FLOSS Flyover

I mentioned yesterday that I'd post about all the latest in the world of FLOSS that's been on my mind lately. Here's the laundry list:

The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards: After a bit of cajoling and nag mail (read: expert geek herding), we've nearly arrived at the list of winners for 2008. Awesome list of nominees this year and no, we won't tell you who won until OSCON.

Open CourseWare and Open Source in education are topics near and dear to my heart, so imagine my pleasure when this list of Linux Open CourseWare floated through my inbox (via the LinuxChix Grrltalk mailing list). LH sez check it out, both the site and the list.

I mostly talk about Open Source programs for students on the Google Open Source Blog, but I'd like to give a shout out to the folks at the OpenUsability for organizing another Season of Usability. Fantastic stuff, and many a former Summer of Code student involved I might add. I'm so excited that this meme continues to spread - while we're on the subject, check out the Haiku Code Drive - and it means a great deal to me that I have the opportunity to contribute to an effort whose effects are yet to be understood, but are far reaching indeed. Life is good.

Speaking of said meme, via the NOSI list about a month ago I saw a call go out for proposals and support for the Freedom Summer of Code, a program to get students designing software for advocacy campaigns and other "radical tech." There have been times when folks wonder why Summer of Code doesn't have an overt social justice component to it and the simple answer is that the program is about code. The more complex answer is that there's no effective way for our team to take a position on which social justice and world saving mission is better than another, so we focus on helping Free and Open Source projects get useful code written. Then other folks can use that code for whatever good they deem most worthy. I've got an email into the organizing team to find out how their call for student proposals went, as they stopped taking submissions on 24 May.

Speaking of Open Source as a catalyst for social change and a corner stone of the Open Culture movement - yet another topic near and dear to my heart - check out the awesome work being done by the folks at the Textbook Revolution project. The site recently relaunched and there are some great resources for finding Open CourseWare. The accompanying Stingy Scholar Blog also rocks.

I may live to regret this offer, but if anyone is looking into doing a Summer of Code like mentoring program, let me know. I may have some useful guidance to offer you. Free and Open Source software/culture projects only please.