NESTA: new look economy will be built on high tech and innovation
The UK can only achieve healthy economic growth and job creation by boosting its high-tech capabilities and innovation across the economy, according to a report published by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).
'Involve universities and local tech companies when moving to open source'
Public administrations considering a move to open source should make sure they involve universities and IT companies, said Martin Garcia, head of IT at the department for Infrastructure and Transport at the Valencia regional administration, at a conference in the city of Guadalajara, Spain.
The give and take of OSS
According to a recent Accenture survey of IT executives, open-source software is being heavily adopted, with 50 per cent of those surveyed 'fully committed' to open source, 69 per cent planning to up their investment in open source, and 38 per cent planning to migrate mission-critical software to open-source alternatives in 2010. However, a surprising 29 per cent are unwilling to contribute back their code modifications to the relevant communities. Is this a problem?
Open Core and the Open Source Business Model Debate
The past few weeks have seen a resurgence in the debate over whether or not open core is a valid open source business model or not. There has been a lot of passionate and pragmatic discourse from lots of knowledgeable people. Stephen Walli considers the issues.
Why Does FOSS Development Lag the Innovation Curve?
Are open source developers on the ball about delivering alternatives to cutting-edge proprietary products and services, or do they lag the proprietary innovators? Sam Dean suggests that open source developers don't deliver key products in key categories fast enough and considers why this development lag exists.
How to get your open source project to 1.0
Damien Katz, whose Apache CouchDB recently hit 1.0, shares tips on creating a successful open source project. These include:
- decide why you are creating a project and what problems it solves
- code comes first
- know what you aren't
- community wants to help
Much to take forward from TransferSummit
More than a month on, and people are still talking about TransferSummit. Shirely Evans of Techdis has posted her impressions: 'In summary I felt that there was something there for everyone in the fields of OS, business, education and technology. Networking opportunities were plentiful and rich as was the tweeting. I have been left with much to think about and much to take forward both work-wise and on a personal development basis.'
Participating in a gift economy: Are you giving enough?
Why do open innovation and open development work? It has to do with giving. As Jonathan Opp notes, 'open source communities are often compared to gift economies. You participate. You solve shared problems. Others do the same.' He quotes Chris Brogan, author of Trust Agents: 'Humans understand how favors work. Doing and trading favors is woven into the fabric of our culture. When people are recipients of a favor, it's in their nature to want to pay it back.
Four types of crowdsourcing
Steve Keifer recently finished reading Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing. 'One of the key takeaways I gained from the book was that there are multiple approaches to crowdsourcing. Some depend upon active collaboration within virtual community of individuals, while others benefit from the opposite. For example, prediction markets maximize value not through collaboration, but from minimal interaction between participants.
Open Source: it's all LinkedIn
The professional networking site LinkedIn is built with community managed open source. 'At LinkedIn, we love open source,' we read in a recent blog. 'We’re committed to contributing to Hadoop and Pig and giving back to the open source community through projects like Azkaban and Voldemort.
