diversity

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9 Relevant Topics for Community Leaders Today

In 2009, Jono Bacon brought the first Community Leadership Summit to the free and open source world. Five years later, Donna Benjamin hosted an off-shoot event, CLSx at linux.conf.au in Perth. 2017 marks the third year for CLSxAU at LCA. This year the event hosted nearly 30 attendees, each participating in one or more of nine discussion sessions. All CLS events are presented in an unconference format, allowing attendees to shape the program as they see fit...

Computer Science Professor on the Changing Face of Tech

Dr. Kyla McMullen spoke at OSCON's morning keynote session today. She was the first African-American woman to graduate with a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. And it says a lot about tech's lack of inclusiveness that this landmark achievement happened in 2012. These days she is Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Florida. In her keynote, Dr. McMullen explained that as a child she was a tinkerer and reader—like most of us in the room...

Elsevier Acquisition Highlights the Need for Community-based Scholarly Communication Infrastructure

Heather Joseph and Kathleen Shearer | SPARC | September 6, 2017

Like many others in the scholarly community, we were very disappointed to learn about the recent acquisition by Elsevier of bepress, the provider of the popular Digital Commons repository platform. The acquisition is especially troubling for the hundreds of institutions that use Digital Commons to support their open access repositories. These institutions now find their repository services owned and managed by Elsevier, a company well known for its obstruction of open access and repositories...

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Let’s Stop Focusing On Shiny Gadgets And Start Using Tech To Empower People

Margaret Stewart | Wired | September 7, 2013

Two weeks ago, [Red Burns] passed away. But much more needs to be said about one of the smartest, gutsiest women I ever knew, and about what she thought about education, technology, design … and life. Read More »

Open Source (Seeds) Under Threat

Glyn Moody | Computerworld | May 3, 2013

[...] Just as there is free software that anyone may use and share, there are free seeds - those that are part of the ancient seeds commons, created over thousands of years, available for use by anyone. And just as free software is threatened by software patents, so seeds are equally endangered by seed patents. Read More »

Open-Source Seeds Challenge Monsanto, Support International Day Of Farmers' Struggles

M. Jahi Chappell | Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy | April 16, 2014

Tomorrow, Thursday, April 17, the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) will release over 29 seed varieties into the global commons and humanity's “moral economy.” This new initiative hopes to provide a counterweight to private patenting of seeds, which has undermined farmers’ rights around the world. Read More »

Searching Upstream For The Source of Sickness

Beverly Merz | The Atlantic | January 15, 2014

New “upstreamist” doctors are looking for the roots of illness in patients’ environmental and social spheres. Read More »

The Public Intelligence Project: Creating A Culture Of Democracy

Michael J. Oghia | Ushahidi | October 15, 2013

Freedom of expression is a fundamental civil liberty imperative to democracy. However, in societies throughout the world, it is at risk, and George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty Four is increasingly becoming more of a prediction of the future instead of far–fetched, fictional hyperbole... Read More »

ThoughtWorks: Much More than Good Intentions

Staff Writer | Anita Borg Institute | November 1, 2016

The gender gap in technology is well documented and broadly acknowledged, however most conversations focus on the problem rather than the real, impactful actions organizations are taking to build inclusive cultures. What programs and policies have forward-thinking companies implemented to yield real improvements in the numbers of women technologists they attract, retain and advance? And how do those program and policy decisions impact the number of women technologists they attract and retain?...

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Trends in Corporate Open Source Engagement

In 1998, I was part of SGI when we started moving to open source and open standards, after having been a long-time proprietary company. Since then, other companies also have moved rapidly to working with open source, and the use and adoption of open source technologies has skyrocketed over the past few years. Today company involvement in open source technologies is fairly mature and can be seen in the following trends...

What to Do When People Start Hacking Your Open Source Culture

I've previously written about the fact the Apache Software Foundation offers an exemplar of large-scale open source governance. Even with those supreme qualities, things can still go wrong. Apache offers some of the best protections for open source contributors but its mature rules can be manipulated by skilled politicians and/or determined agendas. What can we learn from their experience?...