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Open Source and Related Resources

An Annotated Compendium of Open Source and Related Resources


NC State adopts open source computer policy

Annotated Links by Topic

Vendors and Sources in the Open Source Arena

An interesting development over time has been the growing commercial support of Open Source Software. Adoption of Open Source can be aided by using commercial support when sufficient local support isn't available. Additionally, the leadership of an organization may prefer the added assurance of stability which can be provided by a support contract. Many of these commercial support organizations feed back code enhancements into the Open Source code.

Linux

  • Red Hat, Inc. A well known local company which "is a market leader in open source operating system (OS) software, services and information. Along with its award-winning open source Red Hat Linux OS, Red Hat offers a full line of services, including telephone support, on-site consulting, developer training, certification programs and priority access updates ..."
  • Tao Linux "is one of several projects to build a free Linux distribution from the sources used in the Red Hat Enterprise product line."
  • White Box Enterprise Linux "is derived from the Free/Open Source Software made available by Red Hat"
  • Bastille Linux This is a project to provide a highly secure Red Hat Linux environment, while educating the user about security issues as it does its audits and replacements.
  • Debian an Open Source operating system using the Linux kernel.
  • Linux Mandrake A Linux distribution.
  • SuSE Linux "is the leading distribution of Linux in Europe and is also distributed in the US."
  • Slackware A Linux distribution.
  • Yellow Dog Linux "The most complete Linux distribution for POWERPC"
  • Linux Online
  • Corel Linux "Based on Debian and featuring an incredible four-step installer and a drag-and-drop desktop environment based on KDE and Qt[tm],"
  • SAIR Linux & GNU Certification Testing and Study Guides.
  • Linux From Scratch "LinuxFromScratch is a project aimed at teaching the reader more about the inner workings of Linux. It's intended for those seeking to learn more about how Linux works and how the various pieces of the Operating System fit together and interact."
  • Linux Enterprise Computing a survey of "Linux in a corporate, commercial enterprise setting from a programmers' or technicians' perspective." many examples and links
  • Buildkernel "The buildkernel script is an intelligent tool that will build a new linux kernel for you. It is designed to be easy so that a novice can use it. At the same time, it is flexible and powerful enough that it can be useful for experienced users."
  • Linux Standard Base "Standardizing the Penguin" "We strive to develop and promote a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant Linux system. In addition, the LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux." Will have a standard for desktops.
  • TurboLinux   (Linux business and name sold to SRA.)
  • Open Source Research Team (OSoRT) at UNC-CH's MetaLab. "The UNC Open Source Research Team is particularly interested in understanding and aiding the Open Source communities by quantitative studies of content contributions and contributors, by experimental advanced distribution of Open Source resources, by maintaining and managing Open Source archives, by enhancing searching and retrieval of archived resources, by designing and implementing metadata standards for documentation searching and retrieval, by hosting of Open Source projects, and by mirroring and distributing Open Source resources."
  • United Linux "is a standards-based Linux operating system targeted at the business user. It is developed, marketed and sold by an experienced partnership of Linux companies."
  • Linux.com "A Means to World Liberation" Tutorials, articles and news about Linux.
  • Open Source Development Lab "is a non-profit resource lab for open source developers that provides equipment and infrastructure to large-scale Linux enabling technology projects to support enterprise and telecom applications."
  • The Fedora Project "is an open source project sponsored by Red Hat and supported by the Fedora community." "handles Extras for FC3+ distributions". The "old community project ..." for earlier RH releases.
  • yum Yellow dog Updater, Modified "Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm."
  • CentOS The Community ENTerprise OS - "is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free, however, we ask for a small contribution."
  • Molinux "es una iniciativa de la JCCM para introducir a la comunidad castellano-manchega en vanguardia de la Sociedad de la Informacion."
  • Oracle's "Unbreakable Linux" An interesting twist, Oracle's "product" is support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4 (RHEL3 and RHEL4.)


    • Linux on IBM S/390 and ZSeries Systems

  • Linux/390 Distributions
  • IBM S/390 Linux and Open Source
  • IBM contributions to Linux and related development
  • Linux at IBM
  • Linux Technology Center
  • Linux for S/390 IBM
  • Linux for S/390 more from IBM - general information
  • Linux for S/390 - Technical Details more from IBM
  • Linux On S/390 on VM at Marist College
  • Linux for S/390 Hosted by Marist College - downloads, binaries, etc.
  • Linux for S/390 from Millenux GmbH i.G. and Thinking Objects Software GmbH
  • Linux on the IBM ESA/390 Mainframe Architecture by Linas Vepstas. General information, overview and history.
  • IBM Mainframe C Compilers with support for Linux/390
  • Turbolinux Server 8 for zSeries
  • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
  • LinuxVM (Linux for Big Iron) "is the official home of the Linux/VM project. The purpose of the project is to provide a central source of Linux/390 information and software, and to explore the possibilities of Linux and CP integration or interoperation." Also see the many links on this topic.
  • Linux on the System/390 "a general overview of the Linux port to the IBM System/390 mainframe architecture." by Adam Thornton

  • Linux/390 Development and Information Site was done at Princeton Univ., now archived at linuxvm.org
  • Success in the mainframe marketplace
  • also see CentOS above

    • Unix

  • The Unix Archive run by The Unix Heritage Society. A number of mirror sites are presented. Much of this material (pre-System III, V) is available under a fee free licence that includes the rights use, modify and distribute this named source code, including derived binary products created from the source code."
  • Open Solaris from SUN Microsystems. "The Solaris operating system is being released under the terms of the OSI-approved, Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)" as part of Sun's "open source strategy".
  • Darwin "Darwin is a complete operating system based on the foundation technologies in Mac OS X Server. It is an advanced BSD Unix system which offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and Unix filesystems. Darwin runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers."

    • Other OS

  • K42 The K42 group is developing a new high performance, open source, general-purpose operating system kernel for cache-coherent multiprocessors.
  • Xen virtual machine monitor for x86. IBM Offers Support for Xen
  • Squeak " Squeak is an open, highly-portable Smalltalk-80 implementation whose virtual machine is written entirely in Smalltalk"
  • Croquet Project "Croquet is a computer software architecture built from the ground up with a focus on deep collaboration between teams of users. It is a totally open, totally free, highly portable extension to the Squeak programming system. Croquet is a complete development and delivery platform for doing real collaborative work. There is no distinction between the user environment and the development environment. Croquet is focused on interactions inside of a 3D shared space that is used for context based collaboration, where each user can see all of the others and what their current focus is. This allows for an extremely compelling shared experience. ..." (quoted from a Whitepaper at that site by Smith, et al)

    • General Software

  • Open Directory Project especially see links to Computer Software
  • IOSN UNDP-APDIP International Open Source Network - for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific Region

    • Books, etc.

  • O'Reilly & Associates Books on computer and network related topics. Some software. Especially see O'Reilly's Open Source related list, and Open Source Bibliography which includes books from other publisher. O'Reilly also runs the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention
  • Open Source for the Enterprise by Dan Woods and Gautam guliana. "a top to bottom view not only of the technology, but of the skills required to manage it and the organizational issues that must be addressed."
  • Gimp-Savvy.com "seeks to provide high-level educational and practical resources for the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, a.k.a. the GIMP, and to promote its skillful and knowledgeable use."
  • Google and Libraries join "to Digitally Scan Library Books and Make Them Searchable Online" This has been controversial because of plans to include, without permission, material protected by copyright.
  • Internet Archive "is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."
  • Open Content Alliance (OCA) "represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content."

    • Application Software (including window managers)

