Although a brand-new presentation, I think this one went over pretty well. All of the material I know by heart and can speak on extemporaneously (i.e., for many hours on end). For this reason, my notes section is unusually (for me) empty. I’m going to work on filling out those notes – that makes it more useful for others to reuse, thus adding more fuel to the Creative Commons licensing – and I’ll make a generic version available in TheOpenSourceWay.org presentations directory.

This was a good enough talk that I think it can be useful again in other locations – it really does a good job of distilling a huge amount of the information you need to start, sustain, and grow an open source project. I’ll be submitting it other places, hopefully more people agree with Gareth and put me on somewhere!

This event is the open sourcing of the code behind the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) management console. These assets have been rewritten in Java from the original implementation by the team that was originally from Qumranet before their acquisition by Red Hat.

As with the rest of the open source virtualization stack (Linux kernel, KVM, etc.), we all benefit the most from a strong, sustainable open upstream. Having that upstream dominated by one vendor will greatly restrict the innovation possible by the project. For this reason, Red Hat went out to a number of interested parties, offering a seat on the initial board (which is later filled meritocratically) for any organization willing to put 10 resources to work on the project. For the initial board, that list is Canonical, Cisco, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat, and SUSE.

I got involved in this because the project’s technical director, Carl Trieloff, called on our Community Architecture and Leadership team to help with community scaffolding for the launch and beyond. Since then I’ve been building the ovirt.org website, setting up the communications, creating and filling the wiki, helping with the source repository, starting an open services infrastructure team so all community members can help, and organizing this workshop with Robyn Bergeron.

So this is what I’ve been up to, which I really should have been writing about, but … ah, life.

The details:

• What: Lindependence Hour to discuss GNU/Linux, software freedom, and open source.
• Where: Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company, 1330 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, CA. http://www.santacruzcoffee.com/
• When: Wed. 29 Dec. 2010 from 6 pm to 7 pm PST (1800 to 1900) — repeats last Wed. of the month.
• Who: You, if you use or want to use Linux, such as Fedora, Ubuntu, or Android.

Any planning that I do will also include Fedora components, so we’ll keep those details on the Fedora wiki.

I’ve been having a difficult time getting organized and starting the big work on the next edition of the textbook. However, my recent calls for help have gained a fair amount of attention and multiple really good offers, so we are clearly underway again.

My goals in calling for this first sprint are to:

1. Start a writing rhythm for the team;
2. Take care of some administrivia (decide upon weekly work times, order of work, etc.)
3. Get some initial writing done that may still help the Teaching Open Source professors who are using parts of this textbook this school semester.

See you on IRC bright and early (for me) on Monday!  (This weekend is the end of daylight savings in most of North America.)

On Wednesday, my girls and Larry and his girl are catching a train in Emeryville, CA.  It’s a 19 hour journey to Salt Lake City, which seems long but is only 7 more hours each way than driving without all the downsides of driving.  Also, it should be an awesomely beautiful ride, even at night.  We’ll get a chance to finish our presentations, explore the train, and relax.  Also, sleeping is more comfortable than in a driving car even without a sleeper car.

If you are attending, or know anyone else who is, here a list of the talks we’re giving:

• User Groups 2.0 – Larry talks about the modern user group experience. Friday 08 October at 11:30 am.
• opensource.com – How open source is changing your life beyond technology – I’m giving this talk about how the open source way gets applied in business, education, law, and so forth, as often discussed on opensource.com.  Friday 08 October at 11:30 am.
• Barn raising and musicians on the green – old ideas in a digital world – Friday night’s keynote by me will talk about how the open source way is rooted in a long tradition of how communities get things done.  My goal is to give a talk that pulls in the new-to-FOSS while giving the FOSS experienced something new to think about.  Friday 08 October at 4:30 pm.
• Fedora Birds of a Feather (BoF) – The classic session for Fedora friends, fans, and contributors to get together and discuss all things Fedora.  Friday 08 October at 7:30 pm.
• Ultimate randomness – girls in open source – Mirano, Malakai, and Saskia will reprise their talk from the SCALE 8x Women in Open Source Summit.  After this last weekend’s sleepover at my house, I can attest that this is a whole new presentation based on the original and will be well worth attending.  They’ll talk about TuxPaint, GIMP, OpenShot, and other stuff they do with open source. Saturday 09 October at 11:30 am.

