LitReview: Value of Open Hardware

Who?

• Joshua M. Pearce

What?

Quantifying the Value of Open Source Hardware Development

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/ME_2015011215185288-Value-OSHW.pdf

When?

2015, 6, 1-11

Le Gist

Basically, this was an article literally attempting to give an equation and case study on how to calculate how valuable an open source hardware project is.  This is done mainly in terms of money.  The article is relevant due to modern ability to reproduce hardware especially through means like 3D printing.

The Good

1. Super
2. 4 Ways to Win was extremely helpful information.  Great to learn the major types of business models for profiting off FOSS.
3. I really like the point that FOSS allows businesses to directly interact with customers.  I hadn't thought of this before, but I think it is extremely powerful given how many companies constantly talk about wanting to be close to the customer, and how much companies stress their relationship and trust with customers.

The Bad

1. Some reiteration on reasons why FOSS is great.  I have heard the bulk of the reasoning behind these benefits over and over again.  I would have saved myself some time by just reading the business model specific stuff.
2. Only gives 4 business models, although does offer a link for further investigation.  Would have liked some lists of examples, especially considering fellow students complaints at some of the dated examples(*cough*Netscape*cough*)
3. GPL guide section 12.1 talks about how the GPL does not restrict, but promotes free usage of software under the license, but does not explain how one would control that usage.

Questions

1. What business model currently is the safest for developers like myself?  Would I fall under that startup category?
2. Is there a way to regulate usage of software, but still keep it open source?  Is it possible to put source code up for people to see, but not let them use it?  Is this still Open Source Software?
3. I've heard time and time again the benefits of making software Open Source, to the point that I feel like I can only argue towards everything being open source.  What are some examples of when closed source would be the way to go?

Review

This was a great quick read.  I'm happy to start transitioning from the legal side to the business side of Business/Legal Aspects of FOSS class, and think this was a great jumping off point.  Having said that, I would have liked a less biased, more informative, more up to date version.

7/10

Weekly 8

Spring Break - I went home where my family and I did some snowboarding, and I tried to stay away from any schoolwork :)

Weekly 7

Had to write an essay for my German Film class this week.  That was kind of a bummer.  The assignment was to analyze any of the films we watched in class based on what genre the movie was.  So for example, I chose to write about how the film La Habanera was an Escapist Melodrama.  I chose this movie because I thought it was interesting that these types of films were prominent during WWII in Germany.  I initially believed the market to overwhelmingly be made up of propaganda films, but the motivation was really to distract the viewers from the terrors of the war.

In Japanese Film class, we wrapped up Seven Samurai and discussed it in class.  I thoroughly enjoyed this film because it was action packed and had a very diverse range of characters, who were all very cool in their own way.  A lot of other students like the film as well and it averaged about an 8.5 from the class reviews.  We also started doing an in depth look at Confucianism and the different major relationships involved in traditional Confucian beliefs.  Next, we are supposed to watch a film about the 47 Ronin, who were samurai whose master was wrongfully sentenced to commit suicide.  The 47 Ronin then infamously seeked vengeance for their master's death.

In my Business and Legal Foss class we went to RocPy!  You can read about this meetup in my other blog post!  Basically, RocPy is always fun and productive and you should attend if you can.

In other news, still hammering through the classical Era for Music class.  This week was kind of a wind down before spring break.

Profile1

Check out my Software Freedom Conservancy profile here: https://docs.google.com/a/g.rit.edu/document/d/1c_xVONX7ISMkBR8y2e3Pud9tZVy33LwtsfEX3F2eNWU/edit?usp=sharing

TeamProp2

List your other team members below

• Will Paul - dropofwill (whp3652@rit.edu)
• Kocsen Chung - kocsen (kxc4519@rit.edu)

Which Entity did your team choose to profile?

CoinBase

Description of the Organization

Coinbase is a private corporation that aims to provide a safe and reliable bitcoin wallet for users, as well as handle bitcoin transactions between users.

Describe each team member's role

We ended up dividing the project as such:  Myself - service overview, Will - Organizational details, Kocsen - community architecture

Organization/Project Source Code Repo URL

• github.com/coinbase - toshi is there big project, everything else is wrappers for support

Upstream Mentors and Communication

• IRC: #coinbase
• Twitter: @coinbase

What do you anticipate the easy parts will be?

Lots of information on them on the internet, and it's not hard to sift through.  Pretty up to date company which is good.

What do you anticipate the hard parts will be?

Organization is private, so may be hard to find certain private information about them.

How will you overcome both?

Get together with our group and just start diving into the internet.

If something goes wrong, what contingencies do you have in place?

Google docs saves all changes and is unparalleled for simple collaboration.  We will revert back to older changes if something goes awry.  Alternatively, the information we are researching is readily available on the internet, so we can just find it again.

When will your group meet regularly outside of class time?

Much thanks to Kocsen for setting up this nifty meetup calendar: http://www.when2meet.com/?2782271-P9cG4

We usually meet 2 or 3pm on Wednesdays.

RocPy Meetup!

Roc.py meetup was awesome!  Bizlegfoss class met at the University of Rochester for a Python User Group meeting.  It's been so long since I last attended Roc.py that I completely forgot about the weird setup of the room we usually set up in.  All the seats are facing the back of the room because, as my friend explained, it helps the professors see what the students are doing on the computers.

Anyway, the vast bulk of the time was taken up by a really awesome open source Python web project called "toyz" by a U of R PhD student named Fred (fred3m - https://github.com/fred3m/toyz).  The project is extremely useful for reducing and displaying things like gigantic images.  The specific example that Fred gave was astronomy images which can be several gigabytes in size, but load extremely quickly through toyz.  Fred said he made the program to help with his PhD and because he wanted to know he made something cool and worthwhile.  The program was "initially created as a way to view and interact with FITS images stored on a remote server as well as perform data reduction", and it is meant "to meet the needs of 'Big Data' scientists".

Personally, I thought this program was awesome, and was especially intrigued to find that Fred has put the project on Github and would encourage people to check it out.  His demo of the application framework was super cool, as he proved that it could load giant space images in mere seconds, which could then be zoomed in on for higher quality.  The user interface was also very legitimate and professional looking, along with some really cool graph display abilities.

Fred said he wanted to bring attention to the idea that this type of technology needs to be updated and made more accessible, and it was really cool to see that he was trying to do something about that.  After the toyz talk, there was still a bit of time left so anyone was allowed to give a lightning talk.  One of my fellow bizlegfoss students AJ(ajman1101 - github.com/ajman1101) gave an awesome talk about how all of the elements of multiplayer games have already been defined.  This was an extremely interesting topic for me being a Game Designer and Developer myself, and it was fun trying to categorize games that people have played into the categories that AJ gave.  Overall, a fun filled Roc.py!

LitReview: Market Power and Regulation

Who?

• Jean Tirole

What?

Nobel Prize winning article on Market power and regulation

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/nobel-popular-economicsciences2014.pdf

When?

2014

The Gist

A cropped version and summation of the Nobel Prize award winning article about how regulation applies to different markets.  It also explains some interesting tools and strategies for regulation and competition in markets.

The Good

1. Very quick read for an award winning article
2. Talks about oligopolies and monopolies, which I find very interesting 
3. The thing won a Nobel Prize - doesn't get much better than that!

The Bad

1. Could see this being completely boring for those not interested in business.
2. Lots of different cases to think about
3. Would like to read the actual prize winning piece

The Questions:

1. What other cases exist worth mentioning?
2. Are patents good or bad in this sense?
3. What is the most broadly applicable way to regulate markets

My Review

This was an interesting read, and it was really cool to get to know about something that won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for 2014.  This was a very recent article although I would still like to know how it holds up in this immediate time.

7/10

Weekly 6

After going over Business Models last week, we actually made our first company profile this week.  I really like this assignment because I find I am learning a ton about a legitimate business and how they work.  I think my enjoyment of this project is also very much thanks to my teammates dropofwill(github.com/dropofwill) and Kocsen(github.com/kocsen) because we did a great job of managing our team and our meet up times.  Ultimately we just got together at the time we set and populated the profile with information.  It went very smoothly and the presentation was done in no time.

My Casual Game Development class started on a new ICE today.  I really like this assignment because it handles mobile development in a browser.  I thought this was amazing because I didn't even know that mobile browsers supported HTML5 games.  The game we have to make is very simple, it resizes to the screen size and spawns "bubbles" that float to the top of the screen that the player can pop by clicking on.  The ICE was not too hard or time consuming and I think it was a very beneficial assignment to do.  My friend and I are thinking we probably want to incorporate mobile gaming into our next project for this class.

We continued watching Seven Samurai in my Japanese Film class.  For those of you who don't know, the film is set in Warring States Era Japan, and features a town that is threatened by bandits.  To defeat the bandits, the villagers seek help from masterless wandering samurai called ronin.  After trying to recruit many samurai by offering food and shelter, the villagers are finally able to assemble a team of 7 samurai - hence the title.  The movie then follows the samurai's plans to save the village from the bandits.

Not much else worth noting.  My music class was working on the Classical Era this week, which was awesome because we are finally listening to music that I can enjoy, from concertos to sonatas.  These aren't exactly the songs I listen to on a daily basis, but they are not as bad as the very old songs we listened to last unit.

TeamProp1

List your other team members below

• Will Paul - dropofwill (whp3652@rit.edu)
• Kocsen Chung - kocsen (kxc4519@rit.edu)

Which Entity did your team choose to profile?

Software Freedom Conservancy

Description of the Organization

The Software Freedom Conservancy is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and FLOSS projects.  They aim to provide a home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects and allow developers to focus more on developing.  So basically they deal with the legal side of FLOSS projects so that the contributors can make the software without fear or distraction.

Describe each team member's role

We ended up dividing the project as such:  Myself - service overview, Will - Organizational details, Kocsen - community architecture

Organization/Project Source Code Repo URL

• Not Applicable, the Conservancy simply helps open source projects

Upstream Mentors and Communication

• IRC: #conservancy

What do you anticipate the easy parts will be?

Pretty straightforward, fairly large company, with lots of information available.  Company is centered around helping open source projects, so its pretty cool and likeable.

What do you anticipate the hard parts will be?

Unlike the other companies we make profiles for, this one does not actually have a github main project.  Instead, this company helps open source projects.

How will you overcome both?

Good communication, good individual research, and collaboration via google docs.  We usually just get our brains together and start mashing information into a google doc :)

If something goes wrong, what contingencies do you have in place?

Google docs saves all changes and is unparalleled for simple collaboration.  We will revert back to older changes if something goes awry.  Alternatively, the information we are researching is readily available on the internet, so we can just find it again.

When will your group meet regularly outside of class time?

Much thanks to Kocsen for setting up this nifty meetup calendar: http://www.when2meet.com/?2782271-P9cG4

We usually meet 2 or 3pm on Wednesdays.

Profile0

Plug for my Company Profile on Webkit here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h0Bh47JupolD2BBNuMl1-YHTeZR8xRXysOKS8nYk3iU/edit?usp=sharing

Weekly 6

This was coming pretty close to midterm week...yay...

I got assigned my midterm for Production Studio which was basically a smaller working version of what the final product was supposed to be.  The demo was to fully incorporate audio aspects hooked up to change the graphics of the scene.  So far, we had split into smaller groups to get things done quicker on a smaller scale.  This was really nice and I got to work with 2 kids who I had never worked with before.  One of them is really smart and the other one does not really do any work.

In my Japanese History class, my professor gave a full overview of the Warring States Period.  Apparently it was a period in Japan where there were a ton of different regions owned by various warlords, and they all fought constantly for control of the country.  We also looked at Zen Buddhism which was a branch of Buddhism that was easy for samurai to quickly adapt to.  We started watching Seven Samurai, which I am told will take us about 3 classes to finish.

In my Casual Game Development class, we handed in our final projects.  You can check out my project on my friend's website here: http://alanleeson.com/BunnyBombs/bunnybombs.php.  We were really proud of the project for several reasons.  My friend enjoys web development and I also am a pretty big fan of javascript, so it was nice to get to program the game in that and HTML5.  We were also very clean in how we organized the programming of the game.  We used a module system and gave everything its own values.  I personally handled collisions, design, sound, and some other minor fixes,

In BizLegFoss we started transitioning from Legal to Business studies by doing our first profile, which you can see on my blog!