    • The GNU Project of The Free Software Foundation. A large amount of open source software (too big to list here) available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) which is often used for Open Source Software. I will mention that gcc is the standard open source compiler. It also can be used as a cross-compiler.
    • Source Forge "SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development website, with the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet. SourceForge.net provides free services to Open Source developers."
    • Developer Shed Open Source resources for developers
    • Developer Central at SGI, "In the words of Kurt Akeley, Senior Vice President, Chief Technical Officer, and co-founder, Silicon Graphics, ``The open source software model is the future of software development. This fast-developing community of talented and committed engineers is eager to work to create higher levels of technology.''
      This site, oss.sgi.com, is our repository for open source. It is running on an SGI system with a 100% open source content as a proof that open source not only works better, but is also ready for prime time in production settings. We encourage everyone to download and try our software, and invite external parties to get involved by sending feedback to the respective maintainers and in case they are really serious, to get write access to source tree. This software is available as open source for the benefit of all of us."
    • Linux at Duke assorted projects
    • ClamAV "anti-virus tookit for UNIX" to be integrated with mail servers
    • Linux related
      • Freshmeat.net a lot of information about applications running under Linux. Searchable and also available as a newsletter.
      • Simple End User Linux "SEUL is a volunteer project to help Linux become an operating system that the average user can install and operate easily. Currently SEUL is working on the non-technical aspects of bringing Linux to end-users -- Linux in education, advocacy documents, managing and coordinating communications between projects, coordinating feedback from end-users, and hosting related development projects."
      • The Linux Lab "project is intended to help people with development of data collection and process control software for LINUX. It should be in understood as software and knowledge pool for interested people and application developers dealing with this stuff in educational or industrial environment."
      • Eazel "intends to help make Linux the desktop of choice for millions of people. To achieve this, we are creating next generation user interface software and services designed to make Linux easier to use."
      • SAS System for Linux This is not open source, but is designed to run on RedHat 6.2 on the Intel platform.
      • Creative Open Souce source code of Linux Soundblaster Live, other drivers, and other audio projects.
      • Percent of Debian Linux apps successfuly compiled for different CPU architectures.
      • NILFS "New Implementation of a Log-structured File System ... developed for the Linux kernel 2.6." "A log-structured file system has the characteristic that all file system data including metadata is written in a log-like format."
    • HyperNews.org An Open Source "threaded discussion list" or "forum" for the Web.
    • Graphics
      • the GIMP "The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring." Also see Gimp-savvy.com in the Books section.
      • OpenGL High Performance 2D/3D Graphics
    • Streaming Audio an Open Source Project
    • Audacity "A fast multi-track audio editor and recorder for Linux, BSD, Mac OS, and Windows. Supports WAV, AIFF, Ogg, and MP3 formats. Features include envelope editing, mixing, built-in effects and plug-ins, all with unlimited undo."
    • VLC media player "is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, as well as numerous others) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network."
    • Version Control Software "CVS is the Concurrent Versions System, the dominant open-source network-transparent version control system. CVS is useful for everyone from individual developers to large, distributed teams:"
  • Version Control Software "The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system

    • that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community."

