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OSI 20th Anniversary Celebration 2 hours ago
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Hugh Douglas-Smith, 2019 19 Mar, 02:13
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17 Mar
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Opensourcw.org
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Welcome to your wiki 17 Mar, 07:46
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josmanmohamad7@gmail.com
www1.sekarangnetwork.com
www.nownetwork.net
www1.sekarangnetwork.net
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16 Mar
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That's a great idea Bruce!
If Open Source workshops or projects could be directly inculcated into school curriculum that would ensure that students not only become skilled but also responsible developers as they imbibe their education.
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Good to hear, Frank.
Getting credit for open source development is definitely a good idea. Open Source software development should have equal stature as that of competitive programming. I myself am expected to join university this fall (provided Ivy day works out well, or I get into Stanford) and definitely would like to contribute what I can to spread the opportunity.
In fact, schools could have summer projects for students who're in STEM to come up with something cool that they can open source. The student could get grades as well as the knowledge and the satisfaction of having their work out there for everyone to use.
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15 Mar
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While Hugh's answer was just fine, I find fault with the question:
The anonymous person presents a fiction: that there is a center ground between viewpoints which tend to marginalize or exclude people and those which do not, and that it would be "democratic" to establish that center ground within an organization (this time OSI). There is no such center ground, and establishing such a thing would not promote democratic ideals of equal representation. And obviously the purpose of a diversity program is to assure that those people are not marginalized.
This fiction of "viewpoint diversity" exists to move the perception of discriminatory and marginalizing viewpoints toward an imaginary center in the public eye, when they belong in a rejected extreme which would justly be excluded from discourse by an organization like OSI.
I guess this is a form of moral relativism, which is itself a form of cognitive relativism. Silly ideas, and dangerous ones because they can justify any hate, any lie. Truth and falsehood do exist, so do good and evil, and some viewpoints thus are bad and wrong.
So I reject your sentiment that ethnic, racial, gender, religious and sexual orientation diversity result in diversity that is "only skin deep".
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While Hugh's answer was just fine, I find fault with the question:
The anonymous person presents a fiction: that there is a center ground between viewpoints which tend to marginalize or exclude people and those which do not, and that it would be "democratic" to establish that center ground within an organization (this time OSI). There is no such center ground, and establishing such a thing would not promote democratic ideals of equal representation. And obviously the purpose of a diversity program is to assure that those people are not marginalized.
This fiction of "viewpoint diversity" exists to move the perception of discriminatory and marginalizing viewpoints toward an imaginary center in the public eye, when they belong in a rejected extreme which would justly be excluded from discourse by an organization like OSI.
I guess this is a form of moral relativism, which is itself a form of cognitive relativism. Silly ideas, and dangerous ones because they can justify any hate, any lie. Truth and falsehood do exist, so do good and evil, and some viewpoints thus are bad and wrong.
So I reject your sentiment that ethnic, racial, gender, religious and sexual orientation diversity result in diversity that is "only skin deep". And I suggest that the candidate this is attached to ignore the question.
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Great question Aadi! As a college undergraduate (studying CS at RPI in NY) I have asked those questions many times myself! Very few friends of mine who study computer science or any tech fields are often either not very involved in or not very aware of open source. Of those who actively use and develop open source projects, too few know about the OSI. Much can be done to involve the younger generation.
One wonderful way I've been able to learn, teach, and promote open source is in my own university's open source dedicated club, RCOS (https://rcos.io/), which, as a OSI affiliated group, has given me the opportunity to propose a project and find students to work with me on it as well as get course credit for working on projects! From what I've heard from RCOS, very few of these sorts of clubs exist in universities, and its probably even more rare in high school!
The OSI could certainly work to encourage universities to start organizations that allow students to explore open source and develop a community that can introduce them to the open source world. Movements can also be made on more local levels to open open source clubs in high schools. If the OSI got involved in this (which is what I would propose I am elected) then many students would have the opportunity to learn the *official* tenets of open source as well as getting a head start on learning and using open source technologies.
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I asked questions of a number of candidates. All but one answered (so far), and all of the answers were really good IMO. I didn't ask questions of all of them in the hope that others would.
I really appreciate that the candidates have their heart in this. This isn't really the sort of election where there are opponents.
14 Mar
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Great question, Aadi,
I think we need to take some of the existing educational programs, see if they are good enough or need more work, make them easy to pull offline and use, and encourage STEM teachers to add them to curricula. ARRL does this for ham radio and has a summer workshop for teachers with grants to fly them to it and lodge them. Why shouldn't we do it for Open Source? This takes volunteers to work on it. If people like you volunteer and take on the project, we can get it done. We have corporate friends who could fund this.
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Great question, Aadi,
I think we need to take some of the existing educational programs, see if they are good enough or need more work, make them easy to pull offline and use, and encourage STEM teachers to add them to curricula. ARRL does this for ham radio and has a summer workshop for teachers with grants to fly them to it and lodge them. Why shouldn't we do it for Open Source. This takes volunteers to work on it. If people like you volunteer and take on the project, we can get it done. We have corporate friends who could fund this.
