Keynote speaker Dan Scott, Systems Librarian from Laurentian University, talks about implementing the open source Evergreen ILS. Library Journal 2009 Mover and Shaker Karen Combs discusses using Drupal for her library's intranet, and LYRASIS Board Chair Joe Lucia, University Librarian at Villanova University, shares his experience with the development of the VuFind open source discovery layer for library catalogs.

"The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. Its members are colleges, universities, commercial firms and interested organizations that share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for their software requirements. The goal of Kuali is to bring the proven functionality of legacy applications to the ease and universality of online services."

 The Chronicle's take on next gen catalogs--mentions everything but OLE

This is the website to the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID).  It contains a multiude of information regarding GAID activities, ICT development projects, and publications regarding relevant ICT and development issues.  There are various articles on the use of Open Source Software in development projects, which I will use as examples in this paper. 

The GAID is an organization launched by the United Nations in 2006 to address the use of ICT in acheieving the Millenium Development Goals, particularly for reducing poverty in the developing world.  It formed from the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), during which a need for a global ICT and development policy forum was established.  The GAID serves to facilitate collaborative development projects between the private and public sectors, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups.

As stated on the website, the Objectives of the GAID are as follows:

"The Alliance will seek to contribute to:

(1) Mainstreaming of the global ICT agenda into the broader United Nations development agenda

(2) Bringing together key organizations involved in ICT for development (ICT4D) to enhance their collaboration and effectiveness for achieving the internationally agreed development goals

(3) Raising awareness of policy makers on ICT4D policy issues;

(4) Facilitating identification of technological solutions for specific development goals and pertinent partnerships

(5) Creating an enabling environment and innovative business models for pro-poor investment and growth and for empowering people living in poverty

(6) Acting as a "think-tank" on ICT4D-related issues and as an advisory group to the Secretary-General."

Inveneo 2008, Inveneo, San Francisco, CA, viewed 23 July 2009, .

Inveneo is a California-based Non-Profit working to bridge the Global Digital Divide (GDD) in Africa. This website has some concrete examples of ICT development projects that have been completed in Africa. It also has various links to information about the digital divide and actual technological information about Inveneo's products and processes. This website can inform various parts of my paper including: a general discussion of the GDD, specific tactics that have been used in the developing world, and specifically the use of Open Source Software.  Inveneo has designed computing and networking systems built upon Open Source Software. This is a specific example of how OSS can be used effectively for development purposes.

 The GAID is an initiative launched by the UN in 2006 to address the use of ICT in achieving the MDGs.  This book outlines the purpose, goals, and operations of the GAID.  It is organized into three parts: 1) principles and structure of the GAID; 2) summary and outcomes from the organization's first meeting; and 3) the business plan of the GAID.  It is published by the UN/GAID so it is somewhat of a manifesto rather than a critique or analysis of the organization's operations.  It will give a concise view of the GAID stated goals and objectives and how the organization plans to promote the Millenium Development Goals through the effective use and proliferation of ICT.

The GAID originated as a result of the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).  During this summit, representatives from the UN, civil society groups, and non-governemental organizations (NGO) determined a need for a global open forum within which ICT policy dialogue could take place.  It is from this need that the GAID was concieved and launched in 2006.  In pursuit of this goal the GAID "will contribute to transforming the spirit and vision of the WSIS into action and promote the use of ICT for the acheivement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millenium Development Goals (pp. 2)."  The organization acts a facilitator and a spring board for colaborative partnerships aimed at tackling development issues using ICT.  This is the main focus of my research and thus this book will be helpful in understanding the vision and operations of this organization. 

In the chapter entitled "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement," Richard Stallman outlines the evolution of the free operating system and free software ideology. While working for MIT in the early 1970's he was part of a software-sharing community, in which engineers would share, improve, study and redistribute software programs free of charge without any formal licensing agreements. The author argues that this type of communal culture is natural and preferable to the current age of proprietary software development. He discusses his many career moves which focused on developing a free operating system, the GNU, and eventually the Linux system n 1991. During this span of time, Stallman challenged the practice of copyrighting software by creating the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as well as the General Public License (GPL). He continues to pursue the goal of promoting free software and challenging the copyright mentality that has become so common in US society.