  • 'WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.'
  • "CollabNet provides platforms and services based on open source tools and principles"
  • Languages
    • Perl - a scripting language
    • Python a very-high-level interpreted language.
    • A+ a programming language (with roots in APL)
    • Rexx - IBM withdrew Object Rexx from marketing, and transferred Object Rexx OORexx to the control of RexxLA as an Open Source project. This is supposed to handle both classic REXX format and the object format.
    • Java "Sun is opening the door to greater innovation by open sourcing key Java implementations - Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME), and Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) - under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2)"
      • OpenJDK "collaborate on the open-source JDK, an implementation of the Java Platform"
  • Open Source Projects at Apple - Overview. Project Descriptions "Apple is the first major computer company to make open source development a key part of its ongoing software strategy. This allows Apple to partner with external developers to create richer, faster and more reliable products for our users through open source development."
  • Library Applications
    • OSCR an Open Source Course Reserve system for a library.
    • MyLibrary@NCState is/was an Open Source "user-driven customizable interface to a library's collection of information tools" source, information and a Mailing Liston MyLibrary development and the development of personalized library interfaces. (The above links don't work right now - but some Information is available. A description is available, or search for mylibrary and Eric Lease Morgan.
    • DSpace a digital repository created to capture, distribute and preserve the intellectual output of MIT - source is Java for Unix (theoretically will run on anything) and is available under the BSD distribution license.
    • The Fedora Project An Open-Source Digital Repository Management System from U. of Virginia Library and Cornell. Distributed under the Mozilla Public License.
    • Greenstone "is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections." from the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato and is available under the GNU GPL.
    • EPrints Self-Archiving and Open Archives. Distributed under the GPL.
    • OAI Open Archives Initiative. Metadata standards for web-accessible material.
    • Greenstone "is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections." Distributed under the GPL.
    • VuFind "is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC"
    • LibraryFind "an open source metasearch application"
    • Omeka "is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online."
  • Windowing, GUIs and IDEs
    • IDEs and GUIs for x86-win32 GCC (From the GNU Win32 related projects page)
    • Guide to Window Managers for X a "guide to window managers and desktop environments for The X Window System, as used mainly by Linux and UNIX operating systems." (also Desktops)
    • KDE The K Desktop Environment, an office suite, an integrated development environment, etc.
    • GNOME GNU Network Model Environment. "The GNOME project intends to build a complete, easy-to-use desktop environment for the user, and a powerful application framework for the software developer."
    • The XFree86 Project X Window System, especially for Intel x86-based platforms.
  • FreeS/WAN "Linux FreeS/WAN is an implementation of IPSEC ... IPSEC is Internet Protocol SECurity. It uses strong cryptography to provide both authentication and encryption services." S/WAN is the Secure Wide Area Network Project.
  • OpenNMS Open Network Management Software
  • Snort Network Intrusion Detection System
  • Twofish A New Block Cipher. "is counterpane Lab's candidate for the New Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). It is one of the five finalists chosen by NIST from a field of 15 candidates. Twofish is unpatented, and the source code is uncopyrighted and license-free; it is free for all uses."
  • Office Productivity Apps and Suites
  • Browsers
  • Database Management Systems
    • MySQL database management system
    • Ingres Enterprise Relational database - released under CA "Trusted Open Source License"
  • GFS a global files system
  • Personal Information Management (PIM)
    • "Chandler" (scheduled for release at the end of 2004) from the Open Source Applications Foundation founded by Mitch Kapor. Chandler is to include e-mail, calendar, contacts, todo list and instant messaging capabilities.
  • Portal - XOOPS "is a dynamic OO (Object Oriented) based open source portal script written in PHP. XOOPS is the ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs, ..."
  • E-Commerce - osCommerce "an online shop e-commerce solution under on going development by the open source community. Its feature packed out-of-the-box installation allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved."
  • University Financial Information System - Kuali provides a comprehensive suite of functionality to serve the financial systems needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. It includes such functional elements as Flexible Chart of Accounts, General Ledger, General Accounting, Accounts Receivable, Capital Asset Management, Pre and Post-Award Administration, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Cash Receipting and Disbursement, Travel Requisition and Reimbursement, Auxiliary Accounting, Web-based e-Commerce, Budget Construction and Administration.
  • Thunderbird e-mail client
  • OATS Open Source Assistive Technology Software
  • Tesseract OCR "A commercial quality OCR engine" at SourceForge.
  • OpenClinica - "web-based electronic data capture (EDC) system for clinical research"
  • Quantum GIS "is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System"

    • Middleware

  • OpenLDAP an Open Source LDAP suite
  • OpenMP specifications and products for programming shared memory multiprocessor computers. Also see the OpenMP Web Site
  • MICO MICO Is CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture)     Puder and Roemer Book
  • OpenAFS "AFS is a distributed filesystem product, pioneered at Carnegie Mellon University and supported and developed as a product by Transarc Corporation (now IBM Transarc Labs). It offers a client-server architecture for file sharing, providing location independence, scalability and transparent migration capabilities for data."
  • Mason "is a tool that interactively builds a firewall" ... for Linux
  • Bill Stearns' assortment of tools and links.
  • OpenCable Standard for set-top boxes.
  • Linux Virtual Server Project The Linux Virtual Server is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers, with the load balancer running on the Linux operating system. The architecture of the cluster is transparent to end users.
  • Rendevous networking app - for automatic cluster-like configuration
  • TightVNC a "client/server software package allowing remote network access to graphical desktops." "available on most platforms". Enhanced from the original distribution.

    • Hardware

  • OpenCores.org complete 33/66MHz 32-bit PCI Bridge Soft Core

    • Web Software

  • The Apache Software Foundation Best known for its Open Source web server, "Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April of 1996. The May 1999 WWW server site survey by Netcraft found that over 57% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache (over 60% if Apache derivatives are included), thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined."
    "The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects. Formerly known as the Apache Group, the Foundation has been incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and funds on a sound basis, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source software projects."
  • OpenSSL Project "The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library."
  • W3C Open Source Releases at the World Wide Web Consortium, "The natural compliment to W3C specifications is running code. Implementation and testing is an essential part of specification development and releasing the code promotes exchange of ideas in the developer community. All W3C software is Open Source; see the license for details. Note that this license is GPL compatible, i.e. it is possible to redistribute software based on W3C sources under a GPL license." Much more information about Web standards, etc. is available at the World Wide Web Consortium - W3C
  • Hypertext Preprocessor "PHP is a tool that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages." (It's a server-side scripting language.)
  • The Annotated XML Specification "The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML."
  • XML Sites
  • JA-SIG The Java in Administration Special Interest Group (JA-SIG) is an independent organization designed to increase the flow of information between educational institutions and companies involved in the development of administrative applications using Java technology. The JA-SIG uPortal Project is to produce "a free, sharable portal for institutions of higher-education." A Whitepaper by Bernard W. Gleason discusses Portal issues and recommendations.
  • SteelBlue "is an open-source Web application server environment in which Web-database applications can be developed completely in an extended HTML language. Similar to ColdFusion and Story Server, session and user-associated data as well as SQL commands can be directly embedded into the HTML page. Therefore, no CGI programming experience is required to develop applications with SteelBlue, only knowledge of SQL and HTML."
  • Google Code "Google's place for Open Source software."
  • Nvu "The Complete Web Authoring System for Linux, Macintosh and Windows" (intended to rival FrontPage and Dreamweaver)
  • zotero a "Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources."

    • Related Software

  • Freeware which is free, is not the same as Open Source, although the source may be provided.

    • Hardware

    Content

    Educational and Other Content

    • Project Gutenberg Over 2,500 books (mostly public domain) in Ascii format. Comprising:
      • "Light Literature; such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, etc.
      • Heavy Literature; such as the Bible or other religious documents, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, etc.
      • References; such as Roget's Thesaurus, almanacs, and a set of encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc."
    • The Harvey Project "An international collaboration of educators, researchers, physicians, students, programmers, instructional designers and graphic artists working together to build a highly interactive human physiology course on the Web. Materials produced by the Harvey Project will be made freely available to any educational institution." It is migrating to OpenCourse.org which is "a free collaboration platform for educators."
    • The Open Science Project "is dedicated to writing and releasing free and Open Source scientific software. We are a group of scientists, mathematicians and engineers who want to encourage a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world."
    • Softpanorama: (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society. "The mission of Softpanorama Open Source University is to provide a educational materials to schools and universities to serve as a source for the independent study of OSS in both Linux and Windows environments and this way extend the frontiers of the use of the open source software."
    • Open Source Professional Development Environment Condensed Guidelines by Steve Gilbert
    • Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Discussion and advocacy of the position, "Scholarly literature ought to be free and online."
    • MIT OpenCourseWare "free, open, publication of MIT Course Materials"
    • OpenCourseWare initial phase at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
    • Open Learning Initiative (OLI) Carnegie Mellon University
    • Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets (SOFIA) Foothill - De Anza Community College District "Modeled after MIT's OpenCourseWare Initiative"
    • OpenCourseWare at Utah State University
    • Open Learning Support "a free and open resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world."
  • OpenCourseWare Consortium "a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model."
  • MERLOT "is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments." Some of this material is open source.
      • Similar resources in other countries:
    • EdNA Education Network Australia
    • ARIADNE the European Knowledge Pool
    • CanOpenER Canadian Open Source Education and Research
  • Managing the Digital Enterprise Open Courseware - Professor Michael Rappa
  • Open Courseware Laboratory "founded at North Carolina State University in 1998 by Professor Michael Rappa. The mission of the Lab is to promote the open exchange of knowledge within the academic community via the Internet."
    Also see OpenSeminar
  • Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education
  • National Science Digital Library "online library of resources for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and research." Provides links to 400+ collections.
  • Mathematics Encyclopedia by PlanetMath
  • Connexions "a rapidly growing collection of free scholarly materials and a powerful set of free software tools to help" at Rice Univ.
  • Swahili Dictionary The KAMUSI Project. additional Swahili material
  • The Open Library "website was created by the Internet Archive to demonstrate a way that books can be represented online. The vision is to create free web access to important book collections from around the world." The Internet Archive is a member of the Open Content Alliance.
  • Google's Book Search Beta version. "Search the full text of books to find ones that interest you and learn where to buy or borrow them." Controversial because many books under copyright are included, although full text is provided only for out of copyright books.
  • Biodiversity Data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
  • Science Commons "Our goal is to encourage stakeholders to create areas of free access and inquiry using standardized licenses and other means; a 'Science Commons' built out of voluntary private agreements."
  • Baen's Free Library The noted Science Fiction publisher, Baen's Books, has a significant number of its books available on the web - free. The philosophy behind this action of a commercial publisher and the authors is interesting.
  • Open University "to make a selection of its learning materials available free of charge to educators and learners around the world." To be launched in Oct. 2006.
  • Deep Blue open access to research at U. of Mich.
  • Introduction to Probability by Charles M. Grinstead and J. Laurie Snell
  • Curriki "Open source educational resources and curricula.

