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Running a student contributing program the open source way

16-Sep-10

This is a very exciting opportunity where free and open source software (FOSS) and other organizations meet for mutual benefit and the advancement of open source participation.

Who might get to take advantage of this?  Perhaps some people who do not yet even know how they can, as a part of their day job in a hardware or software company, contribute directly to FOSS in a collaboration done the open source way.

If you have ever done or wanted to be part of a team that puts together an online student contributing program (similar to Google Summer of Code and Fedora Summer Coding 2010) …

If you have skills in event and project or program management …

If you are interested in outreach to education that makes a difference to individual students whose work can reach thousands and millions …

Would you be interested in helping organize Fedora Students Contributing (FSC)?

To get the Fedora Summer Coding program going this last season, I just did the work and played it all out on the two public and one private mailing list.  Our team at Red Hat calls those two principles, “Get in there, get it going.”  Now I am trying to move through “going” toward the last principle, “Get out of the way.”

Now is the time to bring in other voices to guide and shape and take personal responsibility for the future of this program.  Rather than taking total control of this program forevermore for the Red Hat brand, we are convinced that applying the principles of the open source way to community events management is the right way to do such a program in the name of a community.  In addition to inviting all Fedora users, enthusiasts, and participants to join in organizing this event, I want to specifically call out to the organizations – corporate, academic, non-profit, etc. – to join with some of their staff/members.

Fedora Students Contributing requires/teaches skills for program administrators, such as:

  • Project management.
  • Fund raising and small accounting.
  • Community organizing, mentoring, and leadership.
  • Mentor training.
  • Writing.
  • Strategic and tactical planning.
  • Open marketing.
  • Public speaking.
  • Getting things done in a FOSS project.
  • Remote team collaboration.
  • Running a student program with applications, proposals, acceptance, milestone checks, and stipends.
  • More!

It’s rewarding to help so many people help each other, and the results are often surprising.  As with many other parts of working in FOSS projects, it provides a chance to learn, use, and teach skills that are useful in other parts of your life, as well as on your CV/resume.

End note: I have not done a review of any other student contribution programs, so I do not have specific knowledge of how they are run.  I am envisioning here a program done the open source way entirely from my own imagination, a vision fueled by so many of you all.

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Do you like knocking on doors?

15-Sep-10

As it happens, I don’t.  I’m a bit terrified by it.

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:

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

Filed in Education, Fedora, FLOSS, TOS | | Comments (1) »

Sad mad Dad feels bad and what else is new?

13-Sep-10

Feeling 3x worse than before I hammered on the kids. Build up and relief of anger rarely feels good.

I KNOW the girls can see the build up, as I move, sometimes over the course of _days_ from reasonable, nice, conciliatory, consensus seeking to upset, sad, frustrated, and vocally angry.  Temper still as short as when I was a shortie.

Just as I can see when each of them is getting upset at something.  Yet these build-ups that we should know in each other, it’s like they won’t watch out for each other, for all of us.  It’s all about watching out for self, making sure that “I” get enough cookies, the best job in the chore, a fair number of turns on the swing.  It’s never about “let’s all watch out for each other” and in that way we make sure everyone is taken care of.
More…

Filed in Personal, Responsibility | Tagged , , , | Comments (1) »

Understanding computer scientists

13-Sep-10

This the question I’m trying to answer:

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.

Filed in Fedora, FLOSS, History | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7) »

It’s time to help organize the next session of Fedora Students Contributing aka Summer Coding

25-Aug-10

We haven’t formally picked a new name for Fedora Summer Coding, but we need to, and ‘Students Contributing’ has the advantages so far.  We’re not sticking to summer in one hemisphere and we’re already doing projects that are beyond code.  Students Contributing is descriptive of what we’re doing.

This post is about the upcoming session for Fedora Students Contributing, to cover September 2010 to February 2011.

We need organizing help and we need sponsors.  In fact, would you like to help find new sponsors?

This week we’ll get the list of known tasks updated (in our Trac instance) for anyone to work on.

We have a success on our hands.  For a relatively small chunk of budget, we were able to fund about a dozen students to work on an equal number of interesting projects.  As you read more about this successful program in the coming weeks, think about how you can be involved.

Are you willing to recommend that an organization make a bet of a few thousand dollars in budget to find out what they can gain from supporting and helping organize the Fedora Students Contributing program?

Read some more.  Think about it.  Join the mailing list and introduce yourself.  Then, let’s get to work.

Filed in Education, Fedora, Summer Coding | Tagged , , , | Comments (1) »

Community building is down to Earth – a setiQuest Summit update

14-Aug-10

Spent the middle part of today in a working session, lead by IDEO facilitators, to tackle a few of the big questions in front of setiQuest and the Seti Institute.

The two big questions were generally:

  • How do we enable developers and designers to contribute back to setiQuest in a way that benefits all involved?
  • How do we share the SETI vision with the world, so that conversation can come back and support people wanting to find ways to participate?

The community building problems are pretty straightforward, the kind of thing we cover in The Open Source Way (TOSW).  In fact, I’m going to follow up this meeting by joining a working group to help setiQuest architect the community structure and seed the leadership team/interim board.  I intend to create and use some checklists and so forth derived from TOSW handbook. To me, it’s a great chance to take the principles in TOSW and see them applied in another domain while at the same time applying them to actually new open source and open data.

Another stroke of luck, one of the IDEO people I met today works on OpenIDEO, their new project to open the design thinking process.  I’m excited to get to follow up with them, find out more about how they want to grow the OpenIDEO community, and how that can feed in to and learn from a “Design the open source way” chapter in The Open Source Way.  It will be an interesting conversation, since I intend to press on the license and terms used by OpenIDEO in comparison to the open nature of the site’s purpose.  At the same time, I hope to learn about more about the challenges of design and free/open business models, and learn more about how to make The Open Source Way a better book.

