http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org open source software innovation support centre Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:25:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When I first became involved with Mozilla through working on a Mozilla Foundation accessibility grant, I quickly discovered the impressive open source educational work at Seneca College in Toronto, lead by David Humphry and Chris Tyler. Students on the computer science course get the enviable opportunity to work on projects ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/07/03/how-seneca-college-approach-open-source-education/ In my last post I argue that open development can both reduce costs and improve quality. Today, Steve Lee pointed me to an article in Business Week that illustrates the point very well. The article identifies Ken Saunders, a 41-year-old, legally blind volunteer for Mozilla as a prime example of the ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/07/02/innovation-through-open-development/ The EPSRC recently issued a call titled "Software Sustainability". This topic is something that is close to the heart of OSS Watch, so naturally OSS Watch submitted a bid (and, in fact, were named as partners on a number of other bids). Collaboration is the key OSS Watch have been acutely aware ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/06/30/software-sustainability/ To be honest I'm enthusiastic about the potential of the European ÆGIS project which launched last week. I see the blend of open source and accessibility, open accessibility, as having the potential to provide the most appropriate solutions for users of accessibility and assistive technology. So I've spent the last ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/06/12/the-aegis-1st-pan-european-open-accessibility-workshop/ HTML 5 - the next version of the language used to create web pages - is due to be finalised somewhere between 2010 and 2012, depending on whether you believe the W3C or the WHATWG, the two groups who are contributing to the language specification. One of the expected benefits of the new ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/06/11/games/ Towards the end of April I found myself spending  2 enjoyable days in the company of OMII-UK members at the OMII-UK collaboration Workshop along with others involved in e-Research in various capacities.  Steve Brewer,  project manager of the Engage project, invited me to provide OSS Watch input at the event ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/06/02/open-development-embraced-by-omii-uk-projects/ From time to time OSS Watch will be publishing guest blog posts here to highlight interesting opinions from around the FOSS community. This post is by Gerry Gavigan, chairman of the Open Source Consortium. Elections for the European Parliament are scheduled for 2 June 2009, and this seems like an ideal ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/06/01/guest-post-foss-and-the-european-parliament/ As we mentioned back in February, Microsoft has sued Dutch GPS device and software manufacturer Tomtom over - among other things - Tomtom's use of GNU Linux; specifically a Microsoft-developed file-system component within GNU/Linux,  FAT. In our previous post we speculated that the Open Invention Network might play a role in this drama and indeed on ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/05/01/battle-ended-smoke-not-clearing/ Open source licence proliferation has long been recognised to be a problem. The Open Source Iniatitives License Proliferation Committee wrote the following in May 2006: too many different licenses makes it difficult for licensors to choose Some people use "license proliferation" to mean that there are just too ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/04/16/one-less-open-source-licence-to-worry-about/ Here at OSS Watch we often get asked things like "which is the best open source twitter alternative" or "which is the best open source financial managment tool?" We don't answer these questions, and for good reason. Instead we focus on helping people understand how to find and evaluate open ... http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2009/04/15/procuring-software-is-not-even-as-simple-as-buying-a-car/