    • Open Access Publishing

    Courseware

    • Moodle modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment - "Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites" and "is an ongoing research and development project designed to support a social constructionist pedagogy for students, teachers and developers." Release 1.9.4 is now available. This site includes some demonstration courses. Commercial support is available.
    • Brian Donohue-Lynch's web site (archive) on opensource, appropriate technology, and related topics.
    • The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) The result of this collaboration is an open and extensible architecture that specifies how the components of an educational software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems. O.K.I. provides a modular development platform for building both traditional and innovative applications while leveraging existing and future infrastructure technologies.
    • CHEF Initiative The CompreHensive collaborativE Framework (CHEF) initiative has as its goal, the development of a flexible environment for supporting distance learning and collaborative work, and doing research on distance learning and collaborative work. ... working closely with and are contributing to the OKI reference architecture, and are collaborating with other groups interested in open source collaboration standards." It is being used in the
    • Sakai Project "to integrate and synchronize ... educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools."
    • OpenSeminar "OpenSeminar is an open courseware platform that enables professors from different universities to work collaboratively to create an online seminar and then customize it to the needs of their own students." (or they could be on the same campus :-)
  • LaTeX Project Public License "is the primary license under which the the LaTeX kernel and the base LaTeX packages are distributed."
  • Computer Associates (CA) Trusted Open Source License (CATSOL or CA-TSOL) A reciprocal license said to be similar to that of Apache's.
  • Not Quite Open Source Licenses
    • Microsoft's "Shared Source" License
    • Creative Commons Create, License, Share
    • "Ghostscript License"" It appears that the latest version (of Ghostscript) is payware, but after a time the older versions are released under the GPL or the AFPL (Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License).
    • Aladdin Free Public License "This License is not the same as any of the GNU Licenses published by the Free Software Foundation. Its terms are substantially different from those of the GNU Licenses. If you are familiar with the GNU Licenses, please read this license with extra care." ... "This License is not an Open Source license: among other things, it places restrictions on distribution of the Program, ..."
  • Open Source Opens Legal Issues By Malcolm Maclachlan, TechWeb.com
  • A Question of Licenses Lawrence Rosen's Geek Law column about choosing the appropriate Open Source License, "What drives the license selection process is the client's business strategy, and not the other way around."
  • Rosen's book: Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law. Also see a detailed book review by Don Rosenberg.
  • Enforcing the GPL
  • The OEM Software Licensing Site. Also see Don Rosenberg's book review above for a link to an online copy of his 2000 book, "Open Source: The Unauthorized White Papers".

    • Evaluation of Open Source Software

    Developing an Open Source Community

    Copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 by Henry E. Schaffer.
    Comments and suggestions are welcome, and should go to hes@ncsu.edu
    Last modified 5/12/2009
    Disclaimer - Information is provided for your use. No endorsement is implied.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Orig. Posted: Wed, 05/13/2009 - 09:54 — dlschmid.ncsu.edu  Last Modified: Mon, 06/08/2009 - 10:06