open source
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5 Humanitarian Crises Where Open Source Projects Aimed to Bring Stability Government Software
Natural disasters, epidemics, terrorism, and uprisings—the world awaits with bated breath for the situation to turn to normalcy for those directly and indirectly affected by these crises. Here are five crises where open source technologists have helped, in some way, to bring stability in these hostile regions. An annoyed user couldn’t fix his printer as the printer’s source code wasn’t available to users. This was the reason that led to the start of the open source movement...
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5 Initiatives That Pushed the Free Software Envelope in Europe in 2016
The public sector tends to lag—some would say drag—behind the private sector when it comes to adopting new technologies. This is also true when it comes to adopting free software: Although companies widely see free technologies as a boon, government organizations often are still locked into proprietary software and work with closed standards. That said, some countries are making progress moving toward open source technologies...
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5 Myths Busted: Using Open Source in Higher Education
Have you ever heard someone say, "It's impossible to do X with Linux"? Me too. This is the story of how I busted the myths about open source in my own head and used Linux to finish my PhD in fine arts. Many people think non-technical students can't use Linux, and they make a lot of assumptions about people who use it in their advanced degree programs. They scoff and reply with something along the lines of, "Well, of course; those people do 'computer stuff,' but in my [lofty, important, unique area] it's just not possible." Well, it is possible, and I'm proof...
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5 open source dashboard tools for visualizing data
To start with a confession, I like dashboards. A lot. I've always been fascinated by finding new and interesting ways to bring meaning to data with interactive visualization tools. While I'm definitely a geek for numbers, the human mind is simply much better at interpreting trends visually than it is just picking them out a spreadsheet. And even when your main interest in a dataset is the raw numbers themselves, a dashboard can help to bring meaning by highlighting which values matter most, and what the context of those numbers is...
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5 Open Source Natural Language Processing Tools
Open source is chock full of high-quality libraries to solve common problems in text processing like sentiment analysis, topic identification, automatic labeling of content, and more. More importantly, open source also provides many building block libraries that make it easy for you to innovate without having to reinvent the wheel. If all of this stuff is giving you flashbacks to your high school grammar classes, not to worry—we've included some useful resources at the end to brush up your knowledge as well as explain some of the key concepts around natural language processing (NLP). To begin your journey, check out these projects...
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5 Open-Source Technologies Powering The Army's Battlefield Cloud
Cloud computing has, without a doubt, forever changed military intelligence, according to Army and contractor executives working on the Distributed Common Ground System-Army Standard Cloud (DSC) in Afghanistan. Read More »
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5 Reasons Professors Should Encourage Students to Get Involved in Open Source Projects
I've been supporting student participation in humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS) projects for over a decade. I've seen students get motivated and excited by working in a professional community while they learn and mature professionally. Out of the many reasons for supporting student participation in open source, here are five of the most compelling reasons...
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5 Things I Learned at TEDGlobal
The theme at TEDGlobal this year was "Radical Openness," indicating the effects of open-source technology, collaboration, social media, and DIY invention on our world. Read More »
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50 Open Source Replacements For Health Care Software
According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers Study, 79 percent of health care executives anticipate an increase on their technology spending this year. With "Meaningful Use" considerations weighing heavily on the industry, many will be investing in or upgrading their electronic health record (EHR) capabilities. [...] Read More »
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50 Open Source Technologies/Projects to Look Out for in 2012
The open source movement continues to strengthen every year, such that no matter who you are, what software you use, what book you read, whatever you do somewhere along the line open source software is in use. Read More »
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6 Examples Of Open Source Best Practices In Knowledge-Sharing Projects
The very effort of creating open source software is a massive knowledge-sharing experience, covering all the domains of software development with many methods and practices. Although there is rarely only one way to achieve a goal, open source communities have, over time, honed their knowledge into best practices as a natural byproduct of the open collaboration and transparency passed on within their respective communities. But what about best practices that span communities, which are useful beyond the unique needs of a single project and broadly applicable to any and all open source software efforts? I'll look at six different knowledge-sharing communities that take six approaches to gathering, maintaining, and distributing their best practices.
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6 Growing Pains of Open Source Organizations That You Can Avoid
Everything has a season, and as organizations age—communities, charities, companies, churches and more—they face similar diseases of time. These are emergent patterns of failure that arise not from mistakes but from the consequences of earlier success. In open source, we are seeing the same patterns emerge; this should not be a surprise. Some of them are unavoidable. Understanding them helps leaders reduce the risk that will arise and helps identify them when they do. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but we have encountered all of these modes of systemic failure, some of them often...
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6 remarkable features of the new United Nations open source initiative
The United Nations wants to make technology, software, and intellectual property available to everyone, including developing countries. Open source and free software are great tools to achieve this goal since open source is all about empowering people and global collaboration while protecting the personal data and privacy of users. So, the United Nations and the open source community share the same values. This new open source strategy and policy is developed by the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL). Last month, we had our first in-person meeting in Helsinki in the UNTIL offices. I find this initiative remarkable for several reasons:
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6 Ways Programmers from Underrepresented Countries Can Get Ahead
Becoming a programmer from an underrepresented community like Cameroon is tough. Many Africans don't even know what computer programming is-and a lot who do think it's only for people from Western or Asian countries. I didn't own a computer until I was 18, and I didn't start programming until I was a 19-year-old high school senior, and had to write a lot of code on paper because I couldn't be carrying my big desktop to school. I have learned a lot over the past five years as I've moved up the ladder to become a successful programmer from an underrepresented community. While these lessons are from my experience in Africa, many apply to other underrepresented communities, including women.
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7 Cool Little Open Source Projects That Stood Out in 2016
In the early days of the open source movement, a lot of the attention was on operating systems, and later on large content management systems. These days, containers are mentioned regularly even in mainstream news outlets. The big tech stories are great, but they miss the other great activity in the niches of the open source space. I've rounded up seven interesting lesser-known projects from the past year. You can see more articles about projects like this in my Nooks and Crannies column...
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