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Great question, Aadi,
I think we need to take some of the existing educational programs, make them easy to pull offline and use, and encourage STEM teachers to add them to curricula. ARRL does this for ham radio and has a summer workshop for teachers with grants to fly them to it and lodge them. Why shouldn't we do it for Open Source. This takes volunteers to work on it. If people like you volunteer and take on the project, we can get it done. We have corporate friends who could fund this.
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15 Mar
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You are lucky. I have consulted as an intellectual property specialist for companies that decided that compliance wasn't worth the cost. I am bound by NDA and law from revealing who they are.
You are absolutely right about OSD#9. That word "distributed" made sense in June-July 1997 when it was written for DFSG, and is too narrow now.
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You are lucky. I have consulted as an intellectual property specialist for companies that decided that compliance wasn't worth the cost. I am bound by NDA from revealing who they are.
You are absolutely right about OSD#9. That word "distributed" made sense in June-July 1997 when it was written for DFSG, and is too narrow now.
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I am also neuroatypical. I had a motor deficit and didn't speak clearly for much of my youth, and I still walk on my toes once in a while. I probably have ADD and could be on the spectrum, but they didn't diagnose in the '60's the way they do today. Back then, a lot of people didn't even believe that we should be mainstreamed in school! Things are better today, although we have a lot farther to go.
It's important to recognize that Open Source and technical fields in general are places where people with social difficulties can feel a sense of belonging that they might not achieve in other parts of their lives. We need standards of behavior but we also need to understand that what for many are painfully obvious social gaffes are not so easy to recognize for some of us.
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Molly, I found this paragraph on your blog important enough to repeat here:
With licenses like the Server Side Public License, proposals like the Commons Clause, and criticism of the Open Source Definition, it’s become more important than ever to push for the integrity and necessity of open source. Open source is not a developmental model — though there are certain models of development enabled by using an open source license. Open Source is about user freedom. If I want to make sure our rights are respected in technology, there is no better place to do it than on the front lines.
Very well said!
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14 Mar
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Mariatta Wijaya, 2019 14 Mar, 12:21
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While I'm sure you have the best of intentions, I hope you aren't in any position of leadership in FOSS. You come of as excessively confrontational over non-FOSS politics.
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Tobie Langel, 2019 14 Mar, 08:25
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Sorry, far too late probably but what do you want to do for / at the OSI? Other candidates usually include a section on their intentions as well as an about me (yours is very interesting!)
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2019 Board of Directors Election Candidates 14 Mar, 07:18
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What do you think could be done to involve more students into the OSI?
As a high-schooler, I consider myself fortunate enough to know enough and care about open source but there are a lot more students who don't, especially in developing nations. As such, I'd say the only program I've witnessed that helps promote Open Source globally among teens has been Google Code-in.
I'd like to know what more could possibly be done considering it is the younger generation that will represent all that we stand for in the future.
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13 Mar
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ClearlyDefined Monthly Board Report: March, 2019 13 Mar, 12:45
09 Mar
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Christine, you did address policy issues and you got my vote because you did. Some candidates still have not. And obviously you could instruct me on women's issues, although I'm trying hard. I got to deal with a male professor tone-policing a woman scientist this week. It frustrated me that this still goes on in 2019. I'm sure it frustrates you more.
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Christine, you did address policy issues and you got my vote because you did. Some candidates still have not. And obviously you could instruct me on women's issues, although I'm trying hard. I got to deal with a male professor tone-policing a woman scientist this week. It frustrated me that this still goes on in 2019.
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Christine, you did address policy issues and you got my vote because you did. Some candidates still have not. And obviously you could instruct me on women's issues.
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Christine, you did address policy issues and you got my vote because you did. Some candidates still have not.
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Christine, you did address policy issues and got my vote. Some candidates still have not. Some did it after I prompted them with questions on their pages. I refrained from placing a question on every candidate's page, leaving that for the rest of the electorate.
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Actually Bruce, I think I dealt with almost all of your bullet points, not by addressing them specifically, but in my thoughts about open source, the players in the current evolution of open source, and what can and can not be accomplished through open source licensing. About the only issue that I did not address was gender issues, because I've been fighting gender and sexuality battles since the 1960s and certainly don't want those issues to be the centerpiece of my campaign. However, this old hippie can assure you that she's 104 percent on the side of equality for all peoples and for creating work and living spaces that are free from harassment and roadblocks, whether visible or invisible.
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Actually Bruce, I think I dealt with almost all of your bullet points, not by addressing them specifically, but in my thoughts about open source, the players in the current evolution of open source, and what can and can not be accomplished through open source licensing. About the only issue that I did not address was gender issues, because I've been fighting gender and sexuality battles since the 1960s and certainly don't want those issues to be the center point of my campaign. However, this old hippie can assure you that she's 104 percent on the side of equality for all peoples and for creating work and living spaces that are free from harassment and roadblocks, whether visible or invisible.
