Please contribute to a better understanding of the professional use of open source software, through a straightforward, online questionnaire.
The questionnaire will feed into a Westminster University research project, and can be be completed at http://www.oss-survey.org/ – thank you in advance!
NB. This survey has also been advertised in the eBCS bulletin dated 12 July 2006, under the title of Open source software – hype or reality? .
There was a capacity crowd in attendance at this BCS Hants AGM and OSSG supported event with several people forced to stand in the aisles at the historic Chilworth Manor Hotel located next door to the state-of-the-art Chilworth Science Park, Hampshire. Simon Phipps gave an excellent presentation in support of the argument that open source is not just a passing fad. To find out why I would recommend in the first instance a visit to his slides for the event at:
http://mediacast.sun.com/share/webmink/0625-BCS-Hampshire.pdf
In the second instance I would visit Simon’s webmink website, which is packed with a wealth of information at:
There are some interesting additional points that stick in my mind from the event that are not covered in the presentation slides. The first of these is that there is now an official fork of the OpenOffice project called NeoOffice dedicated to the Apple Mac operating system. Also Google are now offering a desktop that amongst other things will read the relatively new .odt and .ods open document formats found within OpenOffice 2 for Word Processor and Spreadsheet documents. Sun no longer use any Microsoft Desktop software thus OpenOffice has clearly taken up some of this vacated space.
To save any confusion about exactly what part of Sun he works for British born Simon explained early on in his presentation that although he lives in Hampshire, UK he actually works in Silicon Valley, USA for Sun Microsystems, Inc. Now that’s what you call commuting!
Mark Elkins
News Item Update See Simon’s comment to this news item. An audio recording of his presentation is now available at: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=zen_audio
Further to the previous post on this subject, the migration from Plone to WordPress continues apace: the new site is now available at https://ossg.bcs.org as you can see. Account details have been e-mailed to all registered users with active addresses and you should now be able to log on to comment and/or write posts. Please see the Editorial Policy document for contribution guidelines. Above all, if you have any difficulties or suggestions for improvement please contact the webmaster or discuss matters on the ossg-members mailing list.
As promised, the old site is available at http://hemswell.lincoln.ac.uk/oldossg/ for archival purposes. It will remain available for the forseeable future and you will be warned if and when it is deleted.
At present, the feature allowing new users to register themselves with the site and mailing lists is disabled, to allow a short period of time for existing users to recover their accounts. This feature will be re-enabled on Monday 10th July. Thankyou for your patience.
Finally, we hope the new site is useful and hope to see you all at one of the forthcoming OSSG events.
Alex Lambert requests the group’s help in completing his MSc research by completing a short questionnaire. We received this message from Alex:
I am a student member of the BCS currently studying towards an MSc in Information Systems and Technology. My tutor is Dr Andrew MacFarlane, also a member of the BCS.
I am currently writing my dissertation, which is evaluating open source development and specifically asking the question of whether open source can be the silver bullet of software development. I would really appreciate your responses to my questionnaire as I would like to have some feedback from people with hands-on experience of the concept. The survey should only take a few minutes of your time and I would be very grateful if any responses could be sent to me by 14.07.06.
Many thanks for your time,
Alex Lambert
PS I realise that it’s a little ironic asking questions about open source from a word doc, but I have to work with the tools I have at my disposal ;-)
You can download the questionnaire here. Your help is appreciated.
A wide cross-section of the Linux community will gather in Brighton for the annual UKUUG Linux Technical Conference. from Thursday 29th June – Sunday 2nd July 2006. It’s a great way to broaden your knowledge and keep up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of linux. This low-cost event is for anyone with a serious interest in linux including systems administrators, linux professionals, developers and enthusiasts from companies and linux user groups throughout the UK and beyond.
For more information, visit http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2006/
In addition to converting the old “issues” forums into MBOX format as described in a previous post, we have also imported the content into the blog as a collection of posts and comments.
The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) annouce a combined event with BCS Hants. A presentation by Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc: “The Zen of Free: Why open source is not a passing fad” Talk abstract: “With companies like Sun, Novell and IBM switching to Open Source, it’s clearly about more than just “free stuff”. Hear about “social production”, how software gets written, where the money comes from and why this is just the first wave of a series of revolutions that will change society profoundly and permanently.” Simon Phipps is the Chief Open Source Officer for Sun Microsystems, with global responsibility for Sun’s Free/Open Source software strategy including OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and more. He has a deep interest in the nature and impact of networks and the social change they produce. Prior to his current role, he helped create blogs.sun.com and get Sun’s President blogging, worked at IBM Hursley where he helped introduce Java and XML, and has worked on video conferencing, X.25, run a Windows software business and programmed everything from PDAs to mainframes. Find out more at http://www.webmink.net/ This event, as usual, is open to non-members (although non-BCS Hants members cannot vote at the BCS Hants AGM being held prior to the combined event), is CPD assessed, free and requires no booking. Time: 7pm (Finger Buffet 6.30pm) Venue: Chilworth Manor Hotel, Chilworth, Southampton, Hampshire SO16 7PT. Location details http://www.chilworth-manor.co.uk
For more information, visit https://ossg.bcs.org/2006/06/13/the-zen-of-free-why-open-source-is-not-a-passing-fad/
The new WordPress site set up to replace the Plone site is now available. There will be period of transition from the Plone-based site to this new WordPress instance. As you can see all the important content has already been migrated, but there are still some tasks left to do. The important dates are listed below: