Information is power, and the fossil fuel companies don’t want anyone but them to have power. They have lied to governments, manipulated political parties, and publicly deny their actions are killing all of us. Obviously, that’s not good. Now an international team of researchers and concerned organizations have launched the
Continue readingTag: open source
Things Are Good: Happy 20th Birthday to VLC
One of the best open source projects is undoubtedly VLC, that little app with the pylon icon that plays any video file you throw at it. VLC embodies the spirit of a free and open world of computing in which the user can do whatever they want and not have
Continue readingeaves.ca: Covid-19: Lessons from and for Government Digital Service Groups
This article was written by David Eaves, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tom Loosemore, Partner at Public Digital, with Tommaso Cariati and Blanka Soulava, students at the Harvard Kennedy School. It first appeared in Apolitical. Government digital services have proven critical to the pandemic response. As a result, the
Continue readingThings Are Good: 3D Printing Respirators to Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Italian health care system finds itself short on parts due to the influx of COVID-19 patients. Due to the nature of the virus people with it are more likely to need breathing support as lungs are in such a bad shape. Some geniuses at one Italian hospital decided to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Streetmix: Remix Your Street
Streetmix Let’s be honest, people are bad at conveying their ideas on what streets can look like. Thankfully there’s an open source project designed to help people remix their local streets and share it with others. The web based design tool Streetmix provides a simple drag and drop interface to
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Changing the Capitalist System – We are closer than you think
I’ve recently changed computer operating systems, moving from Windows 10 to a version of Linux called Mint. I was motivated primarily by concerns about privacy and had grown weary of a computing environment that was constantly trying to sell me stuff I didn’t need. I won’t bore you with what
Continue readingBravo to Elon Musk, patent-buster
Inventor/entrepreneur/engineer/investor Elon Musk recently announced he was giving away all the patents on Tesla Motor’s electric car technology, allowing anyone, competitors included, to use them. Musk, CEO and product architect for the company (for which he receives a salary of a dollar a year), made the announcement last week, commenting,
Continue readingeaves.ca: Government Procurement Failure: BC Ministry of Education Case Study
Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve been in business mode – both helping a number of organizations I’m proud of and working on my own business. For those interested in a frightening tale of inept procurement, poor judgement and downright dirty tactics when it comes to software procurement and
Continue readingeaves.ca: Mozillians: Announcing Community Metrics DashboardCon – January 21, 2014
Please read background below for more info. Here’s the skinny. What A one day mini-conference, held (tentatively) in Vancouver on January 14th San Francisco on January 21st and 22nd, 2014 (remote participating possible) for Mozillians about community metrics and dashboards. Update: Apologies for the change of date and location, this event
Continue readingThings Are Good: Open Hand: Low Cost Robotic Hand
A funding campaign on IndieGoGo is focused on making an open-sourced robotic prosthetic hand. This is wonderful because the end product will be shared with everyone and the hand can be made essentially anywhere. The Open Hand Project is open-source, which means all of the plans to make a robotic hand
Continue readingThings Are Good: Open Tech Forever Hardware Cooperative in Colorado
Colorado has a new permaculture and open sourced initiative taking shape and it look promising. The team is adding open source technology from hardware and software to a sustainable agriculture setup. On top of all of that they are also developing an open source business model! This is an exciting
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Aaron Swartz’s Last Gift: Site Launches Whistleblower Safe House
In era of “most aggressive government assaults on press freedom,” new open source dropbox provides “secure route” for leaks By: Lauren McCauley | Published by Common Dreams on May 17, 2013 One month before his January 11th suicide, web pioneer and creative commons architect Aaron Swartz completed one last project—an “opensource drop box
Continue readingeaves.ca: CivicOpen: New Name, Old Idea
The other day Zac Townsend published a piece, “Introducing the idea of an open-source suite for municipal governments,” laying out the case for why cities should collaboratively create open source software that can be shared among them. I think it is a great idea. And I’m thrilled to hear that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Open Source Ecology Explained
Way back in 2008 I blogged on Open Source Ecology (OSE) which is an open source project to create tools and knowledge to build a fully sustainable village. The project has grown since then and they are going even further by designing tools that can be fabricated on site. Recently,
Continue readingeaves.ca: Making Bug Fixing more Efficient (and pleasant) – This Made Me Smile
The other week I was invited down to the Bay Area Drupal Camp (#BadCamp) to give a talk on community management to a side meeting of the 100 or so core Drupal developers. I gave a hour long version of my OSCON keynote on the Science of Community Management and had a great time engaging what […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Is the Internet bringing us together or is it tearing us apart?
The other day the Vancouver Sun – via Simon Fraser University’s Public Square program – asked me to pen a piece answering the questions: Is the Internet bringing us together or is it tearing us apart? Yesterday, they published the piece. My short answer? Trying to unravel whether the Internet
Continue readingeaves.ca: Community Managers: Expectations, Experience and Culture Matter
Here’s an awesome link to grind home my point from my OSCON keynote on Community Management, particularly the part where I spoke about the importance of managing wait times – the period between when a volunteer/contributor takes and action and when they get feedback on that action. In my talk
Continue readingeaves.ca: Transparency Case Study: There are Good and Bad Ways Your Organization can be made “Open”
If you have not had the chance, I strongly encourage you to check out a fantastic piece of journalism in this week’s Economist on the state of the Catholic Church in America. It’s a wonderful example of investigative and data driven journalism made possible (sadly) by the recent spat of
Continue readingeaves.ca: Using Metrics to Measure Interest in an Open Source Project
David Boswell has a couple of interesting posts (here and here) about how he is using metrics to measure how effective Mozilla is at attracting and engaging people express an interest in helping contribute to the Mozilla mission. Some of the metrics being used can be seen at Mozilla’s Are
Continue readingeaves.ca: Is Civic Hacking Becoming ‘Our Pieces, Loosely Joined?’
I’ve got a piece up over on the WeGov blog at TechPresident – Is Civic Hacking Becoming ‘Our Pieces, Loosely Joined?‘ Juicy bit: There is however, a larger issue that this press release raises. So far, it appears that the spirit of re-use among the big players, like MySociety and
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