Team Proposal 0

Lol at the 0 index in the title of this blog post :)

List your other team members below

• Will Paul - dropofwill (whp3652@rit.edu)
• Kocsen Chung - kocsen (kxc4519@rit.edu)

Which Entity did your team choose to profile?

KDE/Apple/Adobe/Google/Opera - Webkit and Blink

Description of the Organization

Collaboration of giant leading software companies to create a powerful and extremely widely used open source project web tool.

Description of the project

Webkit was authored by KDE and has been contributed to, and implemented by the mammoth aforementioned software companies.  It is written in C++ and functions as the layout software for webpage rendering used in web browsers.  Where WebKit powers Apple's Safari, the "fork(though possibly more than just a fork at this point)" project Blink powers Google's Chromium.  Webkit technology has a larger browser market share than the engines used by Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.  Webkit is licensed predominantly under the BSD 2.0.

Describe each team member's role

I really like the way Will(dropofwill) organized this in his blog post, and I think we will stick to the idea of dividing the work based on this:

-Organizational details for each enterprise

• Google
• Apple
• Adobe
• Opera
• KDE

-Webkit communication channels

-Blink communication channels

-Webkit community architecture

-Blink community architecture

-Webkit technology/product overview

-Blink technology/product overview

Organization/Project Source Code Repo URL

• WebKit - https://github.com/WebKit/webkit
• Blink - https://github.com/ChromiumWebApps/blink

Upstream Mentors and Communication

Might try and contact the folks at Google or Apple via some customer service links, if we have a burning question.  I could also be devious and probably shoot some emails to the email addresses listed in the contributions to each project :)

What do you anticipate the easy parts will be?

It's a lot of information.  Should be easy to find sources because we're looking at a collaboration between giant companies, and a project that is extremely important to the major web browsers today.  I also think this should be interesting to research into.

What do you anticipate the hard parts will be?

It's a lot of information.  WebKit is a huge project with a lot of history divided amongst several huge companies.  Blink is probably the same way.  It might be hard not only to have to deal with all of the information from both projects, but also to find differences between the project and its "fork".

How will you overcome both?

Not really sure of a milestone list, but I will probably just determine what role I will play in our team role list and then start hitting the points from the rubric here: http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/hw/profile.html I'll try and only grab at information that is really relevant to the point that I am working at.  We will overcome through filtering and consistent work input - basically just good researching.

If something goes wrong, what contingencies do you have in place?

I will probably default to asking my groupmates if they have any information or suggestions of places to look for what I need.  If that doesn't work, I might try and get information straight from the companies, or just keep searching until some light is shed on the subject.

When will your group meet regularly outside of class time?

Much thanks to Kocsen for setting up this nifty meetup calendar: http://www.when2meet.com/?2782271-P9cG4

Looks like we line up times on Mondays/Fridays 3-5pm, and Wednesdays from 3-4pm.

LitReview: OSI Business Models and GPL Guide Ch. 12 Section 1

Who?

• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Anthony K. Sebro, Jr.
• Denver Gingerich
  
• Folks at the OSI and SFLC

What?

GPL Compliance Guide(Chapter 12.1) and Open Source Case for Business

Where?

GPL Guide: http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/comprehensive-gpl-guide.pdf#section.12.1

OSI Business Models: http://opensource.org/advocacy/case_for_business.php

When?

2014 updates on both

Le Gist

GPL Guide section on basically how the GPL deals specifically with copying, distributing, and modifying, but does not really cover usage at all, which can be helpful to businesses.  OSI article is all about the benefits of Open Source Projects to businesses, and the "4 Ways to Win" which are 4 effective business models that make money with Open Source Software.

The Good

1. Great transition into the business side of this class.  Also interesting to acknowledge the benefits of the freedom of using open source software in house.
2. 4 Ways to Win was extremely helpful information.  Great to learn the major types of business models for profiting off FOSS.
3. I really like the point that FOSS allows businesses to directly interact with customers.  I hadn't thought of this before, but I think it is extremely powerful given how many companies constantly talk about wanting to be close to the customer, and how much companies stress their relationship and trust with customers.

The Bad

1. Some reiteration on reasons why FOSS is great.  I have heard the bulk of the reasoning behind these benefits over and over again.  I would have saved myself some time by just reading the business model specific stuff.
2. Only gives 4 business models, although does offer a link for further investigation.  Would have liked some lists of examples, especially considering fellow students complaints at some of the dated examples(*cough*Netscape*cough*)
3. GPL guide section 12.1 talks about how the GPL does not restrict, but promotes free usage of software under the license, but does not explain how one would control that usage.

Questions

1. What business model currently is the safest for developers like myself?  Would I fall under that startup category?
2. Is there a way to regulate usage of software, but still keep it open source?  Is it possible to put source code up for people to see, but not let them use it?  Is this still Open Source Software?
3. I've heard time and time again the benefits of making software Open Source, to the point that I feel like I can only argue towards everything being open source.  What are some examples of when closed source would be the way to go?

Review

This was a great quick read.  I'm happy to start transitioning from the legal side to the business side of Business/Legal Aspects of FOSS class, and think this was a great jumping off point.  Having said that, I would have liked a less biased, more informative, more up to date version.

7/10

LitReview: SFLC Legal Primer Chapter 3

Who?

• Richard Fontana
• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Eben Moglen
• Matthew Norwood
• Daniel B. Ravicher
• Karen Sandler
• James Vasile
• Aaron Williamson

What?

FOSS Primer - A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects (Chapter 6)

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/decause-foss-primer.pdf

When?

4 June 2008

The Gist

This chapter of the FOSS Primer was all about Common Organizational Issues, and it talks all about different types of organizations while leaning heavily towards nonprofit corporations because at the time, that was the preferred/recommended corporate form for FOSS projects.

The Good

1. Lists and discusses 4 major corporate forms - unincorporated organization, nonprofit corporation, umbrella organization(insert Half Life 2 joke here), and individual acting independently.  I thought this was interesting and helpful.
2. Gives benefits to forming each different organization, but also lists weaknesses.
3. Great information for anyone looking to start a nonprofit corporation and get it registered for tax exemption.

The Bad

1. It was mentioned in class that the nonprofit corporation is no longer the recommended corporate form for FOSS projects, and this chapter goes much more in depth on nonprofit corporations than I would have liked.  I would have really liked a similar amount of information on for profit structures.
2. Makes it seem like forming an organization is a lot of time and effort, which it most likely is, but it becomes more unappealing in my eyes.
3. IRS seems kind of obnoxious.

The Questions:

1. Is a non-profit organization definitely not the way to go if you want to make money off of your open source project?
2. Why does the IRS allow only 27 months from formation for a nonprofit to become tax exempt if they also require 3 years of financial history to even apply for tax exemption?
3. What are some ideal cases of successful non profit open source organizations?

My Review

My professor (github.com/decause) made a point in class that we don't have many(if any) courses even similar to my Business and Legal FOSS class, and he proceeded to ask who was hearing/learning of things like "corporate forms" or "trademarks" for the first time.  I among many other students in the class raised my hand in response to this question.  This chapter serves as another example of something I am finding very interesting that I wish we had more time in the semester to go deeper into along with patents, trademarks, copyright, licensing, etc..  Having said that, I wish this chapter went more into corporations in FOSS that were profitable.

6/10

Weekly 5

This week was a nice slow down after the pretty eventful last 4 weeks.  In my Casual Game Development class, our teams of 2 presented what we had so far and everyone voted on what demo was their favorite, to give that project extra credit points.  I liked doing this because I found it made all of the teams work harder on their deliverable because we all wanted to be voted the favorite game.  We actually did end up scoring some extra credit points for what we had!

In my Global Cinema - German Film class, we watched something called a "Rubble Film" which takes place in the ruins of Berlin in Post WWII Germany.  It was pretty amazing to watch especially because they actually filmed in the ruins of the war, so the damage was very real.  In my Modern Japanese History in Film class, we started discussing the Warring States Period.

In my Production Studio class, we worked on merging the "audio team's" work with the "graphics team's" work.  This was a total pain because since the group in total had about 12 people, everyone just relied on someone else to do all the work, and very few people ended up committing changes until last minute.  Ultimately, we did manage to pull together a very simple, but pretty broken demo fusing the music and sound.


In other news, my Introduction to Music class had its first quiz on reading music and describing music objectively, as well as our first exam on the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Eras.  I did extremely well on both exams although not without long hours of studying.  I think this is one of those classes that people will assume is a lot easier than it actually is.