government

The power of the crowd, revisited

Almost three years after Jeff Howe coined the term in his seminal article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing," and, ironically, in the very week 1,300 handpicked scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and other thinkers, movers, and shakers assembled at the TED conference in Long Beach, the term "crowdsourcing" yielded more than 1 million search results on Google.

That's quite an accomplishment. Crowdsourcing is no longer an exclusive noun for a few in the know, it has become a verb for the crowd. Mom-and pop shops, SME's, and large corporations, receptionists, interns, middle managers, and CEOs – everyone'… Read more

Open source finds its way into the U.S. stimulus bill

Even as open source thrives in the downturn, with many open-source vendors reporting significantly increased interest in open solutions as budgets get slashed, the U.S. federal government has decided to put U.S. taxpayer dollars into play to fund a study of just how much money can be saved by moving to open source.

Rather than a broad-based study, however, Congress approved a measure that will study the viability and financial effects of open-source health IT providers, as noted in the stimulus bill [PDF - see page 488] and reported on Slashdot:

STUDY AND REPORT ON AVAILABILITY OF OPEN … Read more

Australia government limited Google's bushfire map

The refusal of the government in Victoria, Australia, to provide data for Google's bushfire map mashup limited its scope and highlighted glaring problems with Crown copyright provisions, the search giant's top Australian engineer said yesterday.

With over 1 million page views since Sunday, the Google Map overlay showing Victoria's bushfires has been invaluable for tracking the extent of the disaster.

Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble told the Broadband and Beyond conference in Melbourne yesterday that he became involved with the bushfire mapping effort after Google engineers woke in shock Sunday morning to read about the horrific … Read more

Can we please keep Google and IBM out of the government bail-out trough?

Apparently, even technology companies want a bail-out.

Recently, the CEOs of Google, IBM, and other technology companies converged on the White House to lobby President Obama for key measures like broadband investments to be included in the U.S. government stimulus package. It's one thing to see U.S. auto makers, perpetually inefficient and ineffective in the market, begging for government hand-outs. It's quite another to see the leaders of the world's most successful technology companies seeking the dole, as well.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made it clear what he hoped to gain from his government intervention … Read more

TransparencyCamp to shed light on tech policy

Given how poorly the government seems to do with spending money (feeble-minded stimulus bill, anyone?), it's refreshing to hear about TransparencyCamp, an effort to "remix the geeks and the wonks so we can integrate transparency with policy in the government."

It's a laudable goal--one to be welcomed as technology CEOs lobby the U.S. federal government for policies and "stimuli" favorable to themselves.

This "unconference" has already assembled some stellar participants, including Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, Apache luminary Brian Behlendorf, Bob Biersack of the Federal Election Commission, USA.gov … Read more

Debate: To tame 'wild' open-source deployments

Baseline is suggesting that chief information officers would do well to get "wild" deployments of open-source software under control. I'm not sure that I agree.

The magazine article characterizes the primary threat of having 85 percent of enterprises adopting open source, according to Gartner, as a potential intellectual-property landmine. I struggle to see how it's any different from purchasing proprietary solutions.

Some may argue that it's different because you get indemnification with your commercial software purchase. Please. Have you seen how limited and constrained those are, and do you really think that commercial software protects … Read more

Obama: Where are our Macs?

Barack Obama has promised change. In his first day in office, however, he discovered that change is easier said than done.

Take his team's operating-system preference. Obama's team was dismayed to discover that the White House runs Windows, not Macs, according to The Washington Post. I'm a Mac fan, but I'm somewhat surprised by the naivete of this response:

The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with 6-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing...Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, … Read more

Obama wants to know: Why open source?

President Barack Obama is a smart guy. Where others zig, he zags. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that he's been asking around about the benefits of open source, according to Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, who has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.

McNealy, cited in a BBC News story, wasn't shy in identifying them:

It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software....The government ought to mandate open-source products based on open-source reference implementations … Read more

The open-source bailout

Give someone a blank check to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's amazing all the good that they can (purport to) do with other people's money.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has put together his own list of bailout proposals, which included $2 billion to help fund open-source software makers.

Such a proposal should make open-source advocates like me happy, right?

Wrong. Open source is doing just fine without a government stimulus. In fact, I'd argue that the easiest way to discern a thriving industry is to … Read more