I’ll write more about this as it develops.

Filed in Community, Fedora, Leadership | Tagged , , , | Comments (2) »

SETICON and setiQuest Summit this Saturday

11-Aug-10

This week I got a great surprise, my friend Jeff scored me an invite to the setiQuest Summit, held this weekend at SETICON in Santa Clara.  The excitement is that, after all these years, the SETI team is open sourcing their code, including the algorithms used to scan telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life.  The radio telescope signal data has been opened since April.  All of this was kicked off over a year ago when the  Center for SETI Research Director Jill Tarter used her 2009 TED prize to make a wish:

I wish that you would empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.

Aside from being an amateur scientist and a lifelong wannabe spaceman, there is a more immediate and grown-up reason I care about this.  It has longed seemed to me, and I’m sure to many others, that SETI is a natural for embracing a FOSS community.  As the original programmers, some of whom have put 20 years in to the program, near retiring, it’s an opportunity to pass on the legacy in a way that lets SETI grow and scale.  The ability to run their code on commodity hardware, and openness to contributions from citizen scientists, makes the timing natural.  It’s the kind of project that could be completely free and open, and doing that will allow for the growth of an ecosystem around it, including new businesses.

Since SETI started, we have proven the FOSS development model time after time.  SETI, being a scientific pursuit under the aegis of “in the public interest”, there is also a moral imperative to reveal all the scientific methods used … including the source code.

The purpose of this summit is to bring SETI staff together with people who truly understand FOSS development.  I’ve seen the list of attendees, I’m pretty awed by some of the Bay Area big names they have drawn, but not surprised — around the Bay Area and beyond, SETI has a particular interest for many geeks.  It’s great that two efforts for the betterment of humanity, searching of companions in the universe and keeping humanity free, are coming closer together.

For myself, I’ll be bringing whatever brainpower that I can, but I’ll also be gently inserting The Open Source Way all over the place.  As a handbook, it’s a way to get much of the knowledge that you find at a summit, but in a handy format to carry around with you.

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Pondering a solution for a K12 strategy, or Treating our community leadership team like a FOSS project

09-Aug-10

There’s no denying the simple fact.  Our team can’t and won’t have explosive growth.

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. More…

Filed in Business, Community, Education, Fedora, FLOSS, Leadership, Red Hat | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Yay! More new people to play with

09-Aug-10

This morning I caught Simon Phipps’ dent about a 451 CAOS Theory report by Matthew Aslett, “The golden age of open source?“  In that report, Aslett describes our arriving at a fourth stage of commercial open source.  This fourth stage is highlighted by a return to community and collaboration.  Examples given are ones where different entities are collaborating on creating new open source communities without a goal being to monetize it directly.

Phipps’ recent post, “Is the ‘Open Source Bubble’ Over?“, talks on the same topic and says that the true open source way has always been community and collaboration.  He and Aslett refer to Stephen O’Grady’s post, “The State of Open Source: Startup, Growth, Maturity or Decline?“, which is rich with trend analysis over the years to show that some projects  are in maturity, but overall open source is growing with all the return to community and collaboration.

This is a really exciting point they are making.  As many people know, a hallmark of Red Hat’s activities in open source has always been a focus on upstream collaboration and scaffolding for strong communities.  When we acquire a company with an existing codebase or open source community, you see a clear set of moves.  Codebases are released under open source licenses to spur the greatest open community we can, where Red Hat actively participates.  Communities are grown without an attempt to control the intellectual property.

This re-emphasis of the communities that include vendors and customers acting equally on common needs was described in 2004 by Michael Tiemann in ‘The Open Source Triple Play‘.  I regularly redraw this image to explain how and why Red Hat does business:

I was tickled that Aslett included JBoss as an example of the third stage, which he summarized with the first two:

While the first two stages were focused on collaborative development as a by-product of open source licensing the projects and vendors that characterized the third stage were focused on market disruption through widespread distribution and typically eschewed the potential advantages of collaborative development in favour of control over the future development of the project.

When Red Hat acquired JBoss, the clear methodology they had was to hire anyone from the community who started to do any real work with the open source codebase.  This kept all the copyright in the company, what I once heard JBoss founder Marc Fleury refer to as a “strong IP” position – strength in holding intellectual property.  But this was at the downfall of a strong community – it couldn’t stand well on its own if every active contributor was hired to be  part of the same corporation.  To an extent, this was incurring the cost of a closed development model where you have to pay for every developer hour, while not gaining the supposed benefits of a product that can’t be downloaded and freely distributed without you being paid.

As Simon Phipps ultimately points out, this is the way many of us have been doing open source business all along.  The fact that customers are finally figuring out that there is a triple-play in this for them, too, is many shades of awesome.

So, friends new and old, come on in and play.  The water is warm and the waves are just enough to make things regularly exciting.

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Happy birthday Ray

08-Aug-10

Author Ray Bradbury turns 90 years old on 22 August 2010.  The Planetary Society is presenting him with a huge birthday card with good wishes from people such as you and I.  You can post your birthday greeting for him until 9 August.

http://www.planetary.org/special/fromearth/bradbury

The greetings are limited to 250 characters, and I took advantage of a return character costing the same as a space or punctuation to write him this poem:

From first rocket to last pricking of thumbs,
your words and ideas carried our minds
out
past asteroid belts &
in
to the light and dark parts of the soul
Helping make the 20th century
using a mirror as a tool to
reflect the future in the past
Thanks

Filed in Fedora, History, Personal | Tagged , , , | Comments (1) »