opensource.com

In this final episode of our three-part interview with Braxton (part of the "Managing with Open Values" series) we discuss the importance of creating a positive environment for teams.

Rochester Institute of Technology is establishing Open@RIT, an initiative dedicated to supporting all kinds of "open work," including—but not limited to—open source software, open data, open hardware, open educational resources, Creative Commons-licensed work, and open research.

The new open source programs office aims to determine and grow the footprint of RIT's impact on all things "open," leading to more collaboration, creation, and contribution, on and off campus.

For many people, programming is fun because it's a little like solving a puzzle. You know that, in theory, if you can just arrange logic statements and conditions in the right order, using just the right syntax, then you'll end up with an application that does something useful. The problem, strangely, is that sometimes you don't know why you'd need the application you end up with. It's like stepping outside for a walk with nowhere to go. Just as marathons provide a framework and a goal for aimless foot traffic, there are events without a cause for coders.

Free and open source software (FOSS) and the distributed digital manufacturing of free and open source hardware (FOSH) have shown great promise for developing custom scientific tools. For some time now, FOSH has provided scientists a high return on investment. In fact, my previous research in the Open Source Lab reported substantial economic savings from using these technologies.

Loki is an Apache 2.0-licensed open source log-aggregation framework designed by Grafana Labs and built with tremendous support from a growing community. It is also the project I work on every day. In this article, rather than just talking about how Loki works, I will provide a hands-on introduction to solving real problems with it.

People are often surprised when they find out that blockchain technology, which is known for its security, is built on open source software code. In fact, this openness is what creates its security and reliability.

One of the core values of building anything as open source is gaining efficiency. Creating a community of developers with different perspectives and skillsets, all working on the same code base, can exponentially increase the number and complexity of applications built.

Did you know that you can run a Linux command line on your iOS device? You might be asking, "why would I want to use text-based applications on my tiny iPhone?" OK, fair enough. That is a pretty reasonable question. But if you're reading Opensource.com, you probably know the answer: Linux users want to be able to use any device, and they also want to use their own customizations.

And most of all, they want a challenge.

The Open Source Definition (OSD), maintained by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), is a foundational pillar of the open source movement. The OSI's view is that software validly labeled "open source" must be made available in a manner that satisfies the 10 criteria set forth in the OSD, all but one of which pertain to licensing terms.

Although I'm only 20 years old, I've already had many opportunities to help build solutions for a better tomorrow. I've worked with open source technology, research publishing, media, and development. I have served as an administartor and mentor in Google Summer of Code, Google Code-In, and Google Season of Docs with Codeuino, Sugar Labs, Jboss Community, Terasology Foundation, and Open Collective. But my start in open source and technology was not very good.

In Use this Python script to simulate Babbage's Difference Engine, Python offered an alternative solution to Babbage's problem of determining the number of marbles in a two-dimensional pyramid. Babbage's Difference Engine solved this using a table showing the number of marble rows and the total number of marbles.

After nearly six months of frequent video conferencing, I was tired of looking at my colleagues as tiny thumbnails on 13" and 15" laptop displays. However, I didn't want the clutter of a desktop or tower case and all the associated cabling.

A community manager is the quarterback of an open source community. This is the person who ensures that everything runs smoothly, the one who helps the community and all its members grow. Every thriving community needs one.

While the specific skills and expertise a community manager needs depend on the community itself—after all, every community is unique—there are a handful of core qualities you'll see in any outstanding community manager.

Here are five of them.

I just stumbled onto a new (to me) feature of the GNOME desktop that enables you to create a document template. A template is generally an empty shell of a document with certain things configured and is often referred to as boilerplate. An example might be a letterhead for a law firm, with its corporate title and address at the top. Another might be a bank or insurance carrier letter that contains certain disclaimers in the footer at the bottom of the document.

This is part 13 in an ongoing series about creating video games in Python 3 using the Pygame module. Previous articles are:

There are common beliefs about user experiences—the best ones are user-centered, iterative, and intuitive. When user experience (UX) research is conducted, user stories about these experiences are collected—but the research methods chosen inform user experiences, too.

So, what makes for an engaging research experience, and how can methods evolve alongside products to better connect with users?

In the first article in this series, I presented four dimensions of globalization and explained how they relate to open organization principles. Then, in the second part, I reviewed a history of globalization, one based on Jeffrey D.

I love books about technology. My idea of a relaxing weekend is—legitimately—settling in with my copy of DocBook: The Definitive Guide (TDG to those of us who us who've read the whole series). I love learning to understand and integrate technology, and so those are the books I read.

With more kids learning from home this year, it's important to engage them with unique learning opportunities. The classroom looks very different than it did before, and it's going to continue to evolve. So should the lessons we teach.

In the first article in this series, I shared how my students taught me to code. Over the next few weeks, I will be exploring how educators and parents can harness the power of coding to teach kids a wide variety of skills.

Before getting down to the actual writing part of documenting another one of your open source projects, and even before interviewing the experts, it's a good idea to answer some high-level questions about your new document.

Renowned communication theorist Harold Lasswell wrote in his 1948 article, The Structure and Function of Communication in Society:

[A] convenient way to describe an act of communication is to answer the following questions:

Recently, the Forrester Wave, one of the most prominent independent IT industry analyst reports, chose Ansible as a leader in its overview of automation solutions.