Mark is Deputy Principal of Albany Senior High School. Open source software and cloud computing have been essential in the establishment of this school, and in this presentation from the 2010 EDtalks Symposium Mark outlines his beliefs about the advantages and opportunities that open source and cloud computing bring to the students, teachers and school community.
Showing posts with label open source. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open source. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Mark Osborne : the Open Source School
Mark is Deputy Principal of Albany Senior High School. Open source software and cloud computing have been essential in the establishment of this school, and in this presentation from the 2010 EDtalks Symposium Mark outlines his beliefs about the advantages and opportunities that open source and cloud computing bring to the students, teachers and school community.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
School yard bullying is alive and well
Remember the schoolyard bullies of childhood?
Two groups of kids playing similar games on adjacent courts. One group, slightly nerdy maybe and certainly not the 'in' jocks of the other group, seem to be having heaps fun. Laughing, loads of kids on each side, all playing together, really friendly, with rules tweaked as the game progressed to even things up a bit so everyone can play.
The other court has a small team of uber-jocks playing hard and fast 'properly', right number of players on each side, referee, complicated rules, lots of people standing on the sidelines just watching. Slowly, one by one, the onlookers start drifting away from the jocks to the nerds; just watching at first then joining in to play as well.
The jocks look around and realise that they aren't the centre of attention anymore because of this 'mad' inclusive game on the other court which anyone can play because it doesn't need expensive gear, or insider knowledge or years of training.
So the jocks barge onto the court and take the ball, claim they own the court and the rules of the game are xyz. The nerds cry foul but the teacher just nods and says oh thats ok - they don't mean any harm.
The game carries on for a bit but the bullies don't get the nerd game, keep trying to bring in the old rules - not remembering that the nerds had already walked away from the old rules to play their own game.
The nerds try to play nicely but dont get a lookin with the bullies, they eventually wander off, find another place to play, a grassy paddock, another ball and carry on. The grassy paddock is pretty good actually, heaps softer to fall on, makes the game even better. Heaps more people join in. People still come to the courts to find a game, but its not the one they heard about. Their ears pick up the happy noises over in the paddock where the 'real' game is being played and they wander over and start playing too.
The jocks don't get it ... they took the ball, got the court - why havn't the nerds just given up?
Koha bullying
Well this is not dissimilar to the situation the Koha community finds itself in with LibLime / PTFS.
The game was library management systems. Some of us couldn't play - couldn't afford the gear and didn't really like the game that much anyway. So we started a new game, Koha, and pretty soon heaps of people were playing it to. Soon the 'real' library management systems started noticing that people were moving over to Koha. Funding issues just made Koha seem even more attractive, and of course the game was one anyone could play and it evolved really fast because everyone has influence.
So LibLime PTFS grabbed a piece of Koha. They took the ball, the code, and played with it a while cutting out the orginal players by not pasing it back in the way of bug-fixes and enhancements. They got the court too, koha.org.
After a while, the koha community realised that it just wasn't getting a look in and decided to go get its own court to play on, koha-community.org and they have another ball, the code. Everyone is welcome to join in and the community is strong.
PTFS just dont get it.
They keep calling their forks Koha - but they are not. Its a different game. LEK and Harley are Koha forks because they were both built on the Koha open source code at some point in the past. They are not Koha now. PTFS have just released a new LibLime website where they still call their forks Koha and have invented a new logo for Koha. This is provocative, aggressive and just not on.
I was told off in Twitter today for swearing - and yes, sometimes I feel so angry and so helpless against such bullying that I do resort to swearing. I am so annoyed that our philosophically beautiful Koha is getting sullied through association with such ratbags as LibLime and PTFS who think nothing of lying in order to 'win' the game.
What is the game we are playing folks? What will a win look like to PTFS? Total domination of Koha by a single vendor? That will not be a win for anyone.
Two groups of kids playing similar games on adjacent courts. One group, slightly nerdy maybe and certainly not the 'in' jocks of the other group, seem to be having heaps fun. Laughing, loads of kids on each side, all playing together, really friendly, with rules tweaked as the game progressed to even things up a bit so everyone can play.
