The process of acquiring public information from various governments can often be confusing, time-consuming, and costly. RecordTrac was built by the City of Oakland as a part of the 2013 Code for America Fellowship and is aimed at simplifying access to public information. More from OpenSource.com
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The legal issues that surround open source data and hardware are similar to those of open source software. However, open source software has been the subject of many legal cases, providing a relatively clear legal understanding of licensing. Open data and hardware still need a significant amount of legal definition. More from OpenSource.com
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The government of India is implementing the National e-Governance Plan which seeks to make all government services available to the citizens through the use of information and communication technology. The government is working with the FUEL project, which offers linguistic resources to help translate and localize projects. These services help make technology more accessible to […]
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The Sunlight Foundation, Google, and The Knight Foundation are three major organizations that help new, innovative ideas for open governance get started. More from OpenSource.com
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Open Raleigh and the Open Data Institute are both approaching their second birthdays. These two organizations have helped generated a large amount of collaboration and innovation for their region. These groups are exploring the transparent use of open information for governance, business creation, and citizen involvement. More from OpenSource.com
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Oracle’s recent win against Google over copyrighted APIs adds a new layer of confusion to a legal landscape that has had few cases to define it. With many undefined legal areas in API copyright it is likely we will see additional cases between major companies; even Oracle has code that might violate the GNU GPL […]
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The concept of net neutrality is widely supported, but the particulars of making the Internet more open and accessible have been a challenge to understand. At the heart of the current debate is the controversial FCC decision to regulate internet service providers as ‘information services’ rather than ‘common carriers.’ As large corporations begin entering agreements […]
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In 2001 the Munich city council began exploring the use of Linux and other FOSS software as an alternative to Microsoft. The government discovered that while it would cost more in the near term, over the long term making the switch could offer substantial savings. The transition was successful and serves as a model for […]
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Octance v ICON and Highmark v Allcare are two major patent troll cases heard by the US Supreme Court on February 26, 2014; these cases both had to do with the awarding of legal fees to the prevailing party in patent enforcement cases. The court was unsatisfied with the arguments brought up in both of […]
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Open source is expanding beyond high-tech communities into many new aspects of our society. Open source projects often need to be localized for specific communities, and this process can be improved through consistency, communication, and testing. More from OpenSource.com
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France minister Marylise Lebranchu has announced France is joining the Open Government Partnership. This partnership focuses on four key points: promoting transparency, fighting corruption, empowering citizens, and harnessing the power of technologies to make government more effective and accountable. More from Tech Crunch
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Beatrice Martini, the event manager at Open Knowledge, offers some insight into the work of the organization. Open Knowledge has been focusing on the impact of open data initiatives around the world and how governments, civil groups, and businesses will need to adapt. Their recent Open Knowledge Conference asked three questions. How do we broaden […]
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In 2006, John Sebes and Gregory Miller began work on building an open source voting machine. Their goal was to create a system that could be adapted and modified by local governments to provide transparent and secure voting. Their efforts were halted when the IRS launched an audit against them, that is only now being […]
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The US relies heavily on old computer systems for voting that are unreliable, hard to use, and insecure. TrustThevote is an effort to produce a new system of tabulating votes for elections that is open source, easy to use, and that can be trusted. More at Tech Crunch.
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Microsoft is dropping all support for Windows XP in 5 days, and many organizations are not capable of handling the costs associated with upgrading to Microsoft’s newest software. The government of India is following a number of other nations in replacing Windows with FOSS alternatives. More at ./Muktware
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Brazil, Spain, and the UK are among the world governments leading the charge to deploy FOSS software for public functions. There is a long list of benefits offered by making this transition, but the process has so far been slow and arduous. The LibrePlanet conference featured a panel that discussed the benefits and progress being […]
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OST Original
The Proprietary Failure to Protect Privacy
All social interaction requires some degree of trust. This trust has become much harder to understand in the Information Age as we interact with a wide variety of online services daily, many of them requiring the transfer of private information. Businesses, governments, citizen groups and many other organizations need a method for ensuring their private […]
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The Government of India recently announced a major effort to expand open source in the country’s governance. The government appears to be setting themselves up for success, at least initially, but there are still some major considerations that must come into effect if the government wants to achieve sustainable success. The government must also make […]
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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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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 […]
