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Open the business case So I have been doing a bit of research into being “Open” as a business strategy, inevitably it led me to Open government thoughts. We can all cite merrily the bazillion reasons for buying Open source/Open tech, using Open standards, championing Open platforms and generally being the cheering public and sometime consumers of, or contributors to, Open projects. But what about when you are the supplier? What about when you are the business, looking at the business model and not just being the vendor of Open technologies? It’s a tricky one. Here is a starter for ten: “Companies that keep their intellectual property too close to the vest risk missing out on critical business innovations that idea-sharing could generate. Ponderables for a business case (The above is a synopsis of a conversation I had with @steveathon, in Sydney, over IM, whilst his wife made gingerbread – thanks for giving up your evening Steve) But that’s irrelevant: Crisis forces Open consideration Makes blinding sense right?
ZAPDramatic Freedom through a clear governance model at OSS Watch team blog A while back, Mark Webb of the Met Office Hadley Centre for climate change described in a guest post, how his Cloud model project COSP introduced a governance model, based on one of our templates. This was a result of a few informal chats over beers and his exploration of OSS Watch public resources. Mark also described some of the immediate benefits they experienced. Well recently I met up with Mark over skittles and beers (this time some excellent Otter Ale on stillage), and he described how the project has become more animated as a result of introducing a meritocratic governance model. But the observation that I found most telling was that the governance model has actually freed up blockages in the decision-making processes. In particular it appears that lazy consensus has already sped up progress by allowing action to occur when it could previously get bogged down in fruitless discussion.
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age December 12, 2004 George Siemens Update (April 5, 2005): I've added a website to explore this concept at www.connectivism.ca Introduction Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. Some significant trends in learning: Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. Background Driscoll (2000) defines learning as “a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world” (p.11). Driscoll (2000, p14-17) explores some of the complexities of defining learning. Conclusion:
Open Source by Any Other Name... As I noted on Tuesday, the UK government has been pretty much a total disaster when it comes to using open source. Indeed, it has arguably been a total disaster when it comes to using computers of any kind, spending far more on this area than any comparable European government. Moreover, the stuff is almost always late, and rarely works properly. Of course, I am not the first or last to notice that, and various groups have offered advice on how to fix this lamentable state of affairs. Despite spending around £16 billion per annum, Whitehall and Westminster often see IT as a necessary evil: a risk to be mitigated rather than an opportunity to be exploited. Information technology should be a transformational force, a tool to enable government not only to improve public services but to dramatically improve the relationship between citizen and state. System Error: fixing the flaws in government IT sets out the case for a new approach to IT in the public sector Fab title, no? Commoditisation.
Computer Lesson and Computer Lesson Plans. Why Openness is Inevitable Subscribe to this blog About Author Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be). Contact Author Email Glyn Twitter Profile Linked-in Profile As Richard Stallman constantly reminds us, there are strong moral grounds for adopting free software. Not just better as in runs faster, or uses less memory, or costs less to run, but inherently and inevitably better. Here's another fairly dramatic hint that the future is open: We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up. This is the key point.
Professor Reviews and Ratings Google Android fragmentation is a strength says Motorola Mobility Motorola Mobility, which has made the Google Android platform the centerpiece of its mobile technology strategy, has heard developer and customer concerns about Android fragmentation and systems not all behaving the same. But the company sees variation as beneficial rather than a hindrance, a Motorola Mobility official said. Variation is seen as a value of Android products, said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president at Motorola Mobility, at the AnDevCon Android developer conference. An example of differentiation developers face in Motorola Mobility's systems involves the Xoom tablet and Atrix 4G. Testing and certification programs do a good job of keeping APIs and implementations consistent, Wyatt said. A developer at AnDevCon acknowledged differentiation in Android systems. Motorola Mobility also does not see commoditisation of Android systems as a problem, Wyatt said.
NoodleTools - MLA / APA Bibliography Composer, Notecards, Free Research Tools ☝ Open Source Procurement: Subscriptions Posted on March 3, 2011 by Simon Phipps When you procure proprietary software, you buy a right-to-use license and then a support agreement. But when you buy open source, you already have the right-to-use from the OSI-approved free license, so you should compare the subscription cost with just the cost of a proprietary support agreement. Right? Wrong! Read all about it over on ComputerWorldUK… Like this: Like Loading... Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Procurement Tagged: | Subscriptions UK is a closed source 'stronghold' High performance access to file storage Workshop The UK lags behind the rest of the world in deployments of open source software. Steve George, vice-president of business development at Canonical, believes this is a mistake that compromises not only our economy but also our global competitiveness. In China rural communities are receiving millions of PCs running Linux. In India Ubuntu is the platform of choice for the regional government in Kerala. But the UK is less fertile ground. George argues that this makes it hard for businesses to innovate and puts us at risk of de-skilling technologists. "We can’t wait to see which ideas will be good, we have to try everything and applaud the attempts” “Proprietary software is the opiate of the people,” he says. “It might only be a small percentage of people who do that, but they are the future technologists, the ones who will come up with the next big thing.” In a rut So why, with our great engineering heritage, are we stuck in the proprietary rut?
UK IT Strategy Sets the Pace for All European Governments, But Can They Deliver? - Minefield On March 30th the UK Cabinet Office published its long-awaited IT strategy, which is interesting and aggressive in many respects. It touches upon several areas of concern for IT effectiveness and efficiency. It does start by recognizing that there are waste and failures in government IT and suggesting that this is the priority to be addressed. When addressing cost optimization and how to deal with the reality of tighter budgets, it often appears that people almost give for granted the efficiencies that can be obtained within IT, and focus the conversation on how IT can help the business become mo efficient. The UK strategy starts the other way around, focusing first on what can be saved in IT by reusing more, breaking down large projects into smaller chunks, opening procurement to smaller vendors, and pushing on open source adoption. The third part of the strategy suggests that new channels and applications would be built by third parties, using Directgov as a platform. and more precisely