As one of my many extracurricular activities, I happen to serve on the Dean's Advisory Council for GCCIS, the College of Computing and Information Sciences at RIT. The thing I enjoy most about that experience is the opportunity to contemplate (and hopefully influence) the future of Computer Science/Information Technology education. Below is an essay I... Continue Reading →
OpenID: The RESTful approach to Single Sign-On
Been spending a lot of time on regular work, but a friend recently suggested I check out OpenID -- the de facto distributed authentication standard for Web 2.0. I think of it as "Decentralized Kerberos for the Internet", in that provides the ability to do Single Sign-On without the need for everyone to agree on... Continue Reading →
OSI Membership Policy: Request for Proposals
Ken Coar just posted an official "Call for Proposals" regarding OSI membership. [Read more] for the full text, though the key sentence for me is:The objective of moving to a membership model is tobroaden the "ownership" of the OSI to include the globalcommunity of people who are investing their lives in opensource. Those members then... Continue Reading →
Application for OSI Board Membership
Since I'm applying for public office, I may as well state my agenda and qualifications publicly for anyone who wants to comment (or hold me to them later, if I should attain such office). What is your prior experience with open source software??ÊÊ?http://www.opendarwin.org/~drernie/C1923057755/index.htmlÊ?* Long-term participant in OSI License DiscussÊ?* Active on license proliferation and membership... Continue Reading →
Comments on OSI License Proliferation
As promised, I posted my summary of community reaction to the OSI's License Proliferation Policy: 1. Yes, License Proliferation is a Problem. 2. Yes, the OSI should do something to discourage it 3. No, these terms should NOT be part of the OSD or the license-approval processClick [Read More] for the full text. Well, as... Continue Reading →
Capitalism 2.0
Thoughts on the underlying principles of the Web 2.0 business model: Capitalism 1.0: creating value for shareholders Capitalism 2.0: sustainably creating value for all stakeholders The design pattern for the Web 2.0 business model (aka Capitalism 2.0) is based on authority rather than power: Power comes from acquiring assets Authority comes from giving power away The way to extract value from assets is via creative... Continue Reading →
The Politics of Legitimate Governance (for OSI)
This letter was originally sent to the Membership Committee of the Open Source Initiative as part of the ongoing discussion regarding membership. In particular, it flowed out of concerns expressed on license-discuss about Governance. I decided to post it publicly, since membership-discuss is apparently not archived publicly.[Note: originally I had posted this another blog, but... Continue Reading →
iHack, therefore iBlog 