Let's make NEO "Open for Business"

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 08/30/2005 - 05:05.

Earlier this month, REALNEO IT Analyst Derek Arnold attended the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and Drupal Conference in Portland, Oregon, and he brought back more than new code, knowledge and relationships - he brought back the State of Oregon's vision of being "an epicenter for Open Technology (Linux and Open Source-enabled hardware, software and services)". The State of NEO needs to embrace such a vision!

From Oregon's Economic and Community Development Department, a brochure explains "Oregon's soil is rich in Open Technology nutrients. It is hard to imagine anywhere else in the world that has our assets. We provide a greenhouse for nurturing the development of new businesses and services, and attracting companies from around the world to locate here at the epicenter of Open Technology" - signed, Governor Ted Kulongoski.

While it is unlikely Ohio's governor is aware there is such a thing as open source technology, we in NEO must know better and strive to match Oregon's claims. Oregon promotes "Open expertise and skilled workers", including "Depth in open source and Linux skills that extend to software, hardware and services". "Geographic and virtual access", including "Advanced telecommunications services through world-class fiber optic backbone networks". "Innovative industries". "Venture and business finance". "Favorable business tax climate".

Oregon also promotes their high Gen-X quality of life - "Shorter commutes", "Senic beauty", "Recreational diversity", and "Arts and culture".

NEO must compete on all these points - and may. Our recent Digital Cities recognition from Intel is proof of our potential offered through our "Advanced telecommunications services through world-class fiber optic backbone networks". Rebecca Ryan, of Next Generation Consulting, and Tom Schorgl, of Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, can well speak for our high Gen-X quality of life. We have innovative businesses and we have the education underpinnings to develop "Open expertise and skilled workers". We have a great foundation in place for making NEO as "Open for business" as Oregon.

Where we are weak is our unfavorable business tax climate and a lack of leadership vision - at all levels - that recognizes that open source and open collaboration is the future of information technology and the new economy. We don't just lack a state brochure promoting our "ideal climate for nurturing ideas and businesses", but we lack the "social mindset... conducive to Open Source development", as Linux creator Linus Torvalds describes Oregon. He goes on to say, about Oregon, "The value system fits - there's a better balance between competition and collaboration. In most places, money is the driver. Here, it's the idea that counts."

NEO wants fresh ideas and one place to look for open thought leadership is Oregon. REALNEO went to Oregon for open ideas, and the knowledge we gained is invaluable. What we didn't see there was anyone else from Ohio looking for the same.

Open Source

Hey Norm,

Oregon State University is very proactive and provides hosting for many Open Source Projects such as Gentoo Linux, and the project that runs realneo's site, drupal.org.

Question for you: Is Case a user of OneCleveland's fiber network? If so, a first step would be for them to use that network to mirror open source projects. As you are aware, proactive participation is the key to gaining recognition.

Oregon State's Open Source Lab

http://www.osuosl.org

Also, some local links;

Cleveland Linux User Group - http://www.clevelandlug.net

Northern Ohio Open Source Society - http://www.nooss.org

Both of these appear to have monthly meetings with ones scheduled for Septemeber 10th and 15th, respectively. See their homepages for details.

Second, OhioLinuxfest is happening in October, and it appears that several folks from CLUG are attending. In particular, Greg Boehnlein of N2net (Cleveland area ISP) will be presenting on Asterisk, and Aaron Seigo of KDE fame will be there and is looking for help in setting up a KDE booth:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005/08/akademy-callinng-all-ohioans-kat.html

OhioLinuxFest info can be found here:

http://www.ohiolinux.org/

re: OSL

When at OSCON and DrupalCon, I met Scott Kveton, Associate Director of the OSL. He also helped provided tech support (in tandem with Nate Angell,
Assistant Director for Web Communications of Portland State University--wow, state universities working together--a foreign concept here.) for the DrupalCon events at Portland State University.  They have built an awesome repository for open source software.  Couple that with the incubation facilities, receptive local and state governments and a populace willing to explore and learn new things and new ways, they are doing awesome things.


I was very proud of this...but very disappointed. I have been actively using Open Source software for years (especially since 1999 when I first started messing with Linux). It is pretty sad that the seventh largest state of the Union doesn't have a large, well-connected mirror to speak of.  It would be great if OneCleveland could host an Open Source mirror. 
 

Derek Arnold / d.arnold at realinks dot us

re:re:OSL

Derek,

Seems like we started playing with open source around the same time. My 1999 Christmas present to myself was RedHat 5.2.

Also, in thinking about one cleveland, have you seen the State of Oregon's white paper on using Asterisk?

http://www.news4neighbors.net.nyud.net:8090/article.pl?sid=05/08/16/1923...

I love seeing articles like t

I love seeing articles like that.  Open source + creative ideas + public sector = innovation and cost savings.  Who can't get behind that? 

My first distro was Caldera OpenLinux 1.3. My how Linux has grown.  I was always biased toward UNIX though.  I went from being a Mac guy in 92 to a NeXT user from 94 to 97 (I went to the only college to go whole hog with NeXT: Allegheny College) to a Windoze user that secretly pined for an affordable UNIX desktop.  Then... I found Linux (and the BSDs).  JOY!  I still get kind of nostalgic when watching the colored pinwheel on the OS X machines though :-).
 

I like the news4neighbors.net site.  I met one of the maintainers at OSCON too.  Even though it uses Slashcode (I wish Drupal had come along sooner), it's a wonderful site.  That kind of organic journalism is something every city can use.  That's one of the things we try to do at REALNEO.   

Derek Arnold / d.arnold at realinks dot us

Nostalgia

I started on a mac, you know the one with no hard drives, and you had to swap out the floppies. I moved to windows in the 90s since I wanted compatibility with work.

I have tried a whole bunch of linux distributions and about 2 years ago settled on Gentoo. Although I must admin, Kubuntu is kind of catching my fancy lately. I installed it on my daughter's pc(we have no windows machines in the house), and I gotta admit that binary updates have their attraction for me recently. Particularly apt-get.

I originally ran a japanese site along the lines of news4neighbors but in Japanese. I was using squishdot, a take off of slash for zope. I eventually burned out doing the site after about three years. I have been on Zope/CMF/Plone since about 2000/2001 frame. I have tried out a bunch of different systems(slash, phpnuke, etc), but have never tried drupal.

I recently found REALNEO. Being from Cleveland originally, it was nice to see. I will hopefully be participating more from here on out. よã‚?ã?—ã??ï¼?

OSL gets more bandwidth

This just came across my rss reader.

http://www.medfordnews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=310717&cp=10996

OSL just got a major donation of bandwidth:

For a five-year period the Open Source Lab will receive 600 megabits of bandwidth - a volume of Internet connectivity that is more than five times higher than the total used by the rest of the university. The bandwidth is worth several million dollars, officials say.