Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative

* * Beatles-Beatles tells us that Google is entering into a $350,000 joint open source technology venture with both Oregon State and Portland State Universities. From the article: "With the grant, the universities will collaborate to encourage open source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to open source projects worldwide. The universities will also help provide a bridge between Oregon's universities and Oregon's growing open technology industry." Google also has their version of the announcement on blogspot.

Comments

Google in State Universities?

[pen]

Isn't it policy to keep religion out of state schools? ;-)

Re:A prediction

[Aadain2001]

You must be new here

Open Source = Good
Closed Source = The Devil

Re:A prediction

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

However I can't help but think that if Microsoft worked with a state and university to encourage closed source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to closed source projects worldwide that everyone would say how dare a company try to buy a university into spreading it's FUD.

1. I don't see what Microsoft has to do with it. If Google were pushing closed source curricula on a university, I think the reaction would be negative.
2. I don't see what Fear Uncertainty and Doubt anyone could be spreading by doing anything like this.
3. How could a company pushing open source be looking to buy a university? The university can just go to another provider if they don't like Google's attitude -- that's why it's different with open source software. With closed source it would be a lock-in.
4. Open source fits in more with academia. Mainly, academic/scientific discoveries are usually funded by the university and open to the world. The idea isn't to make profit (closed source), but to share information (open source).

It's not as though open source = Good! closed source = Bad! all the time, it's just that in this situation, it seems clear open source is a better choice and doesn't apply to what you said.

OSH?

[werewolf1031]

...to encourage open source software and hardware development...

Ok, I can see open source software development being done at minimal cost, but hardware? Not trolling here, I'm genuinely curious, can someone explain to me how open source hardware development can be economical? I mean let's face a little reality here, if someone is going to undertake the (rather expensive) industrial task of hardware development, at the very least the need to recoup their investment, and ideally they'll make a profit -- at least that's the goal, or else they wouldn't bother in the first place.

Sooo... Anyone care to chime in here and explain this to me? Thanks in advance.

Re:OSH?

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

Open Source Hardware

Seems they share schematics for the design. I'd imagine you could sell the hardware for profit (binaries) so long as you made the schematics (source code) available to those who bought it. Seems like a reasonable idea.

Re:Why was Oregon U Chosen?

[genericacct]

For one thing, we are home to the OSDL and Linus Torvalds. PSU and OSU have pretty good Computer Science programs. Intel and Tektronix have huge campuses here. There's no shortage of computing professionals in Oregon.

I'm just surprised Portland State and Oregon State don't have anything about it on their front pages.

Core curriculum

[kevin_conaway]

As long as they don't forget core CS curriculum like data structures, algorithms and operating systems, I see this as a good thing. Also note that this should be part of a well-rounded education.

Learning ONLY about OSS software is just as bad as learning ONLY about proprietary and/or closed source software. Students need to be educated in all aspects of the field so that they can make good decisions when the time comes and not try to apply one solution to every problem.

Re:A prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

However I can't help but think that if Microsoft worked with a state and university to encourage closed source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to closed source projects worldwide that everyone would say how dare a company try to buy a university into spreading it's FUD.

-------

Microsoft gives free version of Visual Studio .NET 2003, XP, 2k, Virtual Server, SQL, and a host of other programs for free to people who are in the engineering department of my school. The interesting thing is, even if you are in a completly unrelated curriculum (such as Electrical Engineering or Assembly Programming), you still get the whole lot of it for free.

Draw whatever conclusions you like, I for one feel good about owning a valid Microsoft CD key for the first time since I played Zork. Then again, I liked Crystal Pepsi and the band Styx, so YMMV.

Software freedom should be valued for itself.

[jbn-o]

You completely ignore the ethical ramifications of non-free software, and you don't seem to have any criticism of corporate welfare either. It's also telling that pursuing free software gets called "zealotry" while a proprietor pursuing its ends gets no such namecalling.

Re:A prediction

[sivadnitsuj]

I almost never post comments here (and thus will probably never be seen), but I had to say something..

While I might agree with some of the philosophical ideologies common on slashdot, I do get tired of the seeming group think sometimes.

regardless, your comment seems ill thought out..

If Microsoft contributed money, time, resources and influence to promote closed source software through American Universities, all it would add up to is a sponsored marketing effort, no different than coca-cola or pepsi sponsoring a high school to get their vending machines exclusively represented on campus.

Google dumping money into open source projects (while it obviously provides them with some good PR) directly benefits everyone. *Everyone*.. or at least, everyone that's not supported by closed-source companies.

cheers..

Is that even enough for the furniture?

[tivoKlr]

I mean, come on, what will 350k buy nowadays? Is that enough to equip a full sized office with aeron chairs and furniture? Will there be enough left to purchase hardware? I guess going Open Source will save the M$ tax, so that might cover some of the shortfall, but come on...

Re:not sure...

[Aadain2001]

Supporting Open Source is not throwing away your money or doing something purely for philosophical reasons. Look at it this way: Google uses Linux/OSS heavily, so promoting future developers to improve current OSS projects and create new ones could potentially lead to yet more OSS that Google can use in their business. Google is probably banking on the idea that this investment will be much lower than whatever future OSS that is developed from this program ends up saving.

So you can support OSS with an eye on the bottome line. Maybe not the bottom line this quarter or next quarter, but sometime in the future. Look at IBM. They won't make a dime directly off of Linux, but they can use Linux to help them sell their servers. So it is in their interest to keep Linux improving and moving forward in performance. With IBM it's easy to see why they would want to support Linux. With Google it's a bit harder because they benifit from Linux in their daily operations of their company and services, which isn't directly seen by regular users.