73203033
submission
ectoman writes:
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has just published The Open Organization , a book that chronicles his tenure as leader of the world's largest open source company. The book aims to show other business leaders how open source principles like transparency, authenticity, access, and openness can enhance their organizations. It's also chock full of interesting anecdotes about daily life inside Red Hat. Whitehurst joined Red Hat in 2008 after leaving Delta Airlines, and he says his time working in open source has changed him. "I thought I knew what it took to manage people and get work done" he writes in The Open Organization. "But the techniques I had learned, the traditional beliefs I held for management and how people are taught to run companies and lead organizations, were to be challenged when I entered the world of Red Hat and open source." All proceeds from the book benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Opensource.com is hosting free book club materials.
67424991
submission
jenwike writes:
With the success of open source software today, we are seeing organizations undertake more egregious marketing and promotion schemes that exaggerate their participation in, contributions to, and/or licensing of open source software. Their hope is to capitalize on the label of "open source" and the success that goes along with it. The reality is that the responsibility is on the end-users to review the software and accompanying license to ensure it meets your expectations. How can you do that?
66692581
submission
jenwike writes:
Find out where seeds for our food stand on being licensed in this investigative report. Lisa Hamilton spends time with the Open Source Seed Initiative, a passionate group who wants to ensure their seeds are never patented, but it might not be as possible as you think to make sure seeds are free for use and distribution by anyone. Part of the equation are plant characteristics, like an extended head on lettuce — is that an invention? Or, would you argue that it the collective sharing of material that improves the whole crop over time? In this report, one farmer says, "If you’re not exchanging germplasm, you’re cutting your own throat."
65442171
submission
jenwike writes:
As Neelie Kroes leaves the office of the European Commission's VP of the Digital Agenda, we need to take a look the new, incoming leadership and ask where they stand on open source software and open standards. Public Policy Director for Red Hat, Paul Brownell, gives thoughts on the two politicians that President-Elect Junker has named to lead on ICT for the new Commission: former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has been named as Vice President for Digital Single Market; and incumbent European Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger (a German politician and lawyer) has been named as Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society.
63359935
submission
ectoman writes:
Opensource.com is featuring an interview with Michael Tiemann, co-founder of Cygnus Solutions and one of the world's first open source entrepreneurs. Now VP of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, Tiemann offers an historical perspective on what makes open source businesses successful, and shares how he dealt with the open source movement's early skeptics. "A lot of the skepticism is a response to the abstract; it's a response to the unknown," Tiemann says, "And when you bring a concrete success story with just absolutely stellar credentials that doesn't just outperform the field, but embarrasses the field, then the skeptics begin to look like they're on the wrong side."
62427965
submission
ectoman writes:
Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other "geeky" topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."
61120863
submission
ectoman writes:
Proponents of patent reform in the United States glimpsed a potential victory late last year, when the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act, designed to significantly mitigate patent abuse. Just months ago, however, the Senate pulled consideration of the bill. And since then, patent reform has been at a standstill. In a new analysis for Opensource.com, Mark Bohannon, Vice President of Corporate affairs and Global Public Policy at Red Hat, explains three reasons why. "For this year, at least," he writes, "the prospect of addressing abusive patent litigation through Congressional action is on ice"—despite the unavoidable case for reform.
