Looks like the New York Times had a reporter in the audience of the Open Source Government Panel at the Politics Online Conference. The panel was quite interesting -- lots of great questions from audience members -- many of whom have been working on projects to increase participation, transparency, accessibility, and accountability. Here's a few that were mentioned:

• Stet: software system designed to collect, organize and grok comments on texts made available online for public comment.
• Debateapedia.org: the "Wikipedia of debate and deliberation," it improves your ability to think through the complicated issues and debates you care about, take a confident stand, and take action as a citizen.
• PolicyCommons.org: where public resources used to improve participatory governance are identified, critiqued, organized, and discussed.
• OpenCongress.org: makes it easy to track any bill, issue area, or Member of Congress.
• KnowledgeAsPower.org: Washingtonians' nonpartisan resource for participation in the legislative process.

There's certainly many more... In the meantime, here's the New York Times story about the Open Source Government panel for those who'd like to follow the coverage:

March 5, 2008, 5:30 pm
Wanted: A More Digital Congress

By Ariel Alexovich

When it comes to taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer, some media gurus say Congress is a little behind the curve.

Danny Glover, a tech expert at the Media Research Center put it this way: Most of the world is adapting to the so-called “Web 2.0″ phase of interactive, open source Internet programming. Congress is “maybe in a Web 0.5 phase.”

The consensus among most panelists as the Politics Online Conference in Washington seemed to be that Congress and the White House aren’t doing all they can — and should — be doing to incorporate average Americans into government.

Even in 2008, legislators still seem to be in the “early adopter phase” of developing their personal Web sites, said Mr. Glover, who added that the few congressmen who keep blogs only do it to seem “cool.” (Panelist Johanna Shelton of Google, however, gave props to Ben Nelson, senator of Nebraska, for keeping an online diary of his recent trip to Iraq.)

Some of the ideas tossed out during the break-out sessions were making congressional proceedings available on Web sites other than C-Span and making more government documents accessible to search engines. That’s doable with “a couple hours of coding,” Ms. Shelton said.

Another way to share content online with voters, said Sascha Meinrath of the New American Foundation, is including access to a program like Google Documents, which allows multiple users to edit the same document. The idea is that if congressmen put a preliminary draft of a bill in an open source program on their sites, then specialists out in their home districts could amend the language or add information that hadn’t been addressed for the legislator to consider.

“We should be tapping into that expertise,” Mr. Meinrath said. “Peer production is a massive untapped resource.”

Mr. Glover added: “We’re trying to make it easier to be involved and get more people involved.”

Both of those gentlemen acknowledged that politicians face a kind of Catch-22 when it comes to making their work more transparent. Statements and videos they post online can be taken out of context or re-edited.

One of the most successful examples of a government-run Web site is WhiteHouse.gov, said David Almacy, a former Internet director for George W. Bush’s White House. The site gets about 3 to 7 million page views per week, and provides policy information — and the popular Barney Cam holiday videos — to Internet surfers.

(To see how far the president’s official Web page has come, Mr. Almacy suggested looking at the original White House site under Bill Clinton, which can be accessed through the National Archives in all its cutting-edge-at-the-time glory.)

The most technologically advanced move made by the White House came this year, when the White House submitted its 2008 budget electronically for the first time, complete with President Bush’s e-signature.

But the president’s page is far from open-source. An “Ask the White House” feature has been running since 2005, but Mr. Almaty said “this president will never blog.”

And Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for more government transparency, said the White House site is mostly full of P.R.-friendly statements.

As with any revolution, Mr. Meinrath said, some uncertainty lies in whether Congress will ever make use of all the Internet tools available to it. “That’s an open question,” he said.

Mr. Glover had a, well, slightly morbid outlook: Congress might not become more technology-forward “until older people are voted out of office or die.”

Hoo-ray for open tech! Anne Eisenberg over at the New York Times featured the Neuros OSD -- an open source video recorder. The Neuros OSD is a pretty slick looking piece of hardware, but more importantly, everything about it is open -- all the way down to the circuitry. For those of us who've been advocating for open tech, this is an extremely interesting development (certain to rankle the RIAA, MPAA, and other entities fighting against our fair use rights.

Here's the NYTimes article:

Read more...

