Conmergence

The social web is free, shouldn’t your social business software be free too?
Join Jay Batson, Acquia co-founder, and Bryan House, senior director of marketing at Acquia, for a one-hour webinar presentation, discussing how to get the most out of Drupal Commons.
Drupal Commons is a pre-configured distribution, offered to help organizations quickly build and deploy community-based business applications. Built according to standard Drupal practices, Drupal Commons includes a collection of community contributed modules and Fusion-based theme, giving developers and themers a flexible platform to create custom social business applications.
What will attendees learn:

    * Overview of the Drupal Commons distribution
    * A discussion of the business use cases for social business software
    * How to get involved in the Drupal Commons community and influence its evolution

This webinar is intended for line of business considering social business technologies, as well as Drupal developers, site owners who want to learn more about how Drupal Commons can help them deploy social business applications faster.

Date & time:    Thursday, August 12, 2010 – 1:00 PM EDT
Duration:    1 hour
Speakers:    Bryan House, senior director of marketing at Acquia, and Jay Batson, Acquia co-founder

Register Now: http://bit.ly/c49RnG

We hope that you will join us. If there are other topics you would like us to cover in future Webinars, please drop me a line.

Bryan House
Senior Director, Marketing
Follow Acquia on Twitter
Get a free, hosted Drupal 7 site: http://www.drupalgardens.com

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (http://www.cis-india.org/).

CIS, in collaboration with Hivos’ Knowledge Programme (http://www.hivos.net/), launched a project, Digital Natives with a Cause?(http://www.cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrep) in 2008. As younger generations growing up in emerging information societies learn to engage with their geo-political and socio-cultural environments, a form of technology-mediated identity, popularly dubbed as the Digital Native, has been the discussion of a growing public and intellectual debate. These digital natives are transforming the ways in which they understand themselves as well as the world around them while engaging with Internet and digital technologies. Young users of technology are moving towards a reconfiguration of the world, where questions of identity, political participation, social transformation, cultural production, education, and livelihood are being restructured. The Digital Natives Research Programme focuses on producing new knowledge frameworks, vocabularies and lexicons to understand, investigate and support these new citizens or netizens rather who shall be the agents of change in the future. After the initial research (http://www.cis-india.org/publications/cis/nishant/dnrep.pdf/view), CIS will gather responses from young users of technology to help us understand, document and support different practices aimed at social transformation and political participation more efficiently.

We believe that the world we live in is changing rapidly and the rise of Internet technologies has a lot to do with it. As young users of technology (as opposed to young users who use technology) adopt, adapt and use these new technologised tools to interact with their environment, new ways of effecting change emerge. This survey is an attempt to capture some of the information which gives us an insight into who the people are using these technologies, the ways in which they use them and what their perceptions and experiences are.

The survey will not take more than seven minutes of your precious time and it will help us get a better sense of the way things are. Please click here (http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG9reUVvQ0w4d1ZER3lKOUtFanZMUnc6MA) to start the survey. We would also appreciate if you could share the link to the survey with your friends and relatives via your blog, tweets or other social networking pages. Your help would go a long way in enabling us to find out how the youth of today are shaping the society and influencing the political/social scenario around them. Please note that the data collected as part of the survey would be anonymous and not used for any commercial purposes. We would also acknowledge your help in preparing the final report.

In case you need any further information or clarifications, please feel free to call us at +91 – 080 – 25350955 or write to us at nishant@cis-india.org.

With best compliments,

Prasad

News Updates:
Worries voiced over ID Project
The Government of India’s Unique Identification (UID) Project came under flak at a workshop organised jointly by the Citizen Action Forum (CAF), the People’s Union of Civil Liberties – Karnataka, the Alternative Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society – An article in The Hindu – 17th April.
http://cis-india.org/news/worries-voiced-over-id-project

UID: A debate on the Fundamental Rights
UID: A debate on the Fundamental Rights – was jointly organized by the Citizen Action Forum, People’s Union for Civil Liberties – Karnataka, Alternative Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society on April 16th at IAT, Queens Road, Bangalore – An article in the Prajavani news paper – April 17th.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-a-debate-on-fundamental-rights

UID is an invasion of Privacy: Experts
The Nandan Nilekani headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) came in for much criricism at the first of a series of debates on the issue organised in the city on Friday – Deccan Chronicle, April 17th.
http://cis-india.org/news/uid-is-an-invasion-of-privacy-experts

Experts debate on UID and rights
Bangalore, Apr 16, DHNS: A debate on ‘UID and Fundamental Rights’ organised by several city-based organisations, discussed the social, ethical issues, economic and legal issues that accompanies the UID.
http://cis-india.org/news/experts-debate-on-uid-and-rights

Amendment to Copyright Act opposed
A report on the press conference held on 15th April, at the Press Club, Bangalore: The Hindu
http://cis-india.org/news/amendment-to-copyright-act-opposed

They fight for the visually challenged
Times News Network – A report on the press conference held at the Press Club, Bangalore on 15th April, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/news/they-fight-for-the-visually-challenged

Digital Natives Research Project Coordinator
The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, in collaboration with Hivos Netherlands, is looking for a Research Project Coordinator to help develop a knowledge network and coordinate international workshops for the project "Digital Natives with a Cause?"
http://cis-india.org/news/research-coordinator

Expel or not? That is the question
The decision of an international school to expel 14 students for their alleged ‘promiscuous’ behaviour has led to much debate and discussion.
http://cis-india.org/news/expel-or-not

Info

Nokia eyes GeNext to tap mobile email mkt
Finnish handset giant banks on youth to be in the technology race
http://cis-india.org/news/nokia-eyes-genNext

Research
Critical Point of View: Videos
The Second event for the Critical Point of View reader on Wikipedia was held in Amsterdam, by the Institute of Network Cultures and the Centre for Internet and Society. A wide range of scholars, academics, researchers, practitioners, artists and users came together to discuss questions on design, analytics, access, education, theory, art, history and processes of knowledge production. The videos for the full event are now available for free viewing and dissemination.

Info
Colour Me Political
What are the tools that Digital Natives use to mobilise groups towards a particular cause? How do they engage with crises in their immediate environments? Are they using their popular social networking sites and web 2.0 applications for merely entertainment? Or are these tools actually helping them to re-articulate the realm of the political? Nishant Shah looks at the recent Facebook Colour Meme to see how new forms of political participation and engagement are being initiated by young people across the world.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dn2

Meet the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
Digital Natives live their lives differently. But sometimes, they also die their lives differently! What happens when we die online? Can the digital avatar die? What is digital life? The Web 2.0 Suicide machine that has now popularly been called the ‘anti-social-networking’ application brings some of these questions to the fore. As a part of the Hivos-CIS "Digital Natives with a Cause?" research programme, Nishant Shah writes about how Life on the Screen is much more than just a series of games.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dn1

Digital Natives with a Cause?
Digital Natives With A Cause? – a product of the Hivos-CIS collaboration charts the scholarship and practice of youth and technology with a specific attention for developing countries to create a framework that consolidates existing paradigms and informs further research and intervention within diverse contexts and cultures.
http://cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrep

Advocacy

Accessibility
e-Accessibility: A Wiki Project
Envisaged and funded by the National Internet Exchange of India, and executed by the Centre for Internet and Society, a Wiki site pertaining to issues of disability and e-accessibility has recently been launched.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/e-accessibility-a-wiki-project

Copyright Law as a tool for Inclusion
Can Copyright Law be used as a tool for Inclusion? Rahul Cherian examines this in his blog on copyright.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/copyright-law-as-tool-for-inclusion

Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?
Is Web accessibility just a Government Mandate? Should private sites be ignored? Wesolowski examines this in light of the steps taken by ictQATAR to make its website accessible to W3C standards, and hopes that Qatar and eventually all other Arab nations will follow suit and make Web accessibility much more of a mandate.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/accessibility/blog/web-accessibility-government-mandate

