Licenses, Features and the Open Source Community in Higher Education

03-August-2005

[ Open Source Conferences ]
By Jim Farmer, OSS Watch, July 4, 2005
Good presentation indicating the size of the e-learning market (about 30 billion USD (+/- 30%)) and the importance of open source in serving that market. The author emphasizes several times that open standards, rather than open source, will be key to accessing that market. Some good discussion near the end of the presentation describing open source business models. Via Stephen Downes and Scott Leslie, who also provides a link to the rest of the presentations from the Building Open Source Communities conference , held recently in Edinburgh.
Building Open Source Communities was a one-day conference held in Edinburgh that explored such topics as:

  • how do open source software projects organise themselves
  • why do some projects grow rapidly
  • how does the licence choice affect the kind of community that develops
  • what is the relationship between developers and end-users how important is leadership


    • Other Presentations included:
  • What is an open source software community? Sebastian Rahtz, Manager, OSS Watch
  • Licences, Features, and Community: The Path to Sustainability Jim Farmer, Community Liaison, Sakai Educational Partners Program
  • Co-located agile development Helen Sharp, The Open University
  • Serving Maths: Experiences from a JISC Distributed e-Learning Project Gustav Delius, University of York
    • Life and times in the Apache community Andrew Savory, Director, Luminas
  • MoodleMoot: Meeting Real People from a Virtual Community Sean Keogh, UK Moodle Partner


    • Building Open Source Communities was organised by OSS Watch, the open source software advisory service for UK HE and FE.

    Fiona Concannon; 03-August-2005 09:58:34 forum (0)

    2nd International CALIBRE Conference

    28-July-2005

    [ Open Source Conferences ]
    INVITATION to CALIBRE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2nd International CALIBRE Conference, entitled "The Next Generation of Software Engineering: Integrating Open Source, Agile Methods and Global Software Development". The conference will take place on the 9th of September 2005, in the University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
    SPEAKERS and TOPICS The conference is focused potential of open source for the secondary software sector. It includes topics such as: open source for the automotive industry, air traffic control; and industrial case studies on agile methods and distributed software development. A number of speakers will address commercial licensing issues and the organisational implications of open source. The CALIBRE team are also delighted to welcome international experts from Japan and Africa: Prof. Victor van Reijswoud Head of CSIS, Uganda Martyrs University, Africa, and Yukaka Niibe, Chairman of Free Software Initiative, Japan. Government officials include: Minister Michael Ahern, Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, Ireland and Jesus Villasante, Head of the Directorate-General Information Society and Media, from the European Commission. For further details please contact the conference organiser Andrea Deverell Tel: +353 61 202737 Email: andrea.deverell@ul.ie Website: www.calibre.ie

    Fiona Concannon; 28-July-2005 15:57:21 forum (0)