In regards to my paper, this reading provides a solid background of the free software ideology and also brings to light some of the economic, cultural and social barriers that may be influencing the global digital divide. Namely, the copyright laws that protect proprietary software programs serve to promote the interests of large corporations and profit-driven software developers rather than individual users. Stallman notes that open source software is not necessarily "anti-business," but it offers an alternate business model that promotes freedom and cooperation. He outlines four freedoms that are violated by the proliferation of proprietary software. Users are prohibited from using ICT as they wish, from modifying and distributing their software, and from sharing their software with others. Extrapolating this theory to the global level, it is clear that large corporate interests may inhibit the spread of proprietary software and other ICT tools to areas that could benefit greatly from their use, but are unable to pay the price. This is directly relevant to both my discussion of the global digital divide and the role of open source software in addressing it.

 This is a very extensive text that covers a wide range of internet policy issues.  I will focus on two chapters specifically for this paper: Chapter 26 "Globalizing the logic of openess: open source software and the global governance of intellectual property" and Chapter 30 "Internet diffusion and the digital divide: the role of policy making and political institutions."

Chapter 26 will inform my discussion of the use of and debate surrounding open source software.  The author argues that the global economy dictates the dissemination of information and skills necessary to complete in the era of globalization. Thus corporate powers such as Microsoft, and national powers such as the US and Western Europe are dominating the spread of information and communication technologies to the disadvantage of developing nations.  Liscensing costs and copyright laws serve to protect the interests of wealthy elites and international finanical organizations, while those without access to relevant knowledge and skills fall farther behind.  It is argued here that open source software is a kew way, possibly the key way, to counteract these forces of globalization that contribute to the global digital divide.  Specifically the use of free and open source software in Africa is discussed as is the support for open source software offered by the United Nations and many non-governmental organizations.  This will be a key text for my analysis of the use of open source software.

Chapter 30 focuses on issues surrounding the digital divide and policies that impact it.  It focuses on four countries as case studies: Brazil, Estonia, Singapore and the US.  The aim of this chapter is to discuss what role political policy and institutions may have in addressing the digital divide.  The conclusion is that policy and leadership in a society can in fact impact the diffusion of ICT.  Additionally, as I have seen in my other sources, civil society groups and non-governmental organizations are also key players in addressing issues of ICT disparity.

Roth, Daniel.  "Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web."  Wired.  June 2008 Issue.  Conde Nast Publications.  New York, NY.

This feature article, printed in Wired a few months before the release of Tmobile's G1 - the first phone to run on Google's Android operating system, provides a comprehensive history of the development of Android and a summary of what's at stake and what Google hopes to accomplish with the OS.  The article begins by describing the first meeting between Android founder Andy Rubin and Google cofounder Larry Page in 2005.  Rubin, who had previously invented the Sidekick smartphone, had only hoped to acquire Page's moral support - even just an email saying Android was a good idea - since Page's seal of approval could help Rubin get more funding for his start-up.  Yet, by the end of the meeting - and much to Rubin's surprise - Page decided he wanted to buy Android and make it a Google product.

Since that meeting, Android has gone on to gain the support of a number of major mobile industry players - including Tmobile, Sprint Nextel, Motorola and HTC - who have all named themselves part of the Open Handset Alliance and Google managed to stir up considerable buzz with its developer challenge - a contest with a prize of $10 million to anyone who could develop the best Android application.  But, as the article points out, making Android work has not come without its challenges, and remains to be seen if the OS will gain the popularity that Google wants.  For instance, mobile phone companies are wary of the fact that, by creating a perfect and complete mobile web surfing experience, Android could make it harder for companies to differentiate from each other.  Networks would become "dumb pipes" that would merely deliver data and not play a part in building individualized mobile internet capabilities, thus making the choice between networks a matter of which one has the most towers.  For this reason, Google still lacks the support of the two biggest mobile carriers: Verizon and AT&T, who together control 54% of the US market.  As the article points out, Android needs their support to succeed. 

