The Preamble to the United States Constitution translated into binary code.

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see also

Code For America To Help Cities Modernize IT (Information Week)

http://codeforamerica.org/

http://www.rialtas.net/blog/2010/02/01/code-for-america/

From OpenSource.com

What problems can we solve? How would it affect the way we learn? Work? Run our governments?

We want to shine a light on the places where the open source way is multiplying ideas and effort, even beyond technology. We believe that opensource.com will be a gathering place for many of the open source stories we’d like to share–through articles, audio, web presentations, video, or open discussion.

The term open source began as a way to describe software source code and the collaborative model for how it’s developed. Red Hat used this model for developing technology and built a business model around open source and its principles: Openness. Transparency. Collaboration. Diversity. Rapid prototyping.

The open source way is more than a development model; it defines the characteristics of a culture. Red Hat and other open source thought leaders want to show you where open source is headed next. Tell you how to get involved. Help you apply it to your life and the world around you.

The open source way is about possibility.

Open source presents a new way to solve old problems. To share ideas and effort.

The open source way opens doors.

Open source offers a new perspective. Open, not closed. Collaboration, not isolation.

The open source way multiplies.

Knowledge. Effort. Inspiration. Creativity. Innovation. The impact is exponential.

And it’s already happening:

CHANGING OUR SOCIETY…

The open source way thrives on broad collaboration and shared effort. Wikipedia is one of the world’s most extensive collections of information. Its rapid, exponential growth arose from a very different model and philosophy from the traditional encyclopedia. Anyone can contribute, and entries are subject to peer review.

CHANGING HOW WE WORK…

Two key characteristics of the open source way are transparency and accountability. With natural and organic foods market Whole Foods, they pass accountability to the employees that can most directly impact their individual areas throughout each store. Wages, staffing decisions, even choosing what items to stock–these activities are all done in the open.

CHANGING OUR GOVERNMENT…

US President Barack Obama came to office with the promise of change. His campaign encouraged participation, and his administration has pledged to create a new environment of openness and participation in government.

CHANGING HOW WE LEARN…

Education is all about an exchange of knowledge. MIT took the lead in sharing knowledge and chose to try and change the world in the process. They make the materials used in the teaching of almost all of its undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the web, free of charge, to any user in the world. With nearly 1,800 courses available, MIT OpenCourseWare is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge.

visit site..

All of the presentations were very interesting and will all be online shortly. I will update you on their availability and provide a full report on the event in a subsequent post as soon as the remaining presentations go online.

In the meantime here is the presentation I gave on
‘Working with Web 2.0 (Social Software in the Workplace)’

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The Interview is online as part of Krishna’s hour long podcast at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/PodcampIreland

You can also download an MP3 version of the interview, which is excerpted from the podcast, the interview runs approximately 20 minutes.

In the interview we discuss the recent Kilkenny County Council planning wiki project.

Quebec’s open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company’s products rather than using free alternatives.

The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.

Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.

“It shouldn’t be the rule,” Facil president Mathieu Lutfy told CBC News. “It goes against the public markets policy of the government, which requires them to stimulate competition and look for local alternatives. It’s really an absurdity.”

Between February and June, the Quebec government spent $25 million on software from Microsoft, Facil said. The group estimates the government is spending more than $80 million a year on licences for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system alone…

…Facil said the provincial government, as well as its federal counterpart, is woefully behind the rest of the world in terms of adopting open-source software in the public sector. Governments around the world are looking to lower their costs and reliance on specific software makers. France, for example, migrated more than 400,000 public-sector employees to open-source software in 2006, while the Netherlands recently banned the use of proprietary products in government.

“A strategic free software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs,” Facil said in a press release. “However, Quebec’s public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options.”

Read entire article..

O’Reilly highlights the dangers of proprietary  ‘lock in’ to cloud computing service providers such as Amazon’s S3 and EC2, Google’s AppEngine and Salesforce’s force.com.