The other court has a small team of uber-jocks playing hard and fast 'properly', right number of players on each side, referee, complicated rules, lots of people standing on the sidelines just watching. Slowly, one by one, the onlookers start drifting away from the jocks to the nerds; just watching at first then joining in to play as well.
The jocks look around and realise that they aren't the centre of attention anymore because of this 'mad' inclusive game on the other court which anyone can play because it doesn't need expensive gear, or insider knowledge or years of training.
So the jocks barge onto the court and take the ball, claim they own the court and the rules of the game are xyz. The nerds cry foul but the teacher just nods and says oh thats ok - they don't mean any harm.
The game carries on for a bit but the bullies don't get the nerd game, keep trying to bring in the old rules - not remembering that the nerds had already walked away from the old rules to play their own game.
The nerds try to play nicely but dont get a lookin with the bullies, they eventually wander off, find another place to play, a grassy paddock, another ball and carry on. The grassy paddock is pretty good actually, heaps softer to fall on, makes the game even better. Heaps more people join in. People still come to the courts to find a game, but its not the one they heard about. Their ears pick up the happy noises over in the paddock where the 'real' game is being played and they wander over and start playing too.
The jocks don't get it ... they took the ball, got the court - why havn't the nerds just given up?
Koha bullying
Well this is not dissimilar to the situation the Koha community finds itself in with LibLime / PTFS.
The game was library management systems. Some of us couldn't play - couldn't afford the gear and didn't really like the game that much anyway. So we started a new game, Koha, and pretty soon heaps of people were playing it to. Soon the 'real' library management systems started noticing that people were moving over to Koha. Funding issues just made Koha seem even more attractive, and of course the game was one anyone could play and it evolved really fast because everyone has influence.
So LibLime PTFS grabbed a piece of Koha. They took the ball, the code, and played with it a while cutting out the orginal players by not pasing it back in the way of bug-fixes and enhancements. They got the court too, koha.org.
After a while, the koha community realised that it just wasn't getting a look in and decided to go get its own court to play on, koha-community.org and they have another ball, the code. Everyone is welcome to join in and the community is strong.
PTFS just dont get it.
They keep calling their forks Koha - but they are not. Its a different game. LEK and Harley are Koha forks because they were both built on the Koha open source code at some point in the past. They are not Koha now. PTFS have just released a new LibLime website where they still call their forks Koha and have invented a new logo for Koha. This is provocative, aggressive and just not on.
I was told off in Twitter today for swearing - and yes, sometimes I feel so angry and so helpless against such bullying that I do resort to swearing. I am so annoyed that our philosophically beautiful Koha is getting sullied through association with such ratbags as LibLime and PTFS who think nothing of lying in order to 'win' the game.
What is the game we are playing folks? What will a win look like to PTFS? Total domination of Koha by a single vendor? That will not be a win for anyone.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Why open source is good for Google
Great news item today on Stuff about open source:
"OPEN WIDE: Google's open source-friendly strategy is paying off, Google's head of engineering for Australia and New Zealand says. More>>"
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Open Solutions for Libraries Gain Momentum
Biblios.net is a really exciting new open source project that LibLime in the States has been working on - and very timely given the OCLC policy review and the 'heat' that has generated.Some key points about biblios.net are:
- It's built with completely open source software, and released under the GPL, just like Koha.
- The data in the giant record store (currently 35 million records) are licensed under the Open Data Commons license. Anyone can use the records, modify them, etc. This is in stark contrast to many national libraries and organizations like OCLC, who view the data as owned by them.
- The service is free for anyone to use, meaning that libraries have a free cataloging tool and a free data store.
Thanks to Philip van Zijl for posting link on NZ Libs list this morning.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Koha community defending the Open Source ethos.
Very interesting to see this press release from a bunch of leaders in the Koha community, defending the ethos of the open source Koha community by publically slamming a company who refuse to play by the rules.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can’t Have Our Code
Good article on Code4Lib Journal by Dale Askey - and it mentions our very own Koha!
"Librarians are among the strongest proponents of open source software. Paradoxically, libraries are also among the least likely to actively contribute their code to open source projects. This article identifies and discusses six main reasons this dichotomy exists and offers ways to get around them." more>>
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