Intellectual Property
When Copyright Goes Bad
A part of the Access to Knowledge Project, this short film by Consumers International is available on DVD and online at A2Knetwork.org/film.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/when-copyright-goes-bad

Openness
Research Project on Open Video in India
Open Video Alliance and the Centre for Internet and Society are calling for researchers for a project on open video in India, its potentials, limitations, and recommendations on policy interventions.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/open-video-research

Does the Social Web need a Googopoly?
While the utility of the new social tool Buzz is still under question, the bold move into social space taken last week by the Google Buzz team has Gmail users questioning privacy implications of the new feature. In this post, I posit that Buzz highlights two privacy challenges of the social web. First, the application has sidestepped the consensual and contextual qualities desirable of social spaces. Secondly, Google’s move highlights the increasingly competitive and convergent nature of the social media landscape.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/does-the-social-web-need-a-googopoly

The (in)Visible Subject: Power, Privacy and Social Networking
In this entry, I will argue that the interplay between privacy and power on social network sites works ultimately to subject individuals to the gaze of others, or to alternatively render them invisible. Individual choices concerning privacy preferences must, therefore, be informed by the intrinsic relationship which exists between publicness/privateness and subjectivity/obscurity.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/openness/blog/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking

Internet Governance
Does the Safe-Harbor Program Adequately Address Third Parties Online?
While many citizens outside of the US and EU benefit from the data privacy provisions the Safe Harbor Program, it remains unclear how successfully the program can govern privacy practices when third-parties continue to gain more rights over personal data. Using Facebook as a site of analysis, I will attempt to shed light on the deficiencies of the framework for addressing the complexity of data flows in the online ecosystem.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/does-the-safe-harbor-program-adequately-address-third-parties-online

Sense and censorship
Sunil Abraham examines Google’s crusade against censorship in China in wake of the attacks on its servers in this article published in the Indian Express.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/sense-and-censorship

Report on the Fourth Internet Governance Forum for Commonwealth IGF
This report by Pranesh Prakash reflects on the question of how useful is the IGF in the light of meetings on the themes of intellectual property, freedom of speech and privacy.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/igov/blog/report-on-fourth-IGF

Telecom
The Right Ring Tone
Focus on improving service quality with a strong partner, and not on one-shot stake sales, says Shyam Ponappa in his article published in the Business Standard on April 1, 2010.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/telecom/blog/ring-tone

Other Advocacy
Maps for Making Change Wiki Now Open to the Public
Since December 2009, CIS has been coordinating and nurturing the Maps for Making Change project, organised in collaboration with Tactical Tech. During the past four months, participants have been on a challenging yet fertile and inspiring journey that is now slowly coming to an end. Would you like to know more about what has happened in the time that has passed? The Maps for Making Change wiki is a good place to start.
http://cis-india.org/advocacy/others/maps-for-making-change-wiki-now-open-to-the-public

Look forward to your feedback.

Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required.

If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.

Best Regards

Radha

Centre for Internet and Society
No. 194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur,
Bangalore – 560071
P: +91 80 2535 0955
P: +91 80 4092 6283
W: www.cis-india.org

