Call for Participation: State and Local Government Study on Open Source Adoption

Posted on by • Posted in Local Government

604px-Oregon_State_Capital_rotundaIf you’re a U.S. State or Local technology professional with experience in open source software for your organization, your participation is being sought for a national study.

The interviews will be used to develop and publish a Best Practices and Lessons Learned report for state and local government. The analysis will also help inform Federal research and development efforts to leverage open source software for intergovernmental use.

The research is funded through the Science and Technology Directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security.

You’ll find more information and a contact form on our Call for Participation page.

Call is now closed.

Happy Tenth Anniversary OSL

Posted on by • Posted in Communities, Technology • Tagged , , , , ,
OSUOSL logo

Oregon State University Open Source Lab unofficial commemorative logo, celebrating ten years of operation.

This evening Oregon State University Open Source Lab gathered staff, students and friends to celebrate their tenth anniversary.  Was great to see the crew, and exciting to hear about their direction for the next decade.  Their quiet and critical support of community open source projects continues.  Drop in on their web site, and if you’re in the Corvallis, Oregon area, ask for a tour of the OSL; they love to share.

If you’re interested in a light technical overview of OSL’s hosting and network capacity, hosted projects, and growth over the last ten years you can check out OSL director Lance Albertson’s presentation at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) earlier this year.

NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) license: Good Start

Posted on by • Posted in National Government, Resource Materials

01-Open-Source-SummitFrom time to time I give talks, often to government folks or folks that do business with government, about open source licenses and building communities across industry boundaries.  A number of years ago NASA blazed new trails for the US federal government when they submitted their custom open source license and was successful in having it added to the list of OSI approved licenses, were it remains today.

Over the last several years NASA has asked for advice about its license, which many in the industry and community have suggested limits participation outside of government in a long and valuable list of projects.  In 2011 and 2012 NASA was encouraged, cajoled, nudged and knocked over the head with power point slides suggesting they would be much better off landing on widely accepted license.

Because it comes up often, and I keep loosing track of the best details, I’m parking a copy  the NASA 2011  Open Source Summit Proceedings here were I can find them. This was a highly successful gathering of NASA staff, community leaders, and industry experts (hats off to Linda Curaton and Scott Goodwin as exec sponsors of the meeting).  The summit format included a number of “focus groups” tackling NASA’s top questions.  Issue #2: Licensing (Page 6) includes concrete recommendations for the agency.  Enjoy.

You can read much more about NASA’s work on open source at OpenNasa.gov

Proceedings: Open Cybersecurity Summit 2012

Proceedings: Open Cybersecurity Summit 2012

Posted on by • Posted in Cybersecurity, Events, National Government, Resource Materials

Last fall the Bryant Group led the production of the first annual Open Cybersecurity Summit.

The event was underwritten by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Division (DHS S&T), Cybersecurity Division and delivered by Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Homeland Open Security Technology program (HOST). The HOST program was created to explore, invest in and share potential solutions developed and distributed as open source software tools and applications.

The proceedings have been available to attendees for some time, but are public and available to any interested parties.  It was a first of a kind event so far as we know, with an emphasis on the use of Open Source Software tools and applications as well as related best practices in the Cybersecurity space. You can download the full DC Summit Proceedings 2012, or visit the archived conference site.

We expect the next summit to be announced later this spring.

summit

Summit Agenda

Morning

8:00 a.m. | Registration

9:00 a.m. | Summit Welcome

Keynote: “Crowds, Clouds, and Spies”

Speaker: Stewart A. Baker, former DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy, author and partner at
Steptoe & Johnson LLP

10:00 to 10:30 a.m. | General Session

“OWASP – The World’s Largest Open Source Web Application Security Project”

Speaker: Dave Wichers, Open Web Application Security (OWASP) board member and
COO and Co-founder, Aspect Security Inc.

10:30 – 10:45 a.m. | Break & Poster Sessions

10:45 a.m. – noon | Panel “Open Source and Cybersecurity: Building Trust and
Interoperability”

• Panelists: Matthew Scholl, Deputy Division Chief, Computer Security Division and
Associate Director of Operations for the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of
Excellence.
• Luke Berndt, Program Manager, Department of Homeland Security, Science and
Technology (S&T) Division
• Moderator: Mark Bohannon, Vice President, Corporate Affairs & Global Public
Policy, Red Hat.

Noon to 1:00 p.m. | Lunch Break & Poster Sessions

Afternoon

1:00 2:30 p.m. Panel: “Government as the Consumer and Creator of Open
Cybersecurity”

• Panelists: Dr. David A. Wheeler, Analyst, Institute for Defense Analyses
• Joshua Davis, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) Associate Branch Head, Cyber
Security Lab and Principal Investigator for the Homeland Open Security Technology
(HOST) program
• Joe Broghamer, Lead, Authentication Technologies, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of the Chief
Information Officer, IAD

2:30 – 2:45 p.m. |Break & Poster Sessions

2:45 – 3:50 p.m. | Lightning Talks

• Adding Real-time File Analytics to the Open Source Suricata Platform; Harold
Jones, BAE Systems
• Fostering an Innovative Smart Card Environment; Peter Fucci, Safer Institute
• Identity Management: Linux and Active Directory integration; Dmitri Pal, Red Hat
Inc.
• Open Source Software Verification and Validation; Philip Marshall, Black Duck
Software
• XenClient XT: The Extensible Platform for Secure Virtualization; Philip Tricca, Citrix
Systems
• Drupal Security Controls for Government Sites; Greg Wilson, Phase 2 Technology

3:50 – 4:00 pm | Closing Comments

Speaker: Dr. Douglas Maughan, Director, DHS S&T, Cyber Security Division

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. | Networking & Poster Sessions

Get on the (Hacker) Bus.

Get on the (Hacker) Bus.

Posted on by • Posted in Events, Local Government, National Government, Open Data • Tagged , , , , ,

I recently returned from the Thirteenth International Forum for Free Software (FISL) in Porto Alegre Brazil.  With an attendance of about 8,000 this year, it is the largest tech conference in South America and likely the largest free/open source conference in the world.  I was fortunate to have attended representing OSI and presented a keynote on free and open source software and its civic and social impact around the world, and a second session on Economic Development.

The Brazilian government – with great grassroots support – was a pioneer in the use of free software as an economic development strategy, and also to bridge the digital divide by lowering the barrier to access to technology.  Today the government’s involvement has shifted in some respects, and community leaders from a number of Latin American countries are debating in general the pros and cons of government partnership in their FOSS initiatives.

The “Hacker Bus” project – pictured above behind myself and colleague Paulo Mierelles from the University of Sao Paulo FLOSS Competency Center – really impressed.  Getting technology and “Hacktivism” out into undeserved areas makes for a fantastic program.
You can read more about the project on The Next Web  published during last year’s conference.