The European Commission has just wrapped up the election of the new European Commissioners and Vice Presidents who will lead the activities of the Directorates General. Estonia prime minister Andrus Ansip has been named as the VP for Digital Single Market and Gunther Oettinger has been named Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. Neither of […]
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Open Knowledge and the Open Definition Advisory Council have announced the released of version 2.0 of the Open Definition, a set of principles that define openness as it relates to data and content. Many world governments have been launching open data initiatives across the globe, but doing so opens a new set of risks due […]
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In 2006, the city of Munich set out to replace costly proprietary solutions with open source technologies like Linux. After making a considerable investment in updating the computer technology and training staff on the use of open source tools, the cities migration has been a major success that has helped the city save more than […]
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Patents are extremely costly and time consuming to defend in court, and the mobile computing market is no exception. A number of major suits are currently being processed by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) that involve major corporations like Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and Nokia. Some of these cases have been in the courts for […]
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Code for America is a joint effort from the federal government and various local governments scattered throughout the US that focuses on using software development to solve specific problems faced by the local communities. Notable projects include the focus on public safety in Indianapolis, IN, health and food access in underrepresented communities in West Sacramento, […]
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The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is built from numerous smaller organizations that are often free to explore alternative methods to improve doctor services. Recently, the NHS has been focusing on using IT to improve patient care, and many doctors have been turning to open source as a way to reduce costs. One result of […]
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Municipal governments across Italy have been looking for ways to cut spending during our current challenging economic times. A few cities have turned to open source as a way of saving money with the city of Udine in north east Italy recently joining these efforts. The town has about 100,000 people and will begin a […]
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In this article, Michel Bauwens outlines 10 areas where government can encourage open source development and the commons. Education Research Purchasing Patents Data Collaboration Commons Health Economy Systemic Change More from P2P Foundation
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In June, the Supreme Court produced a ruling on Alice v. CLS Bank which stated that abstract ideas being performed on a computer can’t be patented. In other words, taking a practice that is done without computers and doing it with a computer is not enough to warrant a patent. Since then, a number of […]
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Engineering Group has joined the Open Source Initiative as the latest corporation to help the OSI achive their mission of protecting and promoting open source. Engineering Group brings the expertise of their Open Source Competency Center that founded the SpagoWorld Initiative and leads the SpagoBI project. The company has offices around the world including Italy, […]
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Patent No. 8,609,158 claims to be a cure for cancer and many other ailments through various combinations of natural ingredients. There are a multitude of reasons why this patent should have been rejected by the US Patent Office, such as enablement, indefiniteness, and utility, but it was accepted anyways. Since invalidation of patents requires clear […]
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The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection uses open source software for high level analytics. They chose open source because it lacks license and maintenance fees, has extensible architecture, and global R&D. The department uses the programming language R and relies on an in-house specialist team to develop solutions, but their costs are consistent […]
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Open source is being used increasingly in the US military for a variety of applications. In September, camp Shelby in Mississippi will be launching open source training courses for the military under the work of the Open Technology Center. The academy is part of an effort to improve IT skills of military personnel and to […]
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Seth Vargo, an engineer at Chef, announced in a blog post he was leaving the company and the software development profession after receiving death threats from members of the Chef community. The dispute arose over Berkshelf, a tool that some users and contributors felt hampered their daily tasks. This highlights the challenges of managing an […]
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The Chinese government is planning to release their own Linux distribution for desktop computers by October with a mobile OS following in the next 3 to 5 years. China recently banned the use of Windows 8 on government computers over fears of international spying. The goal is to offer an alternative to software from other […]
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Brenda Chawner, IST Programmes Director at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Information Management, sought to answer two questions about open source contributions in her recent thesis: Factors Influencing Participant Satisfaction with Free/Libre and Open Source Software Projects. What types of contributions do participants make to free/libre and open source software projects? Do the factors […]
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Simon Phipps is the president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Here, he is interviewed by Gordon Haff, a cloud evangelist at Red Hat. They discuss patent law, odf standard adoption in the UK and the importance of adopting open source in business. Key Highlights: Legal changes are occurring in the US that will make […]
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A new study by researchers from Harvard and the University of Texas demonstrates how patent trolls have a significant negative effect on R&D spending of companies. The study showed companies who lost patent litigation against non-practicing entities spent $211 million less on R&D on average than those who won. The study also shows a negative […]
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The U.S. Federal Government has made two significant steps towards greater adoption of open source. The first is the release of the Digital Services Playbook: a document that outlines how governmental institutions should use software in an agile and reusable way. The second is the launch of 18F and Digital Services: two organizations tasked with […]
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DemocracyOS is a program designed to bring democratic systems into the 21st centuryby offering a suite of tools that makes it easier to conduct governance in a way that is transparent, and open to the citizenry. This tool is based on the concept of Net Democracy, a hybrid of delegative democracy and direct democracy, which […]
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OST Original
The Open Source Solution to Privacy
In this part of the series, I want to explore the various open source solutions that have risen recently. The transparency of open source software offers a unique solution to the issues of protecting the privacy of citizens by allowing anyone to check the integrity of the code used to generate applications. This is only […]
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The city of Turin has chosen to switch to Linux PC’s in 8,300 municipal offices. They needed to update from an older version of Windows, a process that would have cost 22 million euros to do so, rather than sticking with proprietary solutions, they have decided to switch to Linux and open source alternatives to […]
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The release of LibreOffice 4.3 has renewed vigor in the LibreOffice community in their drive to replace MS Office. More than 80 million devices are using LibreOffice, a number the Document Foundation expects to grow to 200 million by the end of the decade. LibreOffice is gaining support from many organizations and governments around the […]
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