The article does an excellent job of summarizing Google's strategic goals with Android as well as the potential shortcomings of the OS.  Reading this article almost a year after its initial publication (and almost 6 months after the release of the G1) makes it clear just how apt it was in pinpointing the challenges to Android's market success.  The article mentions how Google has a tendency to release its applications as sort of beta models, with the hopes that they can be developed and improved down the line for future success.  The problem is that Google in a way took the same approach with Android, which made it a much more difficult sell based upon first impressions.  Considering the sleek presentation of Apple's iPhone, the "unfinished" look and feel of Android has likely worked against the success of the OS.  While success may come down the line as developers become more adept and creative with the Android code, Google's laissez faire attitude has likely slowed widespread adoption of the OS.

Gardiner, Bryan.  "Google's Latest Efforts Test the Open Waters."  Wired.com.  November 9, 2007.

This article discusses Google's forrays into arena of open source technology and places them within the context of past open source endeavors by other companies.  The most revelatory aspect of this article is the emphasis on the fact that open source technologies are not unfamiliar territory for media companies.  In fact, the article describes Google's strategy with Android as a "classic move," that is, a big company taking on a collaborative project in a market where it has little presence.  While, in the short term, it may seem Google has little to gain by partnering with Android, there could be huge gains in the long term.  The best case scenario for Google would be dominance in the mobile market, which is currently up for grabs.

Although Google hasn't won over Verizon or AT&T, and it has some stiff competition from companies like Microsoft over domination of the mobile market, the article notes that networks would benefit from partnering with Google, since Google is known to drive data usage rates, which could in turn lead to more money for networks.  Ultimately, the success or failure of Android will not be evident in the short run, since domination of the mobile market is likely to be a long process.  However, even if Android does ultimately fail, it will still likely cause mobile web technology to evolve, and any impovement to mobile internet surfing is a boon for Google, meaning Google's investment in Android is essentially a win-win situation for the company.

Lerner, Josh and Jean Triole.  "Some Simple Economics of Open Source."  The Journal of Industrial Economics. Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 197-234.  Blackwell Publishing.

This article from The Journal of Industrial Economics surveys some of the basic economics of the open source software model.  The article begins by noting how open source practices have in fact existed in the realm of software development for several decades, but that the practice of open source software development has grown more concretized and widespread due to the rise of the Internet (to demonstrate this, the article provides a brief history of software development from the 70s to present day).  The article then goes on to examine several case studies involving specific products of open source software development, specifically Apache, Linux, Perl and Sendmail.

Perhaps one of the more unique aspects of the article is the close examination of the motivation for developers to work with open source rather than closed source software.  The authors identify several types of incentives that they hypothesize lure developers to the open source model.  Such incentives include career concern incentive and the ego gratification incentive.  Both of these incentives are categorized in economic terms as what's called a signalling incentive.  The authors list several conditions under which signalling incentives are strengthened, and all of these conditions appear to be present within the open source model.  For example, the ego gratification incentive is in part fulfilled by peer recognition.  The open source model strengthens this incentive because the development process is transparent, meaning all changes to source codes are tracked and tied to specific developers, thus allowing for a high level of peer recognition.

While this article may ultimately pose more questions than it answers, it marks a necessary step towards closer examination of the open source model.  By examining the model from an economic perspective, the article is helping to systematize and deconstruct the motivations and human behaviors that govern the ways in which open source development operates.

Roth, Daniel.  "Open Source Software Made Developers Cool.  Now It Can Make Them Rich." Wired. March 2008.  Conde Nast Publications.