South Africa has thrown its hat into the non-proprietary ring. I expect that a growing number of countries will move in this direction as they do the cost-benefits analysis and quickly realize that FOSS technologies are far more cost-effective than proprietary tech (even when you have to pay to help with development efforts). My hope is that South Africa will consider supporting open source wireless technologies as well, since telecommunications infrastructure is desperately needed in many regions of the country.

From: www.govtech.com

South Africa Adopts Open Source Software Policy

Nov 1, 2007, News Report

While the South African open source software (OSS) market is still in its development stage, the recent decision by the South African Government to adopt a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) policy is a significant boost for the industry, according to a release from Frost and Sullivan.

A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan South African Open Source Software Market, finds that both the public and private sectors will benefit from the expansion of OSS, as the cost reductions realised will not only encourage the start up of new businesses, but will also allow the government to channel resources to much needed areas such as healthcare and education.

"OSS provides South Africa with an alternative to the costly applications of proprietary software vendors," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Lindsey McDonald. "The government's adoption of the FOSS policy is a major driver for this market, as OSS will be used at all levels of the government where it is comparable to or more suitable than proprietary software."

There is a high level of collaboration among OSS developers and the government policy should serve to further increase collaboration in this market, continued the release. This in turn will result in the development of applications uniquely suited to the South African environment.

However, a general lack of awareness is threatening the extensive use of OSS. "Many potential users are not aware of the benefits or capabilities of OSS," says McDonald. "These include the potential to customize it for any purpose and the availability of the source code to all users. Additionally, there is a perceived lack of support for OSS software."

While this is true in some cases, a growing number of companies are also offering OSS support and customization services.

Overall, market participants need to challenge the view that OSS is simply for technology enthusiasts, concluded the release. The practical benefits of OSS should receive more attention. Focusing on the strengths of OSS rather than the alleged weaknesses of proprietary software would be a positive manner in which to promote the use of OSS.

I've been talking for awhile now about open tech and the coming disruptions to established business models and incumbent communications infrastructures. The Elevate.at Conference was a fantastic integration of music and politics -- DJs and tech-heads hanging out together in an underground bunker dug out of the mountain under a medieval castle (yes, it was quite cool -- a big thanks to Roland and Dan for inviting me).

Open Technology and the Wireless Future discusses the rise of the Intranet era, Intranet services and applications, and the COMMONS Project. I gave the presentation on October 25, 2007.

I'm attending the Broadband in Cities and Towns Conference that Jabari Simama hosts each year, having just arrived back stateside from a speaking tour and series of strategy workshops in Austria and Slovenia. My friend Helga Schmidt documented one of the (many) highlights of my trip -- Andreas Marksteiner's open source based quad copter. Imagine deploying solar nodes to rooftops in 2 minutes -- the quad copter currently only has 1-2kg of lift, but as a proof of concept it's quite interesting -- plus, it was incredibly cool to see this tool in action.

My good friend Ian Howard has been involved in a number of interesting and innovative projects over the years. This latest endeavor really pushes the envelope for grassroots media, DIY broadcasting, and community empowerment. The OpenFM Project is very exciting stuff!

Adapted Consulting Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Drewett
[T] +1-202-292-4242 / +1-647-722-5629 ext. 5011
[E] ldrewett@adaptedconsulting.com
[W] http://openfm.adaptedconsulting.com

RADIO ADAPTED FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD;
Adapted Consulting Inc. Launches its New Open Source Radio Station —OpenFM

TORONTO, ON – August 21, 2007 – At midday in the Sahara, several dunes past Timbuktu, the sun is blistering hot. During the months when the Harmattan winds blow, the air is dense with sand. The strong winds blow constantly, so that by day’s end everything is left covered by a think reddish film of dirt – the floors, the furniture and, in the case of a radio station, all of the electronic equipment. Such conditions present their own unique set of challenges. So when Adapted’s Co-Founder, Frédéric Renet, couldn’t find a commercial radio that was right for this situation – durable, energy efficient, easy to repair and affordable – he decided to build his own. From this first design created to withstand the harsh climate of Mali comes Adapted’s OpenFM.

Read more...

A bunch of folks have e-mailed me recently regarding the recent FCC ruling on "Cognitive Radio Technologies and Software Defined Radios". The ruling has been making the rounds and I've just now had a chance to read through the actual FCC document. All in all, this final rule demonstrates a continuing and remarkable ignorance regarding SD and cognitive radio technology and open source development on the part of the FCC.

