Tag: Community

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Open source transformation: How products become community projects

In the dynamic world of software development, we are increasingly seeing commercial or proprietary software projects being opened up and made available as open source software. Microsoft’s Azure RTOS, for example, has been transformed into an open source project under the leadership of the Eclipse Foundation. This allows the software to be continued under a different legal and organizational umbrella. This means that hosting, administration and exchange platforms, for example, can be coordinated centrally and resources can be used more efficiently.

Community building as a key factor

This administrative effort behind a software project can take up a lot of time, which is why the trend of opening up software can be particularly groundbreaking for smaller projects. But even software projects that are already openly available can benefit from outsourcing the administration to a higher-level organization.

Our approach as a non-profit organization is to take over projects at external request and continue them as open source with a local coder community. Anyone involved in the development of software often invests a lot of time, money and brainpower. Enthusiasm for the project idea, the practice-oriented learning effect and cooperation are strong motivators, but not a reliable long-term strategy. That’s why we reflect on and analyze the framework conditions before migrating a software project and consider together where it should go and check whether a software fits our statutory purpose or whether the developers want to strive for a transformation in this direction.

In this context, opening up software projects means a culture of sharing and collaboration. Developers can learn from each other, share best practices and work together on new ideas. This leads to a more networked and cooperative coder community that is constantly working on a project over the long term.

Potential of open software

In general, opening up software or migrating open software to a higher-level organization opens up various opportunities: The transparency of the source code, for example, enables users to understand how the software works, check security aspects and ensure that their requirements are met.

Collaboration in an open developer community also promotes the resolution of problems (issues) and the rapid identification of errors (bugs). By involving a broad group of developers with different expertise, bugs can be identified and fixed more quickly, which improves the stability and quality of the software.

Open availability makes it easier to reuse and adapt software projects, which leads to a more efficient use of resources. This helps to extend the lifespan of software projects and reduce the ecological footprint.

The transformation to open source also offers opportunities for sustainable financing. Through crowdfunding, donations and other models, the community can support development financially. This creates independence from traditional business models and makes it possible for software projects to flourish even if they are not exclusively dependent on commercial sales.

Challenges of open software

In addition to the many positive aspects, the transformation or migration of a software project is particularly challenging, as existing structures may have to be changed instead of considering what needs to be taken into account right at the start of the project.

Open software licenses represent the greatest uncertainty here. In some cases, it is no longer possible to track exactly which developers have contributed what – or more precisely: on platforms such as GitHub or Codeberg, it is possible to track who contributed what and when, but for many code snippets, tried and tested recurring commands are used. This means that a certain composition of code snippets is unique, but the individual components are not necessarily, and it is difficult to differentiate copyrights precisely.

Copyleft licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL), for example, require that derivative works be published under the same license. In addition, incompatibility between different free software licenses can make it difficult to integrate and share code. In particular, collaboration between developers with different license preferences can be impaired.

Another aspect concerns possible conflicts in connection with patents. Some free software licenses include patent clauses, while others explicitly exclude them. Managing license compliance therefore requires careful management to ensure that all parties involved respect and comply with the license terms.

Software migration as a transformation process

One of the ways in which we achieve this is through a semi-structured transformation process, which is structured by successive steps but is flexible enough to respond to the individual framework conditions of a software project. A key component of this is the transition workshop, in which worst and best-case scenarios are worked out.

The collaborative development of role descriptions allows the original developers to decide for themselves to what extent they want to be involved after the handover. Since we are a non-profit association, membership is an obvious choice. In addition, the developers can also be consulted on a regular basis or selectively. These roles are flexible and depend on the availability, values and needs of everyone involved.

Once the areas of activity, responsibilities and expectations have been defined, a formal handover follows. A framework agreement is signed and passwords and domains are transferred to our data protection-compliant servers in Germany. If available, there will be an onboarding for the community, during which roles will be clarified and those involved will be connected.

The relaunch includes a revision of the source code with regard to digital sufficiency optimization and the publication of the software as open source on Codeberg. Depending on the project and objectives, we consider suitable licenses such as the GPL, MIT or Apache License.