S 1714 IS
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 1714
To authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks, and for other purposes.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
September 24, 2009
Mr. DURBIN introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
A BILL
To authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Open College Textbook Act of 2009’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The growth of the Internet has enabled the creation and sharing of open content, including open educational resources.
(2) The President has proposed a new, significant Federal investment in the creation of online open-source courses for community colleges that will make learning more accessible, adaptable, and affordable for students.
(3) The President has challenged the United States with a goal of having the highest college graduation rate in the world by 2020.
(4) More than 80 percent of the 23,000,000 jobs that will be created in the next 10 years will require postsecondary education, but only 36 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds are currently enrolled in postsecondary education.
(5) The high cost of college textbooks continues to be a barrier for many students in achieving higher education, and according to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 200,000 qualified students fail to enroll in college each year due to cost.
(6) The College Board reported that for the 2007-2008 academic year an average student spent an estimated $805 to $1,229 on college books and supplies.
(7) Making high quality open textbooks freely available to the general public could significantly lower college textbook costs and increase accessibility to such education materials.
(8) Open textbooks can improve learning and teaching by creating course materials that are more flexible, adaptable, and accessible through the use of technology.
SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) DIRECTOR- The term ‘Director’ means the Director of the National Science Foundation.
(2) INSTITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION- The term ‘institution of higher education’ has the meaning given the term in section 101 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1001).
(3) OPEN LICENSE- The term ‘open license’ means an irrevocable intellectual property license that grants the public the right to access, customize, and distribute a copyrighted material.
(4) OPEN TEXTBOOK- The term ‘open textbook’ means a textbook or set of course materials in electronic format designed for use in a college course at an institution of higher education that is licensed under an open license.
(5) SECRETARY- The term ‘Secretary’ means the Secretary of Education.
SEC. 4. GRANT PROGRAM.
(a) Grants Authorized- From the amounts appropriated under subsection (i), the Secretary is authorized to award grants, on a competitive basis, to eligible entities to carry out the activities described in this section, including creating, updating, or adapting open textbooks. The Secretary shall award grants in a manner that will result in the creation of a comprehensive slate of high quality course materials for introductory courses in a variety of subject areas.
(b) Eligible Entity- In this section, the term ‘eligible entity’ means–
(1) an institution of higher education;
(2) a professor or group of professors at an institution of higher education; or
(3) a nonprofit or for-profit organization that produces open textbooks.
(c) Duration- Grants awarded under this section shall be 1 year in duration.
(d) Applications-
(1) IN GENERAL- Each eligible entity desiring a grant under this section shall submit an application to the Secretary at such time, in such manner, and accompanied by such information as the Secretary may reasonably require.
(2) CONTENTS- Each application submitted under paragraph (1) shall include a description of the project to be completed with grant funds and–
(A) a plan for quality review and review of accuracy of content;
(B) a plan for access to ensure the widest possible availability of the digital version of the open textbook;
(C) a plan for distribution and adoption of the open textbook to ensure the widest possible adoption of the open textbook in postsecondary courses, including, where applicable, a marketing plan or a plan to partner with for-profit or nonprofit organizations to assist in marketing and distribution; and
(D) a plan for tracking and reporting formal adoptions of the open textbook within postsecondary institutions, including an estimate of the number of students impacted by the adoptions.
(e) Special Consideration- In awarding grants under this section, the Secretary shall give special consideration to applications that demonstrate the greatest potential to produce–
(1) the highest quality and most marketable open textbooks;
(2) open textbooks that correspond to the highest enrollment courses at institutions of higher education;
(3) open textbooks that are easily utilized by faculty members at institutions of higher education; and
(4) open textbooks created in partnership with for-profit or nonprofit organizations to assist in marketing and distribution.
(f) Uses of Grants-
(1) OPEN TEXTBOOKS- An eligible entity that receives a grant under this section shall–
(A) create a new open textbook for use in postsecondary coursework;
(B) update an open textbook for use in postsecondary coursework; or
(C) adapt a textbook into an open format for use in postsecondary coursework.
(2) LICENSE- An open textbook created, updated, or adapted under paragraph (1) shall be licensed through an open license.
(3) ACCESSIBILITY- The full and complete digital content of each open textbook created, updated, or adapted under paragraph (1) shall be–
(A) posted on an easily accessible and interoperable website, which site shall be identified to the Secretary by the eligible entity; and
(B) made available free of charge to, and may be downloaded, redistributed, changed, revised, or otherwise altered by, any member of the general public.
(g) Review Process- The Secretary shall develop a peer review and evaluation process in consultation with the Director to ensure that open textbooks created, updated, or adapted under this section are of the highest quality, accurate in content, and meet or exceed market quality and accessibility standards.
(h) Report- Upon an eligible entity’s completion of a project supported under this section, the eligible entity shall prepare and submit a report to the Secretary regarding all project costs, including the value of any volunteer labor and institutional capital used for the project.
(i) Authorization of Appropriations- There are authorized to be appropriated $15,000,000 to carry out this section for fiscal year 2010 and such sums as are necessary for each of the 5 succeeding fiscal years.
SEC. 5. LICENSING MATERIALS WITH A FEDERAL CONNECTION.
(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, educational materials such as curricula and textbooks created through grants distributed by Federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation, for use in elementary, secondary, or postsecondary courses shall be licensed under an open license.
(b) Accessibility- The full and complete digital content of each of the materials created as described in subsection (a) shall be–
(1) posted on an easily accessible and interoperable website, which site shall be identified to the Secretary by the grant recipient; and
(2) made available free of charge to, and may be downloaded, redistributed, changed, revised, or otherwise altered by, any member of the general public.
SEC. 6. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
It is the sense of Congress that institutions of higher education should encourage the consideration of open textbooks by professors within the generally accepted principles of academic freedom that established the right and responsibility of faculty members, individually and collectively, to select course materials that are pedagogically most appropriate for their classes.
SEC. 7. REPORT TO CONGRESS.
Not later than September 30, 2015, the Secretary shall prepare and submit a report to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions of the Senate and the Committee on Education and Labor of the House of Representatives detailing–
(1) the open textbooks created, updated, or adapted under this Act;
(2) the adoption of such open textbooks; and
(3) the savings generated for students, States, and the Federal Government though the use of open textbooks.