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10 Mar
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Kate Stewart, 2019 10 Mar, 10:42
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Affiliate Member Status 10 Mar, 07:05
09 Mar
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Many candidate statements here only express interest in membership-building, PR and publicity, and evangelism. This is disappointing. I would expect an OSI director to be on top of more policy issues. I would have liked to see more upon:
- Issues of women and people with different gender identities and their participation in Open Source.
- The new licenses that have recently been submitted, which tend to put the project-originator's profit ahead of freedom and place significant restrictions on use.
- Patents and Open Source, especially standard-essential patents and standards organizations that enact a "FRAND" patent policy that locks out Open Source.
- Continuing to heal the schism between Free Software and Open Source, although this is not a criticism of the current OSI: they've done a really good job of resolving the issue.
- Your favorite issue.
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Many candidate statements here only express interest in membership=building, PR and publicity, and evangelism. This is disappointing. I would expect an OSI director to be on top of more policy issues. I would have liked to see more upon:
- Issues of women and people with different gender identities and their participation in Open Source.
- The new licenses that have recently been submitted, which tend to put the project-originator's profit ahead of freedom and place significant restrictions on use.
- Patents and Open Source, especially standard-essential patents and standards organizations that enact a "FRAND" patent policy that locks out Open Source.
- Continuing to heal the schism between Free Software and Open Source, although this is not a criticism of the current OSI: they've done a really good job of resolving the issue.
- Your favorite issue.
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I would tend to agree that data collection and distribution is probably something that needs to be handled in terms of legislation. Organizations such as OSI and EFF could perhaps be most useful here through lobbying efforts. Of course, this would only be possible in countries where OSI has a presence, which would be yet another reason why OSI should work on expanding our membership around the world.
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I would tend to agree that data collection and distribution is probably something that needs to be handled in terms of legislation. Organizations such as OSI and EFF could perhaps be most useful here through lobbying efforts.
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I agree with your first assertion completely. It's probably not going to be possible to stay within the Open Source Definition and create a license that will prevent another entity from using your software in a way that's detrimental to your business. I think it's important to remember that open source is not, and has never been, a business model. If an open source developer and/or vendor's business is threatened by a company's use of its open source software, as long as that company is in compliance with the license, there's little OSI can do to help.
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I don't think that getting companies to adopt open source is an issue any more. About a year ago Craig McLuckie, one of the original developers of Kubernetes and co-founder of Heptio (now a part of VMware), told me that the majority of Fortune 500 companies he was contacting weren't interested in even talking to vendors unless their solutions were open source. That battle is won. Commercial users are by far the largest users of open source these days.
From my vantage point, it appears that the overwhelming majority of enterprise users of open source pay great attention to license compliance and many, if not most, are contributing code upstream, even when they're using the software completely in-house and have no obligation to do so.
Does this mean there are no bad actors? Of course not. One thing that users and developers can do, especially if they're OSI members, is to bring any compliance issues they know about to the attention of OSI so that we can decide what actions to take on an individual basis.
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I don't think that getting companies to adopt open source is an issue any more. About a year ago Craig McLuckie, one of the original developers of Kubernetes and co-founder of Heptio (now a part of VMware), told me that the majority of Fortune 500 companies he was contacting weren't interested in even talking to vendors unless their solutions weren't open source. That battle is won. Commercial users are by far the largest users of open source these days.
From my vantage point, it appears that the overwhelming majority of enterprise users of open source pay great attention to license compliance and many, if not most, are contributing code upstream, even when they're using the software completely in-house and have no obligation to do so.
Does this mean there are no bad actors? Of course not. One thing that users and developers can do, especially if they're OSI members, is to bring any compliance issues they know about to the attention of OSI so that we can decide what actions to take on an individual basis.
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I agree, Bruce. Although we know much more about China than we once did, the country remains mostly a mystery to most of us in the U.S. And I think Hong Phuc Dang is entirely correct in her assertion that we should ask "how we could connect with people there and how we could bring together different communities around the world to share ideas, exchange knowledge and collaborate on projects."
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Macros 09 Mar, 07:30
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Bruce
This is becoming an interesting and I hope worthwhile discussion, however, I want to make it clear, the expression 'only skin deep' was not mine, but the anonymous question. Sadly the world we live in seems to bounce from one extreme to another and the online culture where a level of anonimity can be achieved as well as the lack of any context or emotion is the written word, or perhaps more, where the emotion and context are often misunderstood, the need for an effective method of dealing with issues to ensure the harmony of the community becomes essential.
One of the roles of the OSI has to be to ensure the environment is both open and safe as well as being inviting and conducive to the aims of the organisation. To that end a level of monitoring is required along with a reporting and escallation policy which can deal with any incident. A published code of conduct (CoC) needs to be enforced and easily understood by all who engage. Ultimately with an ombudsman who can adjudicate should it be necessary.
In so many online communities, there are many examples of where an imbalance diverts the attention of those involved away from the core aims of the organisation, thus ultimately threatening to destroy the community from within. I believe that my experience over many years both commercially and within the not for profit sector make me an ideal candidate to be able to assist OSI with the continued building and strengthening of a harmonious community which runs effectively and coherently to its stated goals.