I first started talking with the FCC regarding these issues a few years back. For those who are just getting their feet wet on this issue, I'd recommend taking a look at my posting from two years back, "The Coming (Cognitive) Radio Revolution... AKA The FCC as Regulatory Ostrich." The issues I discussed in 2005 are eerily prescient of the FCC's recent ruling.

Unfortunately, this most recent FCC statement completely ignores the fundamental issue that SDRs cannot be stopped or controlled at the supplier/manufacturer any more than the FCC can stop file-sharing, P2P networking, or micro-broadcasting. People aren't going to seek FCC licensure for their software patches (such thinking demonstrates an amazing naïveté for the FOSS [Free Open Source Software] arena). In fact, this recent ruling all but guarantees that Open Source software developers will have less interaction with the FCC because the agency is dramatically increasing the "annoyance threshold" for independent developers to work with them. Even more importantly, most of the SDR development that the FCC is asserting control over is going to be happening outside of the US, and thus outside the FCC's jurisdiction in the first place. In other words, this ruling assumes an Amerocentrism to open source development that doesn't even exist.

In 2005 I said I expected widespread availability in 5-10 years. Today we're already beginning to see the first wave of SD and cognitive radio technologies. The price points for hardware are dropping rapidly (in fact, even faster than I'd anticipated), and development and deployment of wireless technologies is accelerating at an incredible pace. The FCC still has an opportunity to set aside wide swaths of spectrum for SDR and cognitive radio use and alleviate this looming crisis. However, their continuing failure to act in any meaningful way and the obvious ignorance that this ruling demonstrates regarding the open source community generally, makes me wonder if they've fallen so far out of touch with realities on the ground that they think they can simply ignore the problem or will it out of existence.

I remember when Harold Feld and I went in and spoke with FCC staff about mesh wireless technology a couple years ago. I'd brought up the issue that mesh networks (and community networks generally) needed to be addressed in their rules and regulations (and in CALEA, in particular). The staff responded by saying that mesh was not really a major concern because it didn't exist yet, and nothing I said seemed to impact that assessment. So the next time we went in, I brought a backpack full of CUWiN equipment and, in 20 minutes, set up a working mesh wireless network inside the FCC building. Only with this technology fully deployed and operational in their own building did they begin to take the issue seriously. Remarkably, CALEA has remained completely unchanged by the on the ground realities of distributed (mesh) broadband networks and today things are quite a mess because of the FCC's refusal to address technological realities.

In the end, the FCC should not be making rulings on issues they clearly do not understand. And the FCC clearly does not understand (as an organization) the realities of SDR and cognitive radio technologies (even though a number of individual staffers clearly do). As spectrum policy and open source software development continue to collide, it would be far wiser for the FCC to initiate dialog with the open source community, come to terms with the technological changes that make current spectrum licensure obsolete, and formulate solutions that parallel the realities of software defined and cognitive radio technologies. I'd like to see the FCC actually address the concerns I and many others have been raising with them for the past several years. Instead they seem to be burying their head even further into the sand.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Trieste, Italy-- The BMO Book Sprint Team is pleased to announce the release of the new free book, "How To Accelerate Your Internet: A practical guide to Bandwidth Management and Optimization using Open Source Software". The book was released in October 2006 under a Creative Commons license, and was written in an effort to help network architects understand and troubleshoot problems with managing Internet bandwidth, which often result in unnecessarily high operational costs in the developing world.

Network connections are very expensive in most parts of the world, and it is often costly and difficult to add additional network capacity. Therefore, effective management and optimization of bandwidth is crucial. Research and education benefit significantly from Internet resources, yet the majority of institutions take little or no action to manage their bandwidth usage. This waste results in high operating costs, slow network connections, and frustrated network users.

The goal of the book is to provide practical information on how to gain the largest possible benefit from your connection to the Internet. By prioritizing certain kinds of network activity, reducing the impact of spam and viruses, providing local content caching, and performing extensive monitoring and analysis of network usage, Internet consumption can be brought to manageable levels. This makes it possible to provide equitable access for all users, even when the available bandwidth is quite small.

But technical solutions only solve part of the problem. In order to prioritize network traffic, an organization needs to have a clear idea of the intended purpose of the network connection, as well as insight into how the connection is being used. The book addresses this complex topic by covering the three major components of effective bandwidth management: Effective policy, extensive monitoring & analysis, and solid network implementation. In addition, troubleshooting techniques, advanced performance tuning tips and tricks, and real-world case studies are also provided.