We are delighted to announce the release of the version #5 of SocialCalc activity on Sugar. We have introduced a number of features in SocialCalc on Sugar since the last community release -

1. Localization in Spanish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Chinese (simplified), French, German and Portuguese.
2. Ability to read and edit single sheet Excel .xls files.
3. Sharing of activity over the mesh network.
4. Ability to read and edit single sheet Lotus notes.
5. Optimization of the save files. The sheet extents will include just the part that has data. This feature also “canonicalizes” the saved data in other ways, such as removing no longer used formats and color definitions from the save file.
6. Localization made easy, especially of text in the user interface. All of the text that is normally seen during operation is now easily localizable by changing a single file, socialcalcconstants.js.

Please visit -

1. SocialCalc on Sugar – http://seeta.in/j/products-and-services/socialcalc-on-sugar.html

2. SocialCalc on Sugar wiki page – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=SocialCalc_on_Sugar

3. Download pages – the version #5 along with its source code can be downloaded from http://seeta.in/j/downloads.html or from activities.sugarlabs.org.

4. For Educators

Video on using Charting Tools – http://www.scalablec.com/videos/14/socialcalc-charting-tools-video-tutorial
Guide for using Charting Tools – http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Ndoiron/SocialCalc

We look forward to hearing your feedback and experience with SocialCalc on Sugar. We started a group about SocialCalc on Sugar for educators, content engineers, developers, translators, curriculum developers, testers and graphic designers on ScalableC (www.scalablec.com) to share ideas, collaborate and engineer curriculum materials and develop case-studies on using SocialCalc on Sugar at schools. Please join the group if you are a member at ScalableC. If you are not a member, please ask for an invitation at http://www.scalablec.com/register.php with the message “interested in joining SocialCalc on Sugar group”.

