User:Vesper/FSOSS 08
Here's the stub for my FSOSS 2008 paper. ^^;;
Workshops I attended:
- ohai! art! - Pure Data Workshop
Presentations I attended:
- Enabling Healthy Open Source Communities: Case study -- Thunderbird
- Protecting You with Exploit Me
- The Convergence of Open Access and Open Source
Paper finish date: tba
Contents
Building the Thunderbird Community
The presentation summary can be found here: http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2008/?q=node/87
Topic Summary
The presentation was unique. David Eaves played the role of an interviewer, tossing questions about the development of the Thunderbird community and how it compared to Firefox. Dan Mosedale answered those questions as a true Thunderbird community builder.
...
Speaker's Background:
David wasn't hired to be a programmer. He is a professional negotiator, who irons out relationship issues within a budding community.
Dan is one of the leading coders on the Thunderbird project. He has been around to watch the project grow, and has seen ups and downs in community growth.
Views on Open Source:
Open Source versus Open Access
The presentation summary can be found here: http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2008/?q=node/73
Topic Summary: Open Access
Leslie Chan introduced us to Open Access (a topic that most of us are unfamiliar with) and how it is starting to change with the introduction of new technologies such as Open Source.
Open Access is the free and unrestricted availability of research to the public, be it in libraries or over the Web. Publishers gain prestige by publishing papers in well-known journals, and the publishers (who sell the publishing service and the journals) get filthy rich. It is a concept that has been around for decades, and works well with copyright laws.
The Open Access cycle of knowledge works like this:
Professors do research in universities, and achieve great discoveries. The results of these findings are then published into a journal, which costs the professor a major fee. The publisher then exudes possession over this research, forbidding the professor from spreading that paper to third-world citizens or even the paper's co-author. The publishers then charge the university an exorbitant price for a few copies of that journal, which sit on a library shelf.
The fact is, the results of research aren't landing in the hands of those who need it, and the publishers are exacting a monopoly over this precious information. Research is only available when libraries purchase it.
Topic Summary: What Open Source can do for Open Access
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is that university libraries are comfortable with paying publishing fees. It is difficult to convince the libraries to divert some of their funding towards "open source" solutions.
Chan then began to describe how some sites charge for access to certain journals, while other sites offer the same information for free. Publishers will often seek grants for their publishing work: some grants require the publisher make the journals available on reputable free-access servers. All of this is good progress towards true Open Access
Throughout the entire presentation, I wasn't sure what Open Source had to do with Open Access. The journals themselves can't be open source, since they aren't made of code. The servers that host free access don't necessarily use open source code.
Speaker's Background:
Leslie Chan is a lecturer at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus. His work brings scientific journal access to developing countries around the world.
Views on Open Source:
OS is (possibly) a tool whose use of utmost importance is to balance out the costs of Open Access.
Comparison on Open Source Opinions
...
My Current Views on Open Source
Before I started DPS 909, I thought Open Source was simply a new method of programming. If you wanted a new hobby, you could look into OS. I wasn't exposed to any major OS efforts, and I dismissed it as a style of coding.
By the end of FSOSS, I've realized that Open Source is making a difference in big ways. When viewed only as a coding style, software projects are already making incredible progress beyond their proprietary counterparts. Firefox has evolved to the point that even Internet Explorer winks at it.
Were my views affected by FSOSS? I definitely had an informed view of OS before the conference, thanks to Dave Humphreys. I'd like to think that my views were developed in class and strengthened by the examples of OS communities represented at the conference.