At the same time, fundraising is carried out to support further development. The entire process is documented, evaluated and optimized in order to establish the most pleasant and efficient process possible for future software projects.

The transformation of commercial software projects into open source therefore not only offers technical opportunities, but also creates a constructive, participatory and sustainable development environment that is supported by a broad spectrum of developers and users.

What do you think of this approach? What potential and challenges do you still see? Do you know a software project that needs a home? Feel free to leave a comment or write to us – your feedback is invaluable to us.

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OESA scholarship for theses and projects

As part of his bachelor thesis, our first OESA scholarship holder Alex looked at the potentials and challenges of robots in education and developed a workshop for children on this basis. This took place in cooperation with robolab of the Bücherhallen Hamburg, we reported about it here. OESA supported Alex in his scientific work, established the contact to the practice partner robolab and coordinated and financed his stay in Hamburg. A closing dinner with the OESA board was organized to talk about next steps and of course to ceremoniously hand over the scholarship certificate.

We interviewed Alex at the end of the nine-month collaboration and decided to share a summary of the conversation for potential fellows.

OESA: What was your absolute highlight?

Alex: The workshop with the kids was a lot of fun. I was positively surprised by the children’s interest and how they formed their own opinions through the didactic concept. Seeing how they interact with the robots and the ideas that came up in the conversations was definitely my highlight.

OESA: What new things did you learn?

Alex: Besides the researched content, scientific writing was still unfamiliar to me. In our discussions and annotated versions of the paper, I learned a lot about tone, expression, the content structure of a text, and nuanced phrasing.

OESA: What difficulties did you encounter?

Alex: Due to school vacations and other appointments, the workshop had to be pushed back in time, which meant that the work got a bit bogged down and the timing didn’t work out as initially discussed.

OESA: What would you like to pass on to future fellows?

Alex: The OESA scholarship enables a new perspective. Instead of writing your first scientific thesis on your own, the fellowship gives you the opportunity to ask any question. Because there are very low-threshold contact persons with a lot of knowledge and experience, but at eye level.

We thank Alex for his valuable contribution and wish him all the best for the way after graduation!

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Bündnis Freie Bildung – OER in Germany

OESA has been a member of the Bündnis Freie Bildung (translated: Alliance for Free Education) since August 2020 – what does that mean?

About the Alliance

The Bündnis Freie Bildung is a driving force in the German-speaking OER community. It was founded in 2014 as an initiative of Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and Wikimedia Germany to promote the field of open and free education.

In the meantime, more than twenty organizations, institutions and associations as well as numerous individuals have joined forces in the Alliance to advocate for free education, freely accessible educational materials, open educational practices and open licenses in education – and thus to help shape political decisions and social discussions. As a forum and platform, the alliance therefore organizes events, publishes positions, seeks dialog with decision-makers in politics and administration, and actively engages in discourses around teaching, learning, and education, with the goal of reducing educational inequalities and promoting equal participation in a digital, democratic society.

The Open Education Forum, for example, is part of the Alliance and brings together stakeholders to develop strategies, engage in exchange and provide new ideas. The Alliance’s work focuses on educational materials (Open Educational Resources), software and technology (Open Source), copyright (Open by default), access (Education for All) and pedagogy / didactics (Open Educational Practices).

OER and OEP

The Alliance understands Open Education as a collection of approaches to promote educational opportunities, for example through policies and political measures, the use of open digital educational resources or the use of open courses on the Internet. In this context, openness is not an absolute category, but a relational one, always related to specific social, political, economic, and educational contexts. Because education should always be accessible, participatory, and democratic.

Open Educational Resources (OER), can make a contribution to coming closer to the overall social goal of educational justice. Thanks to open licensing, they can be used by everyone with free software without significant legal and technical difficulties. In particular, they may also be modified, mixed with other materials and republished. This makes it possible to better adapt the cut and scope of materials to the needs of learners and their respective contexts, to keep them up-to-date, and to legally share them worldwide.