Please visit the developers’ guide documented for each feature -

a. Collaboration of SocialCalc in Sugar – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Collaboration_in_SocialCalc_on_Sugar
b. Localization Infrastructure – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=SocialCalc_Localization
c. Interoperability between SocialCalc on Sugar and Excel (.xls format only) – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=File:Interoperability_SocialCalc_on_Sugar_and_Excel.pdf
d. Interoperability between SocialCalc on Sugar and Lotus Notes – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Interoperability_between_SocialCalc_on_Sugar_and_Lotus_Notes
e. Manual for Programmers – http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Guide

Opportunity for Developers and Content Creators -

We are looking for developers and content creators, who are interested in participating with us in a number of initiatives -

1. Develop teacher training videos for SocialCalc on Sugar in their local languages;

2. Develop interoperability between SocialCalc on Sugar and Excel (from MS Office 2007 – xlsx format), Apple iwork Numbers, Google Spreadsheet, Gnumeric, Open Spreadsheet format and KSpread;

3. Engineer features to modify the charts (like colors, fonts, scale etc.);

4. Integration of SocialCalc with Paint, Write, Arithmetic, Physics, Turtle Art and E-Toys and other Sugar activities;

5. Development of 2-D and 3-D area charts and surface charts;

6. Creation of shapes like rectangles, block arrows, equation shapes;

7. Creation of templates that could be used as teacher tools (example – income task problem sums);

8. Localization of SocialCalc on Sugar.

If you are interested, please write to us at socialcalc.sugar@seeta.in.

Best Regards,

SocialCalc on Sugar Team

From: Ignacio Valdes

Significant work that is yielding results has occurred in the last year such as in the VistA community. But I think I am just beginning to ‘get’ the power of Free/Open Source. The state of the art for open source development with collaboration, source control, packaging and integrated websites like Launchpad.net is becoming just mind-blowing.

Think of development that resembles a multi-player video game with few stop signs or speed limits. That seems to be what is available on Launchpad.net. It isn’t just source control, it has a higher level of abstraction through the ability to route branches that seems to allow meritocracy in a way that old school developers like me marvel at. It is a little difficult at first to get your head around. It seems to be software as a bunch of state-space vectors. Crazy.

Which plays into Metcalfe’s law or the network effect to Electronic Health Record software. The ability to interplay software vectors at will is just amazing and may allow unusual things to occur in the near future.

I hope to be harnessing this paradigm soon.

– IV

From: Carl Leitner

We have been using Launchpad to host our iHRIS software suite: https://www.launchpad.net/ihris-suite

We also use it to host the customizations we have done for different Ministries of Health, Faith Based Organizations etc. For example:
https://www.launchpad.net/~ihris+zanzibar
https://www.launchpad.net/~ihris+kenya
https://www.launchpad.net/ihris4pnc

We have found it very convenient for managing the various in-country implementations, and we have provided training on the use of bazaar and launchpad:
http://www.capacityproject.org/hris/blog/index.php/2009/11/first-local-ihris-developer-training-course-conducted-in-tanzania/

Although Ubuntu and Launchpad have gone a long way in easing the learning curve for people not coming from open-source, we have occasionally stumbled. If anyone is interested, I would be happy to have a conversation to develop a shared “best-practices” document for those of you working in low-resourced settings.

Cheers,
-carl

# # # #

OSFA Members,

For some time now, the OSFA Steering Committee has been considering an OSFA deliverable for 2010: a grading/report card on the various U.S. government agencies and their policies and practices as they relate to open source software and openness more generally. (By openness, we intend the same meaning as the Obama Administration: participation, collaboration, and transparency.)

With the Administration’s issuance last month of its Open Government Directive (http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive), we quickly came to an agreement that this is a project that should go forward — but with a new beginning.

We would first like to issue a set of “Guidelines for Open Government Plans,” to help inform the different agencies as they each seek to publish their mandated Open Government Plan by the April 7th due date. We are opening this discussion today; our expectation would be to issue this set of guidelines the second week of February, thus providing the agencies with sufficient time to take them into account.

We have supplied a first draft, which we expect the OSFA community to significantly improve. Our current draft is at opensourceforamerica.org/guidelines. Your comments and advice are welcome, AND please add them to the mail thread located at the bottom of the page so that we can capture them. And if you have a blog or issue a newsletter, please assist us in promoting this effort. We really would like to see our membership and influence grow.