This article from Wired highlights how open source software can be commercially viable, even though the development of it isn't based directly on monetary compensation.  As the article states, 30 open source sotware companies were bought for more than $1 billion in 2007, which is double the number of sales from 2005.  One reason for this commercial interest in open source software is that such software has proven particularly well-developed in the past.  Linux, for instance, is a more stable operating system than Windows, and Mozilla Firefox is a highly popular open source web browser.

The article also points out the main ways open source software manages to make money: "The money comes from selling add-ons, service contracts, and hardware to go with the software."  The examples presented in this article show how open source software can be a commercially viable business endeavor - a fact that goes against the original free software movement from which open source software is derived.  Such evidence supports Google's strategic interest in developing its own open source software for the mobile market with Android and also shows how open source software can prove successful in seemingly incompatible environments (for example, the article describes how open source software has recently been used to set up trading platforms for hedge funds, which are "notoriously insistent on proprietary systems).

Krazit, Tom.  "Google restores tethering app for Android users outside U.S."  CNET.com.  April 2, 2009. 

This article from technology web site CNET presents a news story about Google's pulling an application from its app market due to a violation of Tmobiles terms of service.  The app, which was a tethering app - an app that can be used by Mac and PC users to gain access to the internet through their phones, was banned by Tmobile and was subsequently removed from all app markets by Google.  The problem was that the terms of service violation only applied within the United States and with phones that were locked.  Google quickly remedied its universal takedown by putting the app back up on app markets outside the U.S. and by restoring access for unlocked phones. 

The news story is not so much notable for the tethering app in particular, but rather because it presents an instance in which Google's open access software comes into direct conflict with the network operator on which it runs.  The article notes how "It appears Google's commitment to making Android a completely open operating system will be tested by the reality of how wireless carriers have traditionally controlled the applications that run on their network."  This is an important point because it highlights an inherent contradiction in the ways open source software and mobile network operators function.  This contradiction will likely prove to be one of Google's primary challenges in establishing Android as a widely used operating system in the mobile market.

"What is Android?."  Android.com.  Retrieved on April 7 from http://www.android.com/about/.

This introduction to Android, as presented by Google on the Android web site, provides a brief explanation of what Android is, with an emphasis on the capabilities and potential for innovation that the operating system provides.  The introduction is written in relatively simple, non technical language, and is broken down into four sections: one describing how Android is "open," another describing the equal status among applications, another describing the breakdown of barriers between applications, and a final one describing the fast and easy development of applications. 

This introduction does a good job of breaking down some of the basic capabilities of Android and it gives the reader an idea of the core philosophy behind Android.  The language is mostly in layman's terms, suggesting the intro is written for a general audience.  The page is notable for its lack of Google branding.  Instead, the page describes Android as being developed by the Open Handset Alliance (the consortium of Android supporters gathered by Google).  Although Google has been the primary player in developing Android, the decision to present Android as a product of an alliance seems to be in line with Google's attempts to market Android as a non-proprietary piece of software.

Von Hippel, Eric and George von Krogh.  "Open Source Software and the 'Private-Collective' Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science."  Organization Science, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2003), pp. 209-223.  Published by: INFORMS.

This overview of the open source approach in economics provides a brief history of the advent of open source software and ends with a discussion that uses the open source model to call into question traditional economic models for compensation.  The article defines two basic economic models for innovation: the private investment model and the collective action model.  The private investment model is based on the concept of an individual or private entity investing in an innovation and then owning the rights to that innovation.  This model is beneficial in that it contains an inherent compensatory system for innovators - based on ownership of rights - that encourages further innovation.  At the same time, this model limits public access to those innovations.  On the other hand, the collective action model is based on the concept of public goods - goods which are freely used by all, and whose usage by any given person does not exclude or degrade usage by another person.  In order for innovation to occur in this public realm, innovators must make their knowledge free for all to access.  While this model is beneficial in that it does not place a limit on public use of goods, it is problematic in that it does not include a strong compensatory system for encouraging further innovation.

