Digital Video Editor • Drupal* – Web 2.0 CMS Total: $0.00 *Server-side

Assignment ● ccmixter.org • Audio assignment based on ccmixter.org samples and loops • Students download vocals, drum loops, effects, etc. and use Audacity to mix and recreate tracks. • Learn audio tools and legal aspects via Creative Commons licenses

Assessment ● Are students really satisfied with a FOSS platform? ● Are we providing education or training? ● We are conducted surveys using a “user satisfaction” instrument.

Lessons learned ● FOSS must meet curricular needs. ● Advocacy works. Evangelism does not. ● Innovative technology. ● Collaborative software development. ● Ethics and legalities of the digital domain.

Campus IT services learning management systems

Learning Management at SF State ● Moodle, Drupal, DIVA, Mahara, Coursestream, ... – Software Fanaticism or Weighted Scoring?

Community Service [global] community

One Laptop Per Child OLPCSF Somebody is finally thinking of the children!

a different generation my compi! Mira Verma

School Galadima, Abuja City, Nigeria See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Galadima

Samkha village located in the suburbs of northern Thailand See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Thailand/Ban_Samkha

Khairat school is India's pilot site. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Sugar: a different interface

Sweet as Sugar! http://laptopgiving.org/en/softwareandinterface.php

school...to go

FOSS makes it happen

OLPC Enthusiasts, Jamaica ● Mailing list – http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpcjamaica ● Web – http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Jamaica

Beyond Software ● Wealth of Networks (Yochai Benkler) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks ● Creative Commons (Lawrence Lessig) – http://creativecommons.org/ ● Wikipedia – http://www.wikipedia.org/ ● Open Access Journals ● Public Library of Science (http://www.plos.org/) ● BioMedCentral (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) ● Harvard Open Access Policy (http://fas.harvard.edu/)

free, open, creative, meritocratic, peerreviewed, educational, innovative you

free, open, creative, meritocratic, peerreviewed, educational, innovative participate you

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. mohandas k. gandhi

meritocracy rules!

Facilitating a Digital Commons with Free and Open Source Software: Paving the Way for Generations to Come

by Sameer Verma on Sep 21, 2008

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Facilitating a Digital Commons with Free and Open Source Software: Paving the Way for Generations to Come Presentation Transcript