Following publication of our guidelines, we will then begin work on a set of metrics/questions that we would intend to use to grade the agencies late this spring, following the April 7th launch of their Open Government Plans.

Thank you in advance for your assistance,

OSFA Steering Committee

The NetFPGA platform enables researchers and instructors to build working prototypes of high-speed, hardware-accelerated networking systems. The platform can be used in the classroom to teach students how to build Ethernet switches and Internet Prototcol (IP) routers using hardware rather than software. The platform can be used by researchers to prototype advanced services for next-generation networks.

The NetFPGA is an open platform and available to developers worldwide. Reference designs included with the system include an IPv4 router, an Ethernet switch, and a four-port NIC. Researchers have used the platform to build advanced network flow processing systems. Multiple platforms could be connected together to route packets over multiple subnets.

The system consists of a reprogrammable development board, reference implementations, and sample courseware. The development board itself is a PCI card that can be installed in any PC with an available full-length slot. Hosted on the board are a user-programmable FPGA (with two PowerPC processors), SRAM, DRAM, and four 1Gbps Ethernet ports.

Programming and administration of the development board are performed by the host PC via the PCI bus. This allows users to remotely develop and deploy designs since physical access to the board is not required.

# # # #

We now have over 1,000 NetFPGA devices around the world. On August 4, 2009, Digilent Inc. (the company that manufactures and distributes the NetFPGA) shipped that 1,000th card to another end user in Korea. A map that shows the worldwide locations of the deployed hardware is on-line.

-john lockwood

A 25-minute conversation between Patrick Gannon, then president and CEO of OASIS, and Gregory Maciag, CEO of the ACORD insurance standards organization, is now available online. In the interview, Gannon discusses data integration, Composite Service Architecture, cross-industry applications, and the common ground of OASIS and ACORD standards.

Fibonacci, the International Open Source magazine released on 28th September,
2009. The feedback received from the community for the magazine is highly
encouraging for all of us.

In order to promote the message of open
source far and wide, we further wish to make the magazine reachable especially
to those who are not much aware about this global movement. The role played by
the FOSS community in making up of the magazine largely led to its success.

Please further help us attain our objective of spreading knowledge
unrestrained by forwarding this mail to anyone you believe needs to know about
FOSS.

The magazine may be downloaded from http://sf-foss.iiitm.ac.in/fibonacci/

Fibonacci
Vol. 1 attracted a fabulous participation from all over the world. The magazine
features a total of 46 articles from 41
authors. Magazine committee consisted of 12 advisory board
members, 22 editorial board members, 18
organizing committee members and 25 volunteers. We are further
proud to announce a total contribution of 140 people from
13 countries and 46
organizations.

Download Fibonacci Vol. 1 from http://sf-foss.iiitm.ac.in/fibonacci/

Thanks and
Regards,
Udit Khandelwal
SF-FOSS,
IIITM Gwalior,
http://sf-foss.iiitm.ac.in/

May 6-7, 2010 – Amherst, Massachusetts

A two-day University of Massachusetts Amherst conference jointly hosted by the:

Department of Political Science 

Science, Technology, and Society Initiative (STS) 

Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP)

Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP)

National Center for Digital Government (NCDG)

KEYNOTE & DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS

Eric von Hippel is Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.  He specializes in research related to the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He also develops and teaches about practical methods that firms can use to improve their product and service development processes. He is the author of Democratizing Innovation (MIT Press, 2005) and The Sources of Innovation (Oxford, 1988).

