00466nas a2200157   4500008003900000022001400039245005100053210004800104260004200152300000800194490000600202653002500208100001800233700002100251856003600272       2012                          d  a1927-032100aEditorial: Open Source Business (January 2012)0 aEditorial Open Source Business January 2012  aOttawabTalent First Networkc01/2012  a3-40 v210aopen source business1 aMcPhee, Chris1 aHawthorn, Leslie  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/51501360nas a2200133   4500008004100000022001400041245006000055210006000115260004200175520093200217100002001149700002101169856003601190       2011                        eng d  a1913-610200aIntroducing the Oregon State University Open Source Lab0 aIntroducing the Oregon State University Open Source Lab  aOttawabTalent First Networkc08/20113 aThe Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system, and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships, and industry events such as the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the lab's staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care, and other sectors. In addition, the lab creates real-world educational opportunities for its students by providing high-value development and hosting services for open source communities. In this article, we describe the benefits of the OSUOSL to open source projects and to students of Oregon State University.1 aCasson, Anthony1 aHawthorn, Leslie  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/46102763nas a2200133   4500008004100000022001400041245005600055210005300111260004200164520234800206100001802554700002102572856003602593       2010                        eng d  a1913-610200aEditorial: Humanitarian Open Source (December 2010)0 aEditorial Humanitarian Open Source December 2010  aOttawabTalent First Networkc12/20103 aIn recent years, our increasingly connected world has provided us with a greater understanding of the needs of our fellow global citizens. The devastating worldwide impact of natural disasters, disease, and poverty has been raised in our collective awareness and our ability to collectively alleviate this suffering has been brought to the fore. While many of us are familiar with donating our funds to better the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves, it is often easy to overlook a core component of facing these global challenges: information technology.

The humanitarian open source movement seeks to ameliorate these sufferings through the creation of IT infrastructure to support a wide array of goals for the public good, such as providing effective healthcare or microloans to the poorest of the poor. Achieving these goals requires a sophisticated set of software and hardware tools, all of which work to save and improve lives in some of the most difficult of situations where the availability of electricity, data, IT knowledge, etc. may be low or lacking altogether. It should come as no surprise that the humanitarian open source domain attracts a great deal of attention from software developers, engineers, and others who find that they are able to both solve intense technical challenges while helping to improve the lives of others.

However, to support ongoing humanitarian needs, the communities who produce humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS) and hardware have increasingly identified the need for business models to support their efforts. While the lower cost of using open source software and hardware solutions means that more funds can be directed to aid and comfort those in need, the goodwill of developer communities and the funds of grantees alone cannot grow the ecosystem sufficiently to meet ever-growing global needs. To face these challenges - poverty, global health crises, disaster relief, etc. - humanitarian open source projects must fully engage the market and provide cost-effective, efficient solutions to the technical aspects of these challenges.

In this issue of the OSBR, our authors from several open source software and hardware projects explore not only the global need for humanitarian open source projects, but also the business cases for humanitarian-focused ICT.1 aMcPhee, Chris1 aHawthorn, Leslie  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/39801995nas a2200121   4500008004100000022001400041245005800055210005500113260004200168520160600210100002101816856003601837       2008                        eng d  a1913-610200aExperiments, Expertise and Google Summer of Code (TM)0 aExperiments Expertise and Google Summer of Code TM  aOttawabTalent First Networkc12/20083 aComputer Science seems to no longer hold sway as the career of choice among North American undergraduates. A variety of reasons for the steady decline of enrollment - down 60% in the United States since 1999 - have been explored. These include economic factors such as concerns about job security and the accompanying increase in off-shoring of information technology roles. Further, studies have noted that Computer Science as a whole simply doesn't look like much fun to today's incoming student populations. There's a general perception that Computer Science means spending one's day chained to a keyboard and monitor, scraping by as a "code monkey". In particular, students cite a lack of a social element as a major deterrent to pursuing a career in Computer Science.

In this article, we examine the Google Summer of Code program, the world's first global initiative to introduce College and University students to free/libre open source software development. Over the past four years, the program has provided a model that allows College and University students to more deeply engage with the joys of computing. The experience of our participants stands in sharp contrast to the generalizations mentioned in the previous paragraph. We will discuss the origins and evolutions of the program, as well as its structure. We will also discuss how students benefit by participating in GSoC, focusing on some select success stories. Finally, we discuss how Google views this investment in the F/LOSS community and its potential to improve the overall progression of Computer Science as a discipline.1 aHawthorn, Leslie  uhttp://timreview.ca/article/210