Open Source Initiative

Please lend your support to Carl Malamud's effort to be appointed as the Government Printer, called YesWeScan. He has a history of breaking out closed (or difficult to get) government information. I've known him for over 17 years, and I trust that as the printer of government documents, he will make sure that these documents are also available in electronic form. Open Data is the left hand to Open Source's right hand!

Hey all, I'm looking for speaking opportunities in the Northeast of the US, specifically near Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Pittsburgh. Will talk about Open Source, Open Data, and OpenStreetMap. Thursday or Friday nights preferred. Tuesday nights not preferred.

Also running mapping parties in Boston 2/14-15 and New York City 2/21-22. Follow the link if you're curious about mapping parties.

Bruno Souza uploaded his OSCON 2008 photo of the entire OSI board. I added notes for everybody's name, so you can see the entire set of board members.

Unfortunately, some people don't realize that "Open Source" has a definition. They think it's a loosey-goosey term meaning "stuff that people like", more or less. So they apply it to anything which can be opened, like a door, or a box, or in this case, a car (english). Sorry, no.

I've recently taken on a new job, after 17 years of consultancy. I grew restive at my own weak points, and wanted to outsource sales and management, neither of which I am very good at. I'm now working for Cloudmade, which is a for-profit company seeking to advance the use of OpenStreetMap data. Open Data is very similar in manner to Open Source. It's data that nobody can own, because its value is in the community that creates, cares for, and nurtures it.

Wow. Open Source comes to medical instruments. Of course, hewlett-packard makes great ECG hardware, but for western hospitals, price really isn't their concern. If you could drive the price down, that opens up better medicine to many many people.

Andrew J. Turner (http://www.highearthorbit.com) suggested to me that we need a term for user-created, user-entered, user-discovered, and user-curated data. Of course, if you change "data" to "code" you have exactly what the Open Source Initiative is already doing for software. We could do the same thing for data. Write an Open Source Data Definition, which puts strictures on the attributes of data that claims to be Open Source Data.

These guys (SciPhone) really REALLY ought to get together with some open source developers. Looks like a great product, but it's almost 100% certain that their software stinks. Is it simply that they don't believe that hackers will come togther to write software for their hardware? Do they not know how to build such a community? Are they bound by contracts not to disclose programming information for the chips they've used? Do they not speak English well enough to make a difference in the Open Source creating part of the world?

Let's say that you want to build the highest building in your {village,town,county,state,country}. Your resources are limited, as they always are. Should you start building from the ground up? Or should you make use of the community foundation that Open Source developers have created? Your choice should be obvious. You may choose to build from the ground up, but your competitors are not likely to make that mistake.