Thus, OER are catalysts of contemporary education, because they not only enable self-determined and democratic learning and digital collaboration, but also promote critical reflection on media and their use and open access to education. However, the integration of OER into teaching and learning, i.e. the application of Open Educational Practices (OEP), requires the qualification and further training of teachers, the continuous development of didactic teaching concepts with OER, and appropriate funding.

Open Source

The usability of software in education is still limited. However, software and infrastructures should not restrict learning and teaching, but should provide freedom. Software used for free education should be fundamentally open, sustainable and designable. Open source software offers the possibility to avoid dependencies on certain software companies (lock-in effects), to enable digital sovereignty for educational institutions and not to impose additional hurdles for access – and thus goes hand in hand with the principle of open education, which is much more dependent on standard conformity for a networked infrastructure, which can only be realized through appropriate software and formats. With a view to open standards, networked platforms, independence and transparency, open software offers the possibility for pedagogical designability, adaptation and modification for diverse scenarios in teaching.

OESA and the Alliance

As part of the Bündnis Freie Bildung, we share the same values and work as a non-profit association to promote open education using open software. At the Open Education 2020 forum, our members Celestine Kleinesper and Katharina Mosene co-authored a proposal to transform school libraries into open media centers. The results from this working group were discussed on a livestream with other Alliance working groups and politician:s.

Further information about the Bündnis Freie Bildung: here.

Source: Alliance for Free Education – Position Paper (as of Sep. 2018), released under CC BY 4.0

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OERcamp global: Review and Impact

From December 9 to 11, 2021, an international OERcamp took place for the first time. So far, they have taken place in German-speaking countries and provided an important platform for practitioners to exchange experiences and ideas. The UNESCO has highlighted the importance and driving force of OERcamps in the German-speaking community and organized the first OERcamp globally in cooperation with – how could it be otherwise – Jöran und Konsorten Agentur für zeitgemäße Bildung.

The program was available throughout due to the time difference. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and also in terms of flexibility, the conference format with Zoom was a very good fit. Karaoke evenings and puns are of course part of the OERcamp. During the 48 hours, a wide variety of keynotes, sessions and workshops were offered. Participants and speakers could register for free and received a zoom link to the Plenary Hall. From there, break-out rooms could be entered, in each of which one event took place and further break-out rooms could be set up.

OESA e.V. hosted a session on Public Spaces as Open Spaces (in English) on December 11. We used the example of the robolab of the public library in Hamburg (Germany) to present the design of public spaces according to the OPEN definition and discussed which opportunities and challenges arise. Important was the field of community management: On the websites of public institutions, comment functions are often deactivated because it is time-consuming and there are legal and ethical issues to consider. This raises the question of positioning in the area of tension of public communication between freedom of speech and censorship. We take this as an opportunity to develop a concept for the implementation of OPEN approaches with a list of conditions for success.

We are very excited about the expansion of OERcamps internationally and look forward to future ones. Cheers!

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Event: University:Future Festival – Open for discussion

Where is higher education headed in these times? Where are futures emerging that are already groundbreaking for us today? How is higher education re-imagining itself on the path to the “blended university”? These and other questions will be addressed by the University:Future Festival 2021 from November 2 – 4, 2021 under the motto “Open for Discussion”, the largest event of its kind in the German-speaking world. Over three days, impulses will be given and future topics such as hybrid learning, diversity, artificial intelligence and future skills will be discussed. Of course, OESA will also be there!

The Festival

The University:Future Festival is organized by the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung (HFD) in partnership with the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (StIL). It is aimed at everyone who is engaged with the present and future of academic education: Teachers, students, university management and staff; activists and representatives from civil society, politics and administration; artists and scientists; EdTech founders and journalists. The festival with over 350 speakers and hundreds of program points will take place online in English and German; participation is free of charge.

Our program: OPEN as a standard

On November 02, we’ll talk about openness as an overall concept, openness as the fundamental driver of all social practices, and open source software as a global movement that spans from knowledge and education to urban gardening.