O’Reilly asks

Why did the WWW end up with hundreds of millions of independent information providers while centralized sites like AOL and MSN faltered?…

…All of the platform as a service plays, from Amazon’s S3 and EC2 and Google’s AppEngine to Salesforce’s force.com — not to mention Facebook’s social networking platform — have a lot more in common with AOL than they do with internet services as we’ve known them over the past decade and a half. Will we have to spend a decade backtracking from centralized approaches? The interoperable internet should be the platform, not any one vendor’s private preserve…

…How can we preserve freedom to innovate when the competitive advantage of online players comes from massive databases created via user contribution, which literally get better the more people use them, raising seemingly insuperable barriers to new competition? …

…But just “paying attention” to cloud computing isn’t the point. The point is to rediscover what makes open source tick, but in the new context. It’s important to recognize that open source has several key dimensions that contribute to its success:

1. Licenses that permit and encourage redistribution, modification, and even forking;
2. An architecture that enables programs to be used as components where-ever possible, and extended rather than replaced to provide new functionality;
3. Low barriers for new users to try the software;
4. Low barriers for developers to build new applications and share them with the world….

…This is far from a complete list, but it gives food for thought. As outlined above, I don’t believe we’ve figured out what kinds of licenses will allow forking of Web 2.0 and cloud applications, especially because the lock-in provided by many of these applications is given by their data rather than their code. However, there are hopeful signs like Yahoo! Boss that companies are at beginning to understand that in the era of the cloud, open source without open data is only half the application….

Read the full article here.

The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology – jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession.

This view is born from a hard headed understanding of how markets work – it is not a call for revolution, but for an intelligent and achievable evolution.
But there is more to this than ensuring our commercial decisions are taken in full knowledge of their long term effects. There is a democratic issue as well.
When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company’s technology to access government information.
No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first.

These democratic principles are important. And an argument is particularly compelling when it is supported both by democratic principles and by sound economics.

I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.

Read the full text of the commissioner’s speech..

IBM announced new technology to secure “mashups,” web applications that pull information from multiple sources, such as Web sites, enterprise databases or emails, to create one unified view. Mashups are attractive for business use, as they allow non-technical users to gain insight on complex situations in minutes, but as with all Web-based initiatives, security has been a concern.IBM is helping businesses realize the value of these situational applications without all the risk, through a new technology created by IBM researchers, codenamed “SMash.” Short for secure mashup, this technology allows information from different sources to talk to each other, but keeps them separate so malicious code cannot creep into enterprise systems.

In order to give consumer and business users the opportunity to take advantage of mashup technology, IBM is contributing the SMash technology to the OpenAjax Alliance. The OpenAjax Alliance is an organization of vendors, open source projects and companies using Ajax that are dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies. A founding member of the OpenAjax Alliance, IBM continues to work with the industry to create standards that will support innovation and wide-spread adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.

“Web 2.0 is fundamentally about empowering people, and has created a societal shift in the way we organize, access and use information,” said Rod Smith, IBM Fellow & Vice President. “Security concerns can’t be a complete inhibitor or clients lose out on the immense benefit mashups bring. The same way you wouldn’t buy a car and then later decide to have the seatbelts or airbags installed, as an industry we’ve learned how to build security into business operations from the ground up instead of tacking it on after the fact.”

Read more on http://java.sys-con.com/read/518524.htm

The organisation currently has seven projects live two examples are outlined below:

Fix My street a site which allows members of the public to report problems to their local council such as graffiti, illegal dumping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting.

E-Petitions Petitions have long been sent to the Prime Minister by post or delivered to the Number 10 door in person. This site now allows UK residents to both create and sign petitions on the web, giving them the opportunity to reach a potentially wider audience and to deliver their petition directly to Downing Street.

Users can view and sign any current petitions, and see the Government response to any completed petitions. If you have signed a petition that has reached more than 200 signatures by the time it closes, you will be sent a response from the Government by email.

All petitions that are submitted to this website will be accepted, as long as they are in accordance with its terms and conditions.

A full list of their projects is available here and all of the source code is open source and available by reuse for government organisations across the world to use and adapt.