This article provides a useful re-examination of traditional economic models, which will be necessary considering the open source model will likely be an important presence in the future, at least within the realm of internet technologies.  Though this particular paper does not present hard examples or definitive conclusions about what type of economic model applies to open source innovation, it does at least suggest that experts need to reconsider traditional models and perhaps leave room for a gray area between opposing models.  With regards to open source, there may exist what the authors refer to as a Private-Collective model for innovation that, under the right conditions, allows for the benefits of both the private investment and the collective action models.

"

This hosted service represents a new generation metasearch service. It displays results quickly and simply, and gives the searcher unparalleled control over the search experience. These benefits are accomplished through features such as

* simultaneous searching of up to 100 databases almost instantly
* relevance ranking, sorting and merging of records across databases
* processing of returned hits at the rate of 2000 records per second
* faceted searching by resource, subject, author, date or any library-defined element

MasterKey's simplicity and power provide a metasearch experience unequaled by any other metasearch service."

With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Library Environment (OLE) Project will convene the academic library community in the design of an Open Library Management System built on Service Oriented Architecture. The project leaders are a multi-national group of libraries dedicated to thinking beyond the current model of an Integrated Library System and to designing a new system that is flexible, customizable and able to meet the changing and complex needs of modern, dynamic academic libraries. The end product will be a design document to inform open source library system development efforts, to guide future library system implementations, and to influence current Integrated Library System vendor products.

Free and open-source software is good for you and good for the world. This is the best Mac software that we know of.

MapBuilder is a powerful, standards compliant geographic mapping client which runs in a web browser.

Geotools is used by a number of projects including Web Feature Servers, Web Map Servers, and desktop applications, as is described on this page. Some screenshots of Geotools in action are also available.

Programmers wishing to use GeoTools in their own applications can get more information from the Use page and the User Guide. Developers wishing to extend the GeoTools library can get started on the Develop page and the Developer Guide.

GeoTools releases can be found on the downloads page. The Geotools code base is maintained in a subversion repository.

GeoServer is an Open Source server that connects your information to the Geospatial Web.

With GeoServer you can publish and edit data using open standards. Your information is made available in a large variety of formats as maps/images or actual geospatial data. GeoServer's transactional capabilities offer robust support for shared editing. GeoServer's focus is ease of use and support for standards, in order to serve as 'glue' for the geospatial web, connecting from legacy databases to many diverse clients.

GeoServer supports WFS-T and WMS open protocols from the OGC to produce JPEG, PNG, SVG, KML/KMZ, GML, PDF, Shapefiles and more. More information on specific features of GeoServer can be found here, and some samples of GeoServer in action are in the gallery.

GeoServer is built on Geotools, the same Java toolkit that udig uses. GeoServer is a truly open community, with a well documented and modular codebase, so don't hesitate to get involved.

Open source. Open space. Open art. Open doors. Open questions. Open City?

Open Cities Toronto 2007 is a weekend-long web of conversation and celebration that asks: how do we collaboratively add more open to the urban landscape we share? What happens when people working on open source, public space, open content, mash up art, and open business work together? How do we make Toronto a magnet for people playing with the open meme?

You are invited to discuss, dance, debate, and download Toronto's potential to become an epicentre and an example of a community that thrives on openness. We've all chosen to live here for a reason - let's figure out how we can combine our talents to build a city-wide community of openness.

about...

Open Source is a conversation, four times a week on the radio and any time you like on the blog. We designed the show to invert the traditional relationship between broadcast and the web: we aren’t a public radio show with a web community, we’re a web community that produces a daily hour of radio.

OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

From the website:

Welcome to FUH2.com, home of the official Hummer H2 salute. So...why all the fuss? Well, it breaks down like this: The H2 is the ultimate poseur vehicle. It has the chassis of a Chevy Tahoe and a body that looks like the original Hummer; i.e. it's a Chevy Tahoe in disguise. The H2 is a gas guzzler. Because it has a gross vehicle weight rating over 8500 lbs, the US government does not require it to meet federal fuel efficiency regulations. Hummer isn't even required to publish its fuel economy (owners indicate that they get around 10 mpg for normal use). So while our brothers and sisters are off in the Middle East risking their lives to secure America's fossil fuel future, H2 drivers are pissing away our "spoils of victory" during each trip to the grocery store.
The H2 is a polluter. Based on G.M.'s optimistic claim that it gets13 mpg, an H2 will produce 3.4 metric tons of carbon emissions in a typical year, nearly double that of G.M.'s Chevrolet Malibu sedan. The H2 is a death machine. You'd better hope that you don't collide with an H2 in your economy car. You can kiss your ass goodbye thanks to the H2's massive weight and raised bumpers. Too bad you couldn't afford an urban assault vehicle of your own. Or could you...? The H2 is a tax loophole. Under the current tax laws, business owners can deduct nearly half the cost of their H2s. If you are in the highest tax bracket, that's a tax savings of nearly $10,000! The government rewards you more savings for buying an H2 than you'd get for buying an electric car.

 

From the website:

Sophie's raison d'être is to enable people to create robust, elegant rich-media, networked documents without recourse to programming. We have word processors, video, audio and photo editors but no viable options for assembling the parts into a complex whole except tools like Flash which are expensive, hard to use, and often create documents with closed proprietary file formats. Sophie promises to open up the world of multimedia authoring to a wide range of creative people.

Cartographers have long used flow maps to show the movement of objects from one location to another, such as the number of people in a migration, the amount of goods being traded, or the number of packets in a network. The advantage of flow maps is that they reduce visual clutter by merging edges. Most flow maps are drawn by hand and there are few computer algorithms available. We present a method for generating flow maps using hierarchical clustering given a set of nodes, positions, and flow data between the nodes. Our techniques are inspired by graph layout algorithms that minimize edge crossings and distort node positions while maintaining their relative position to one another. We demonstrate our technique by producing flow maps for network traffic, census data, and trade data.

From the website:

Funambol is open source mobile application server software that provides push email, address book and calendar (PIM) data synchronization, application provisioning, and device management for wireless devices and PCs, leveraging standard protocols. For users, this means BlackBerry-like capabilities on commodity handsets.

Funambol is also a software development platform for mobile applications. It provides client and server side Java APIs, and facilitates the development, deployment and management of any mobile project. Funambol is the de facto standard implementation of the Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management protocols (OMA DS and DM, formerly known as SyncML).

Krishnamurthy, Sandeep, Cave or Community? An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects, May 2002.

The value of this paper is represented in its byline: “An empirical examination of 100 mature open source projects.” The author used as his source one of the premier open source project management websites, home to tens of thousands of projects, and picked a sample that had reached the highest level – “mature.” As the paper notes, the projects sampled had been in existence for 18 months on average, and had released several versions of their product, therefore having the best chance of representing the community development possible within open source projects.

The paper’s most dramatic finding is that most mature open source projects are fairly small – the median number of developers in the sampled projects was four, with a lone developer being the most common case.

Other findings included that most projects did not generate very much discussion, in contrast to the portrait painted by the media of a bustling, communicative group of developers. The study found that products with more developers were viewed and downloaded more often, and also that products with more developers had smaller leadership bases.

Although this study is straightforward and not accompanied by a wealth of discussion, the findings speak fairly loudly toward discrediting a lot of the prevailing image of the open source project.  Even the author’s tone in compiling this bibliography suggests that most projects are large networks of disparate talent, colluding to create products that are extensively peer-reviewed for quality. This study shows that to not necessarily be the case, although it is unclear what subjective level of success the surveyed projects had obtained – projects selected for other variables could yield different data, and the discussion in the study suggests that projects in other stages of life (earlier than “mature”) could carry different characteristics as well.

Crowston, Kevin et al. Defining Open Source Software Success,Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, 2003.

This is a paper in the scholarly tradition that examines previous attempts to define what makes an open source software project successful, and then “reexamines” the culture of open source projects to suggest new measures. The article closes by analyzing measures of success suggested by a primary source from the open source community – the forums on a popular site dedicated to the movement.

The traditional measures of success listed are fairly predictable – most notably “quality” in the general sense. A number of measures from computer science literature three decades old are listed – among them understandability, completeness, testability, and efficiency. Proposed measures of user satisfaction in the open source community are dismissed as non-representative, since measurable feedback requires involvement in the projects themselves, which is not necessarily a complete sample of users not to mention not likely to encompass users with negative opinions. Amount of use is similarly difficult to measure due to the idiosyncrasies of open source distribution.

The paper’s own suggestions include measures much more specific to open source development: project output, level of activity on a project in a given timeframe, professional development as a result of contribution to projects, etc. While these measures certainly speak to contributors to open source projects, questions must be raised about the overarching goals of open source projects implied by these measures. If the goal is to solely to stimulate the developers involved, then these measures can be seen as appropriate, however this hobby-group mentality cannot be solely responsible for the fact that large parts of the global economy rely on open source. These measurements speak nothing to the need to create quality products that serve a real purpose, or the need to serve that purpose better than competitive commercial products.

What is telling is that in the article’s analysis of forum comments by those involved in open source projects reveals a similarly self-centered attitude. The top three measures of success found in this analysis were developer satisfaction, user involvement, and developer involvement, with user satisfaction, an important concern in the development of any product, ranking only fourth. It seems curious that open source has seen success as a model at all, given that the satisfaction of those creating the products is much more highly valued than the satisfaction of those actually using them. While other literature specifically points out that developer and user are supposed to be one and the same (von Hippel, 2001), this is only partially true in software development (Bonaccorsi and Rossi, 2003), and I argue that open source will enjoy only niche success if a developer-centric attitude prevails.

Blizzard Entertainment sued a group of volunteer gamers who created free, noncommercial, open-source software to allow Blizzard game owners to play the games over the Internet. Claiming that the gamers reverse engineered Blizzard’s own Battle.net server software to make their own BnetD server software, Blizzard cited anti-circumvention violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Both Battle.net servers and BnetD servers were available for free online to enable online game play. However, BnetD was created as an alternative to Battle.net to fix some connection difficulties that some users encountered while using Battle.net.

Blizzard attempted to stop distribution of BnetD, alleging that the software has been used to permit play of pirated Blizzard games. However, the volunteer developers did not design BnetD for this purpose, nor were they are using BnetD for this purpose. The free software was a legitimate use and could not be bluntly labeled as a piracy device. Blizzard argued that the developers reverse engineered sections of the game, thus violating Blizzard’s End User License Agreement (EULA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represented the programmers and declared that BnetD was a legal free product which worked with the original product in order to benefit game owners. The court ruled in favor of Blizzard, ultimately stating that reverse engineering and emulating of Blizzard software in this case were illegal.

The consequences of the ruling were detrimental to game upgrades and user enhancements. If this decision set the precedent, user-developed programs that work with original products would be banned. Furthermore, consumer choice would be limited by the available products. Since users would only be authorized to use a certain company’s products with that same company’s accessories together, this would have a profound impact on software and game products. In a similar analogy, imagine if Brand A’s eraser had to be used in conjunction with Brand A’s pencil. What would happen if computer users were forced to run only Microsoft products with Microsoft Windows? What if gamers could only play certain games with specific designated programs and accessories? Inevitably, such precedent would drastically reduce competition in the marketplace in addition to loss of both innovation and user-generated creativity.

The Tacos library project provides components and ajax behaviour for the Tapestry java web application framework. Most of the functionality is based on the exceptional dojo javascript library. Thanks dojo!

It's intent is to provide a library of high quality components that may be used in your tapestry application, as well as provide a core infrastructure for using ajax related logic in these and your own components and pages.

Nice javascript library that could be helpful.  It has a widget for date and time...