Learn more about the importance of Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Education, Open Access and Co. for society, education and our future:

02.11.2021 17:30 Lightning Talk: the future is OPEN!

Program, tickets and more information: https://festival.hfd.digital/en/

Access

On the event platform of the festival, the Lightning Talk can still be viewed free of charge for a while afterwards.

We have also provided the most important content and findings of our talk on the future-proof concept “OPEN” for you to read in the next article.

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Input lunch format in April 2020: “Open- digitization as a yardstick”.

Since the outbreak of COVID 19, social life has been severely restricted, especially educational institutions face the challenge of suddenly and almost exclusively working online. To counteract social distancing somewhat and to keep the exchange alive, the Open Education and Software Association e.V. invites. (OESA) invites you to a digital input lunch format around digital education in times of COVID 19. Every Thursday in April 2020, from 12 to 1 p.m., a fifteen-minute input on a topic area will be given by us, and you will receive valuable advice on practical methods and programs, new impulses and contacts. On this common basis, an exchange with small discussions, questions and suggestions will take place afterwards.

Dates: 

02.4. Open Mind

The first day is there to get to know each other: The input serves to introduce the association and the format in more detail and the subsequent exchange should give space to place topics and questions that currently move the participants*innen.

09.4. Open Education

What does “digital education” mean, what does “open” mean? Why do we need it- and why not? How can this be implemented? What opportunities and difficulties does this present?

16.4. Open University

How can lectures and seminars be designed online? Which platforms and programs are suitable for this?

23.4. Open Schoolyard

How can class council be designed online? Which learning softwares with review functions are available? How can tests or similar be carried out?

30.4. Open Society – Let’s keep volunteering going!

Our last event is dedicated to the question of how volunteerism, community service and participation can continue and what opportunities can even arise as a result. How do we deal with the lack of Wi-Fi among children and young people in our care? What tools and tips are there for collaborative work? How can board meetings and general meetings be conducted online?

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PLAY 19- Creative Gaming Festival

Your spaceship is stranded on an unknown planet. You have to explore your surroundings to survive, but you quickly realize: danger lurks everywhere. Darkness. Ominous silence. And out of the silence, strange creatures burst forth and monsters!

Scenarios like these can be found in a number of games: Dungeons & Dragons, a classic pen-and-paper game, has delighted many game lovers since the 1980s, while role-playing games and first-person shooters add interactive graphics to the gaming experience. Virtual reality games go one step further.

VR glasses create a different reality in which it is possible to move and react. For the game scenario described at the beginning, the controls of the game were explained in a preparation room at the creative gaming festival “PLAY 19” in Hamburg. Afterwards you dive into the world in which you have to escape from your spaceship and put monsters to flight. For the person wearing the VR goggles, this creates a realistic game, intuitively dodging, taking a step back, ducking. All bystanders see only someone with a black box on his head, who staggers around in an absolutely unpredictable way and bumps into all kinds of objects and people. The game could also be controlled calmly and standing in one place, but the physical and emotional reactions are much more intense through the 3D experience than in computer games, for example.

Another game was about playing in a group and in a confined space: One person lies down in a coffin with a smartphone and headphones, and other players stand around him. The goal is to solve puzzles together with other players standing in front of the coffin and finally free oneself from the coffin. Creative Gaming is therefore by no means always the same, but enables very versatile experiences through a wide variety of methods.

More and more people are enjoying trying out such methods themselves. Tables and instructions on a wide range of topics were available in a makerspace: Graphic design, sound effects and small programming. A virtual figure could be programmed with the help of a low-threshold construction kit. In German language, one can thus learn the logic of programming languages and at the same time directly see the results of one’s own programming, which makes programming itself a kind of game.

Of course, the Speakers’ Corner is a must at such an event, as are the numerous training sessions, artist talks and workshops. On one of the four festival days, there was a special offer for schools, which was well attended. The highlight of the event was the Game Award, which is presented every year to innovative games, productions or prototypes. All in all, the PLAY is a versatile offer to get a taste, to inform and to try out, but also to deepen and to network. We are looking forward to the next PLAY…