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff!

Looking forward to the train ride and the chance to meet folks at a conference that is new to me (first UTOSC for my girls and me.)

After posting this, I was reminded that Ryan Rix is doing a BoF, Fedora, FOSS, and Schools.. The story of Fedora Campus Ambassadors at 6:30 on Thursday 07 October, and Robyn Bergeron is presenting Tour de OMNOM (Open Marketing, not Obscured Marketing at 1:30 pm on Friday 08 October. Of course, Jared Smith is giving the Thursday night keynote at 4:30 pm, Swimming upstream: How Linux distributions help the entire community.  Jared is also giving a second talk, Automated Deployments of Linux in a Small-business Environment at 6:00 pm Friday 08 October. *whew*

But many people relish the opportunity to help someone solve a problem they didn’t even know they had, or did know but didn’t know who to turn to.  Or they have it solved, but in an unsatisfactory way.  That’s where the people who will knock on doors and explain things come in very handy.

We need help to find sponsors for the Fedora Students Contributing project.  (This has been called the Fedora Summer Coding project this past summer in the Northern Hemisphere.)

You get the opportunity to:

• Grow a coalition of organizations interested in the many opportunities a student contribution program brings everyone.  (Organizations such as corporations, K20+ schools, private- and public-interest non-profits, small government, etc.)
• Engage in a sales-like role, yet different criteria and stakes.
  • Stretch yourself!
  • Use skills you have already that aren’t exercised in FOSS projects!
• Take a significant role in growing a proven education program in a major FOSS project.

As existing resources:

• A five-year report that shows the value a student contribution program has had for Fedora, JBoss, and Red Hat.
• A first-run of the Fedora version of this program, with thirteen complete projects (eleven funded by sponsors.)  This includes the first student content contribution, the Fedora Musicians Guide.
• A generic presentation to quickly customize and use.  (Full notes available but incomplete, I’m in progress of finishing.  Will update this parenthetical aside when the notes are fully written in.)

Contact me directly or, even better, join the SIG mailing list and let us know your interest.

How can a computer scientist do research without using and producing only free and open source software?

This question is the corollary that follows from this hypothesis:

Free and open source software (FOSS) is the only way to produce and use software that follows the scientific method.

There are all sorts of reasons a human programmer might want to keep their computer code a secret.  But if that human is also a scientist, isn’t it their duty to produce science that can be verified?

Looking at the scientific method definition:

To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[2] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Often to verify science requires access to the same equipment – particle collider, electron microscope, or space-based telescope.  At some level, especially where the machinery is unique, the best method is to provide access to the machine for other scientists to verify. But where are you if your science can only be produced and reproduced using a black box that you have to buy, and that black box clearly has an influence on the outcome of the science?  How can you verify the science if you cannot study the insides of the black box to understand how it affects the outcome of the experiment?

How can I verify your science if your code isn’t open?  I have to be able to fully observe your experiment to verify your hypothesis.  How can I measure your evidence if the tools of measurement, your software code, are compiled and only available in binary form?

You could say that having non-commercial access to the source code would work for verifying the experiment.  That presupposes that the verification doesn’t require a commercial interaction that would be forbidden.  For example, if the code supports a new business method, I can’t verify that the code or method work without doing actual business with them.  Ultimately, these field of use restrictions block unknown usages of the science such as humanitarian or medical where the ethical situation is higher but couldn’t be predicted in advance (when choosing original licensing/release terms.)  These field of use restrictions also have a chilling effect on other scientists.  It’s less clear what is or isn’t a violation, so they seek a scientific solution in code (software) that is less ambiguous.

In addition, restrictive terms for viewing source code has the effect of tainting the recipient.  How is it scientifically ethical if you require a colleague to sign away an unknown number of enquiries in a liftetime of research for fear of violating a source code sharing contract?

There is a whole mess in here with patents, and this is related to why patents may be unethical for science.  In a machine patent, the science isn’t necessarily being patented; it’s the results of the science that is.  Any science that leads up to the machine patent should be open and visible for reproducing and verifying.

But a software patent is a slippery thing.  The patent may cover the science as well as the product of the science, in that both can be in the code.  There is an ethical dilemma for any scientist when they patent the science.  They are putting a price tag and control on reproducing and verifying the science.  Without verification, the science is invalid.

In case you are wondering if this is just semantics and word choices, it is.  Perhaps all of the people who call themselves computer scientists, shouldn’t?  I presume the word has meaning for them, as it does for the rest of us, and I expect them to act accordingly.

Being a scientist has a specific meaning that spans a long part of written history.  How long?  Several hundred to several thousand years, depending on what you are measuring.  It is clear that the scientific method has been followed since at least the Middle Ages.  It predates copyright and patent law by at least several centuries, if not nearly a full millenium.

It was Sir Isaac Newton, amongst others, who said,

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

That, friends, is the whole point of FOSS.  It is, so far, the best way we’ve found as computer scientists (schooled/amateur/citizen) to live up to Newton’s ethics and methods.

I dubbed my point above as a hypothesis because I am opening this idea for debate by scientists, particularly computer scientists and scientific ethicists.

Part of the way to scale ourselves we have always done, which is to engage with other community leaders and leverage each other.  Recently I had a new idea that we could fill out our circle on education and open source by inviting people who are passionate about K12 to work within our team as external contributors and entirely in the public sphere.  Read on if this is interesting to you.

Our team’s definition includes that we are failing if we are growing too quickly by adding paid bodies to manage projects instead of building projects that scale themselves.  A project or program truly done the open source way should be able to survive and thrive without a person paid to be at the helm or shoring up all the work.  So we baked it in to our team’s methodology (and that explains why we work on ten full-time things at once, because once done right each might become a not-full-time thing that comes from and benefits many others.)

One could argue, quite correctly, that our team is currently extended in to the community via all the community leaders we are in regular contact with, where we mutually support in varied ways.  Primarily in Fedora and TeachingOpenSource.org, but others as well.

What I’m imagining is a person, or a few people, deeply passionate about open source, young people, and education.  We recognize that a big selling point for people is that FOSS can save cash-strapped schools a lot of budget.  However, we think the higher goal is to teach open source participation.  It’s as easy as contributing to a Wikipedia article or testing and sending feedback on Sugar activities.  The point is to show kids that they can tinker with their own knowledge, and we start by showing the teachers how to tinker.  They already tinker with what they can – many teachers jump around a textbook if they see fit.  Our goal is to make them feel the same way about technology and the wider world of information, that it is something they can manipulate, model that manipulation to their students, and kickstart a new generation of makers, autodidacts, and teachers of learning it yourself by doing it yourself.

Here’s how I imagine such a community leader role description would go.   Think of it as a first draft.  What would you add?

And more importantly, would you be interested in doing one of these roles?

FOSS in Education Community Leader Role Description

You have a passion about free and open source software (FOSS) and education.  In particular, we are looking for people who want to work in the primary education years, sometimes shortened in the United States as “K12″ to signify thirteen years of primary education.  You can focus on one or more niches in the K12 area, such as public schools, charter schools, private schools, homeschools, foreign or second-language schools, etc.

In this role you will be expected to:

• Choose one or two niches to focus on.
• Attend weekly or bi-weekly bi-monthly meetings on IRC with other members of the community leadership team (CLT), as set by consensus.
• Set goals for the quarter and year, and report status and progress back to the CLT.
• Potentially travel (regionally, nationally, or internationally) for education conferences.
• Interact with school boards, principals, teachers, and staff at all levels about teaching open participation and collaboration.

You should have or be willing to develop skills in these areas:

• Research and writing.
• Public speaking.
• Community organizing, which is done from within and not on top of.
• Fedora Linux and Sugar on a Stick.
• Being a catalyst so others are able to do things (versus doing everything yourself).

The role includes on the job training in being a catalyst in communities (PDF includes full speaker notes.)

While you retain copyright on all your work, you are contributing all your work to e.g. TeachingOpenSource.org under the Creative Commons BY SA 3.0 Unported license.

A last story if you’ve read this far …

Once upon a time there were two build systems and two sets of packaging standards around Red Hat and Fedora.  They were very similar, but were in fact forked from when Red Hat Linux was split in to Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Primarily, the Fedora packaging standards, tools, guidelines, and processes greatly evolved in the first few years of the fork, compared to their kin inside of Red Hat.  When the Fedora Project brought all the Core packages out to the open community infrastructure, the Red Hat engineering teams had to retool and reunderstand these new systems.  They adopted the packaging guidelines that were driven for six releases by open community process.

There are many examples of this, where everything from code to content to policy and processes that are developed in the Fedora Project are adapted or used directly by other parts of Red Hat.  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a primary example of that, but also consider how important the entirely community run Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project is to Red Hat and our customers.  If you don’t know, it’s very important.  I don’t know a service or support person who doesn’t direct customers to EPEL on a regular basis (until the customers figure it out, and maybe take the next step of participating directly in EPEL for shared benefit.)

So the deal is this:  while there can be zero guarantees or promises, you can look to history to tell you there is a very good chance that your doing work and helping set our policy on K12 FOSS education will find it’s way up in to the education strategy that we work on for Red Hat.  Our team’s role is very strategic, more than probably any other similar team exposed by Red Hat to open community work.  You can take advantage of our sharing nature and our desire to use your smart and capable brain to help us figure out this part of the future in K12.

People always say, if you complain about something in FOSS be prepared to do something about it.  We can offer you an opportunity to become a catalyst and center of gravity around K12 and education and teaching participation in FOSS, which means a chance to make a difference in exponential and surprising ways.

Interested?  Comments are open below, if you are ready to get used to the always-in-the-open discussions.  If not, contact me directly and let me help you help us … help you … help everyone.

Note: It should be clear from this site’s URL that these are my own, personal opinions and don’t necessarily represent those of Red Hat, my team at Red Hat, the Fedora Project, TeachingOpenSource.org, or pretty much anyone else in the entire universe.  I am noting this because I want it clear that I am not giving any kind of picture in to Red Hat’s hiring plans.  Also, I am not describing actual Red Hat strategies any more than discussing Linux kernel strategies tells what will be included in the next RHEL update.  I am writing this post as a way to better explain my idea to my own team, meaning that team is vetting this idea at the same time as you are.  Thus, even my own opinion here is subject to change.  This note is here because I’ve never discussed open strategy in this context and I want to set our shared expectations about what is going on here.

(Updated 2010-08-17 to meetings suggested as bi-monthly (twice a month) and decided by consensus.)

A quick look at the numbers:

• 15 students and projects.
• 20 primary mentors, with 15+ more general mentors (includes mentoring the mentors)
• Three funding sources (two from Red Hat) are making the proof of value program happen this summer:
  • We know the concept works (thanks Google’s Open Source Programs Office!), with specific value to Fedora Project and JBoss Community in this 5-year summary report.
  • We have a model to include other sponsors and are actively seeking them.
  • The work this summer proves to those potential sponsors the value of this program.
  • The sponsors who lay a wager by supporting the program for the southern hemisphere this October are buying their own proof of value to see if they want to continue next year.

Next on the schedule is the mid-term review.  During that period, mentors review and privately discuss the state of each project and the student.  The goal of a project is to help the student learn FOSS participation via the Fedora Project and JBoss Community. Ideally, there is good code or content that comes out of it, but completing the initial project plan isn’t the real purpose.  As often happens, in open development we discover new ideas, methods, and reasons along the way.

For example, this week I spoke with a mentor who’s student is struggling a bit with the initial scope of the project plan.  If the only goal were to get that coding done, we’d all be in trouble.  However, the mentor is going to work with the student to narrow the scope so that it is achievable within the schedule.

Having to rescope and reorganize is not uncommon in the FOSS worlds, and this student is learning that reality first hand.  We’re all ambitious with our ideas and skills, and sometimes don’t learn until immersed what is hard and what is easy.  It’s better to rescope and complete a smaller project than to leave in frustration.  Guiding the student in that way is what the mentor is here for, as much as anything else.

In terms of sponsoring, my goal is clear.  I want to see this program run the way we run free and open source software projects.  By bringing in other sponsors, we create more room for innovation in the program’s organization and implementation.  We give these friends and partners a chance to reap the same benefits with a similar investment.  In the process, we work together to strengthen the FOSS ecosystem in to higher education.

Guess what we call that?  Yeah, the open source way.

If you are going to be at OSB10, I’m talking Wednesday 02 June from 1:30 – 2:15pm in Broadway.  I arrive Tuesday morning and am back out Thursday by Lunch, so a nice long window to talk free and open topics.