Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Opinion
Invest Locally
A community source leader's thoughts on how to break down the barriers to open source adoption.
3/28/2007
Microsoft's Chairman Bill Gates spent a lot of time Wednesday talking about "empowering the workers" at the Microsoft's 12th annual CEO Summit 2008 in Redmond, WA, where he gave a keynote speech. However, Gates wasn't talking about political revolutions or even pay raises for office workers before the CEO crowd. Instead, he was referring to new software technologies that can better enable collaboration, social networking and decision-making on the job. Microsoft and some independent security researchers had the blogosphere buzzing Wednesday over a series of denunciations after one company claimed that the Vista operating system was more vulnerable to malware and other exploits than previous operating systems. Blackboard Inc. today announced Blackboard Sync, an application that allows students to receive course updates and communicate with classmates while logged on to Facebook. Technology solutions work best when they well together. That is why the nonprofit group IMS Global Learning Consortium is developing learning tools interoperability standards for the education technology community... A consultancy to the U.K. government has forwarded complaints about Microsoft's licensing and interoperability practices to the European Commission (EC), according to an announcement issued by the Becta consulting group Monday. The JavaOne conference, held May 6-9 in San Francisco, brought together developers from industry, education, and other markets, filling the Moscone Convention Center with a wide array of sessions and exhibits for the open source Java developer community.
Over the last
several years I've begun to pay a lot more attention to what my family eats,
and where it came from. Recently, I've become very interested in sustainable agriculture--both for
my family's health, and to make a positive contribution to the health of the
planet. I've found ways to buy more locally produced food through community supported agriculture (CSA)
organizations and community buying clubs. I've come to the conclusion that food
produced locally using sustainable agriculture practices tastes better, is
healthier, and is better for the planet. But it's also harder from a consumer
perspective. The dilemma we face is that if we choose massively industrialized
food because it's easier and appears cheaper, the money we spend goes elsewhere and
sustains that system. If we spend locally, our dollars are invested in the
local community. As more people do this, and more money flows into the local
community, the services and distribution channels will develop and make the
better choice an easier one. This will lead to more people making the choice,
more investment, better services, and … you get the idea.
The sustainable
agriculture movement is a lot like the open source software movement in higher
education today--simply replace "better food" with "better
software." Okay, it's not quite that simple, but there are a lot of
similarities. Communities like
Sakai, Kuali, uPortal, Moodle, and others are
taking advantage of a better way to build software through open source
communities. Interest in these communities is growing rapidly, certainly
outpacing the capacity of these communities to provide all services necessary
for new community members to be successful with the software. Additionally,
within these communities there are key underdeveloped or entirely missing
services that exist in other software communities (vended software) that help
users mitigate risks, particularly in production use, and ensure long-term
sustainability of the products.
Recommended Reading
