[sldev] Open Source Show and Tell

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Paul Oppenheim (Poppy Linden)
<poppy at lindenlab.com> wrote:
> I recently brought up the idea of having an open source get-together to let you, the hackers, run the show and talk about your projects. The small audience I brought it up to seemed enthusiastic for a meeting that would be less linden-centric.

Excellent idea. I'm in.

>  I'd like to have a once-a-month get together for a show and tell about your projects. Hopefully this could be an outlet if you have a viewer project you want to show off, a non-SL open source project you want to show to an SLdev audience, or otherwise have some variety of judicious hack to show off. Whatever. I'm aiming for the vibe of a hacker meetup, except once a month and for only an hour or so. The real question is, what are you doing with open source?

Me, personally? Well,

* I-APL, free math software for schools, with Free textbooks in which
every math statement is executable

* Open Voting Consortium, Free Software for secure, auditable voting
on printed paper ballots. Open Source voter registration, Open Source
vote counting (canvassing), Open Source test suites for all of the
above.

* One Laptop Per Child, Open Source education (150+ modules currently
available, with localization underway into about 60 languages). OLPC
software supports collaborative discovery. There is a discussion on
this list about creating a lighter-weight SL client that could run on
OLPC XO laptops (256 MB RAM, 433 MHz extremely low-power processor, no
3D graphics acceleration, 1200 x 900 screen resolution in monochrome,
less in color).

* Unicode, universal character set, and implementation in fonts,
rendering, keyboards and IMEs, locale data, multilingual URLs and
URIs, regular expressions, etc.

* Localization of OLPC XO software. I initiated the Haitian Creole
French and Khmer (Cambodia) projects.

* Localization of all Linux distributions, starting with Red Hat,
Debian, and Ubuntu.

* Community-based data-gathering for Geographic Information Systems
(GIS), on environment (weather, air and water quality, soils, plant
and animal life, poaching, illegal logging, etc.), health, education,
economy, and much more, with Engineers Without Borders, International
Symposium on Digital Earth, and many others.

* Open Hardware Initiative on open definitions of wireless
communications and Internet connection hardware, among other things.

* Extended espeak reader engine with karaoke text coloring, supporting
literacy in the manner of Same Language Subtitling of Bollywood
musicals.

* Sugarizing engine to make any Free Software program that fits in
storage and memory to run on the OLPC XO.

What do you have that any of these might use?

Obviously I am not doing all of that development work myself. Each
initiative has its own developers. I contribute more to architecture,
and recruit developers and organizations with an interest in a
particular topic as it relates to poverty reduction and development.
SL clearly could contribute to the OLPC mission, and vice versa, if we
can solve certain technical problems. But it is not at all too soon to
start discussing how projects would fit together.

>  Any suggestions?

We need health, agriculture, appropriate technology, and I don'

>  So far I've heard:
>  * have it every week like an office hour
>  * make it once a quarter for half a day
>  * have a slot signup on the wiki
>  * have a freeform discussion / hangout
>
>  It's pretty open right now.
>
>  I'm leaning towards once a month with some kind of stage / front-of-the-classroom, and a place to chill and hack together. If you're someone with a project to show off, I *really* want to hear what *you* would like.
>
>  + poppy
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay