Community

  • Quote from Tech Crunch: The Linux Foundation is adding yet another foundation to its stable: the LF Deep Learning Foundation. The idea behind the LF Deep Learning  Foundation is to “support and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning while striving to make these critical new technologies available to developers and data scientists everywhere.” The founding […]

  • Mozilla has announced new funding via their Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program to support important open source projects. Ushahidi was the biggest benefactor of this program, receiving $194,000. Ushahidi is a platform for “crowdsourcing, monitoring, visualizing, and responding to reports from people caught up in political turmoil or subject to governmental or vigilante abuse.” […]

  • GitHub has published the results of their 2017 open source survey that highlights many of the challenges the open source industry is currently facing. They “collected responses from 5,500 randomly sampled respondents sourced from over 3,800 open source repositories on GitHub.com, and over 500 responses from a non-random sample of communities that work on other […]

  • SXSW is a giant event in Austin, TX that attracts hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to see the latest in music, movies, technology, and art. Most people are aware of the bigger events that require badges to get in, but there are also a ton of smaller events that are free […]

  • These 5 FOSS projects focus on helping people in need. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap – After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the OpenStreetMap community joined together to build maps of Haiti from any pre-earthquake data they could find. After the crisis, the community stayed involved in the recovery process to help continually improve the map information. Literacy Bridge […]

  • Modern agriculture equipment is highly complex and often requires farmers to hire certified technicians whenever there are problems. Many companies have locked down the computers that run their equipment with proprietary software and hardware, and due to the DMCA anyone who modifies the proprietary DRM risks being targeted for copyright infringement. This has led to […]

  • The Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) has had a number of controversies during heated debates over the development of the Kernel. Most recently, Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, wrote an article where he accused Linus Torvalds of encouraging personal attacks on him. The resolution code was written by Greg Kroah-Hartman and was signed off […]

  • The biggest benefit of open source can also be its greatest challenge. While the ability to modify, reuse, and redistribute software freely helps open source innovate at an extreme pace, it also puts the responsibility of it’s improvement in the hands of the users. This means that users of open source have a responsibility to […]

  • Cassidy James, the founder of Elementary OS, a popular Linux distribution, recently came under fire after suggesting that users who downloaded their software without paying were “cheating” the system. He has since retracted those words, but the implications of this statement are still being discussed. Open source is built on the concept that anyone can […]

  • This short talk from Raghavendra Prabhu gives some pointers on how to successfully leverage documentation in an open source community. [00:30] – Good documentation helps communities grow, attracts contributors, enhances the quality of code, and helps make bug fixes. Redis, Docker, the Linux Kernel, Python and Go are just a few examples of projects with […]

  • There is no time better than the present to get involved with an open source project. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a while, or maybe you made a resolution for 2015. Either way, these five projects are great opportunities to get you feet wet in open source software. BRL-CAD – 3D modeling program […]

  • Community management is a job that is dynamic and requires a broad skillset. These tips from established community managers in the open source industry can be beneficial to anyone looking to get better at this role. The tips include providing contributors with appreciation and gratitude, celebrating work and making heroes, listening to the major complaints […]

  • Starting a Co-op can be a very similar experience to starting an open source project because they are centered around the concept of people taking action and solving their own problems. Projects like these live or die by the people that volunteer their time, so it is vital to foster a strong community. This can […]

  • Growstuff is an open source project focused on building a crop database from crowdsourced, grower knowledge that helps others learn how to grow food in their area. The open food movement has been around for quite a long time and focuses on making the farm to table process for food more transparent so consumers can […]

  • In this video [6:15] , Jen Wike discusses the efforts the team at opensource.com in building a platform for people to tell stories about open source. Opensource.com has been a platform for users to explain how they use open source in their own work, and the site has had immense success in growing their contributor […]

  • At first glance, systemd might appear to be yet another “holy war” in the long list of debates that have raged within the Linux community. However, unlike the debates over emacs v. vi, GNOME v. KDE, and BSD v. GPL, it seems most users and developers aren’t being given a choice over the use of […]

  • A lot of attention has been brought to the exclusivity of some open source communities like Linux. Lennart Poettering recently described the problems he has had with the Linux community in a recent blog post which discussed the harsh reaction to Systemd which went as far as including death threats. Linus suggests that harsh language […]

  • Random Articles from the OST Archives

    • The second annual TOR challenge was recently wrapped up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 1,635 new TOR relays were set up during this year’s challenge, a huge improvement over last year’s 549 new relays. The goal of this challenge is to improve the TOR network and make it more secure for anyone who uses it, […]

    • At first glance, systemd might appear to be yet another “holy war” in the long list of debates that have raged within the Linux community. However, unlike the debates over emacs v. vi, GNOME v. KDE, and BSD v. GPL, it seems most users and developers aren’t being given a choice over the use of […]

    • Modern agriculture equipment is highly complex and often requires farmers to hire certified technicians whenever there are problems. Many companies have locked down the computers that run their equipment with proprietary software and hardware, and due to the DMCA anyone who modifies the proprietary DRM risks being targeted for copyright infringement. This has led to […]

    • In this video [6:15] , Jen Wike discusses the efforts the team at opensource.com in building a platform for people to tell stories about open source. Opensource.com has been a platform for users to explain how they use open source in their own work, and the site has had immense success in growing their contributor […]