The Book Sprint began with online correspondence via email, which led to an initial face-to-face meeting of bandwidth management experts from around the world in May 2006. Intense online collaboration followed over the next few months, which then culminated in the production of the 300 page printed book, as well as a PDF and HTML version. The book was sponsored by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (http://inasp.info/), and was produced in association with the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (http://www.ictp.it/), Aidworld (http://www.aidworld.org/), and Hacker Friendly LLC (http://hackerfriendly.com/). By releasing this work under a Creative Commons license, the Book Sprint Team hopes to disseminate it as widely as possible, bringing this information into the hands of people who need it most.

The book can be downloaded for free, or a printed copy may be purchased at the book's website: http://bwmo.net.

July 20, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director
217-278-3933 x30 sascha@cuwireless.net

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator
217-278-3933 x31 rgmussel@cuwireless.net

***

CUWiN/UIUC PARTNERSHIP AWARDED $500,000 NSF GRANT TO DEVELOP NEXT GENERATION OPEN SOURCE MESH WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign partners with CUWiN to build high-performance, robust open source wireless mesh networking technologies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $500,000 in grant funding to support a research and development partnership between the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This initiative, "Toward building a Performance-Predictable Wireless Mesh Network", focuses on the development of wireless routing protocols, network testing systems, and gateway discovery in open-source technology. The grant, part of the Network Technology and Systems Program of the NSF, provides support over a three-year period.

"CUWiN is building the next generation of mesh wireless technologies. Most importantly, CUWiN is releasing our software under an open source license -- allowing communities, municipalities, organizations, and individuals around the world to deploy low-cost alternatives to current proprietary systems." stated Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director.

Community and municipal wireless networks have gained tremendous attention in recent years. The ultimate objective of this CUWiN/UIUC partnership is to incorporate research results and system prototypes into production code to be widely distributed by CUWiN. With the help of CUWiN, the research to be carried out by UIUC researchers will make a real impact and effect high-throughput, cost-effective broadband access both for the U.S. and worldwide.

"I am extremely pleased with the fact that NSF recognizes the importance of carrying out research on a real multi-hop wireless network. CUWiN provides us with a city-wide research testbed to understand how, and to what extent, wireless links are affected by PHY/MAC attributes and other environmental factors. All the measurements we make on CUWiN will help characterize the behavior of wireless links and identify control 'knobs' in the MAC/PHY layers with which the network capacity can be optimized." Principal Investigator, Jennifer Hou, stated.

CUWiN's mission is to help bridge the digital divide by developing low-cost, open source, wireless technologies and making them available to community and municipal networks around the world. CUWiN networks have been established in urban settings like Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., as well as rural places like the Mesa Grande Indian Reservation near San Diego, California, and Apirede, Ghana. CUWiN continues to expand its development testbed in Urbana, Illinois in partnership with the City of Urbana and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"The wireless technologies being developed by CUWiN as a part of this initiative hearken back to the innovation and vibrancy of early Internet development."stated Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator. "With a focus on maintaining Internet freedom, these new technologies support digital inclusion around the globe."

For more information on this initiative, contact the CUWiN team at:

E-mail: cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net
Phone: +1 217 278-3933 x31.

Sign up for the once-a-month CUWiN e-mail news list at:

http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/cu-wireless-announce

The Advanced Systems and Concepts Office Released a report and recommendations to the Department of Defense to use and develop Open Source technologies. Among the findings in the report:

DoD’s design and acquisition methods are ill-suited to keep pace with accelerating shifts in technology, particularly software and information technology. Consequently, DoD finds itself behind the curve in software, leading to upwardspiraling information technology (IT) costs, obsolescent systems, and the loss of agility for commanders on the ground.

Individuals and companies are able to leverage open technology platforms to rapidly deploy new solutions and capabilities to improve their competitive advantage.

DoD needs to evaluate the impact that locking into one set of proprietary standards or products may have to its ability to react and respond to adversaries and more importantly, to technological change that is accelerating regardless of military conflict. In order to remain competitive in a rapidly shifting technological landscape (including the disruptive technologies leveraged by our adversaries), DoD’s software development and business processes must break out of the industrial-era acquisitions mold. If DoD charts a course to increase the use of open source software (OSS) and create an internal DoD collaborative code repository the effects would be transformative.

For open source developers, check out the criteria on pages 74-75 of the report -- this'll probably be what the DoD is looking for among open source projects.