Clay Johnson is Director of Sunlight Labs. Prior joining Sunlight, Clay was one of the four founders of Blue State Digital, the progressive left's premier technology and online strategy firm. This firm, which was born out of the Howard Dean campaign, was also responsible for Barack Obama's Web presence. At Blue State Digital, Clay was responsible for developing the organization's brand and building its initial client roster. He also had a hand at building some of the company's early technical tools. Before joining Blue State, Johnson was the lead programmer for Dean for America in 2004, overseeing the development of grassroots tools like GetLocal, DeanLink and Project Commons. Prior to entering politics, Johnson was a technologist at Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) where he helped to develop the company's Web syndication product. He also started the first Internet Knowledge Exchange, KnowPost.com, and worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a Venture Capital firm, but still claims that he learned the most from his first job — as a waiter at Waffle House in Atlanta, Georgia.

Christopher M. Kelty is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a joint appointment in the Center for Society and Genetics and in the department of Information Studies. His research focuses on the cultural significance of information technology, especially in science and engineering. He is the author most recently of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles on open source and free software, including its impact on education, nanotechnology, the life sciences, and issues of peer review and research process in the sciences and in the humanities.

APPROACH

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we use the phrase “open source” to capture this broader phenomenon. The Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined.

"Politics" in the conference title, can have many interpretations. Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software movement(s) include: national government policies related to the adoption of open source technologies or questions related to interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since differences in the political perspective appear in international contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of “open source” in other domains, and political issues that surround these broader innovations, are also welcome. Specific topics might include, but are not limited to:

General topics related to the politics of open source

* How open source software or its principles are changing politics

* Emerging transparencies in software, systems and society 

* Open source in the developing world and other international contexts

* The political economy of open source

* Digital divides and open source

Open source and the public sector

* Open source software and transparency in government

* Government policies toward open source and open standards

* Regulation and open source

Open source and democracy

* Open source and democratic engagement

* Open source voting systems

* Activism, political mobilization and open source

The expansion of open source into other domains 

* Understanding how open source collaboration works and how it can be extended into other areas of collective action

* Policy areas, such as the effects of free textbooks on education policy or the politics of "One Laptop Per Child"

* The political implications of open source in other cultural domains

PAPER SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to prepare and submit to JITP a manuscript following one of the six submission formats by January 10, 2010. These formats include research papers, policy viewpoints, workbench notes, review essays, book reviews, and papers on teaching innovation. Proposals for full panel presentations will also be accepted. The goal is to produce a special issue, or double issue, of JITP with a wide variety of approaches to the broad theme of "The Politics of Open Source." 

HOW TO SUBMIT

Everything you need to know about how to prepare and submit a strong JITP paper is documented at http://www.jitp.net/. Papers will be put through an expedited blind peer review process by the Program Committee, and authors will be notified about a decision by March 10, 2010. A small number of papers will be accepted for presentation at the conference. Other paper authors will be invited to present a poster during the Friday evening reception. All posters must include a "YouTube" version of their research findings. 

BEST PAPER AND POSTER CASH PRIZES

The author (or authors) of the best research paper will receive a single $1,000 prize. The creator (or creators) of the best poster/research presentation will also receive a single prize of $1,000.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE 

M.V. Lee Badgett, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Paul M.A. Baker, Georgia Institute of Technology

Deborah Bryant, Oregon State University Open Source Lab

Andrea Calderaro, European University Institute

Mark Cassell, Kent State University

Edward Cherlin, Earth Treasury

Gabriella Coleman, New York University

Doug Downham, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Robert English, Daystar Computing & University of Massachusetts Amherst

Joseph Feller, University College Cork

Jelena Karanovic, Rutgers University

Dave Karpf, University of Pennsylvania/Miller Center for Public Affairs

Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech

Jose Marichal, California Lutheran University

Jens Hardings Perl, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Charlie Schweik, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair

Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair

Megan Squire, Elon University

Krishna Ravi Srinivas, Research Information System For Developing Nations 

Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. & OpenOffice.org

Anas Tawil
eh, Cardiff University & Meedan.net

SPONSORSHIP

For information on sponsorship opportunities, please contact Michelle Sagan Gonçalves at 413 577 2354 or mgoncalves@pubpol.umass.edu