Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Google Businesses The Internet Education

Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative 189

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the and-knowing-is-half-the-battle dept.
* * 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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative More

Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative

Comments Filter:

  • Google in State Universities? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:36PM (#13877105)
    Isn't it policy to keep religion out of state schools? ;-)
  • "Analyst firm IDC estimates that the Linux® hardware and software markets will grow to $38 billion by 2008, with annual growth rates topping 25%."

    Google will need some of that $38 Billion goodness to keep its stock from stagnating.

  • A prediction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:40PM (#13877126) Journal
    I can predict that the majority of posts will be that this is a good thing. 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.

    While it's a good thing that this university is helping to develop open source software, this sort of zealotry on slashdot makes it difficult to take any points it offers on closed or open source software. Open source zealots ultimately hurt open source software more then closed source software. So perhaps think about the points you make before you start preaching to the choir.

    • Re:A prediction (Score:5, Funny)

      by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:43PM (#13877140) Journal
      You must be new here

      Open Source = Good
      Closed Source = The Devil
      • You know if you believed that open source was the devil and closed source was good you could hang out at gotdotnet. It's a big internet, there is room for everybody. At least here they don't delete your posts.

      • What was that, Addain? I thought that code in and of itself was neither inherently good nor inherently evil. Lollercost, here I was thinking it was just human-readable instructions to a interpreter/compiler. I suppose closed source might be evil, insofar that "they" (the man, or men? Penguins, maybe.... shift+1) would force only evil source to close itself...

        But then again, you could just be a zealot nerd (not affiliated with myself, of course) who believes that anyone trying to make money is somehow

    • Re:A prediction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Amazing Fish Boy ( 863897 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:51PM (#13877179) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • Re:A prediction (Score:2, Interesting)

        by size1one ( 630807 )
        "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."

        In fact thats just what Oregon State University did [osuosl.org] when googles prices were too high. They replaced thier Google box with Nutch Search Engine [nutch.org] and saved around $100,000 a year. Fortunatly Google apparently does not have any (or enough) bad blood about this to prevent them from taking the initiative to promote open source.

    • I don't see anything wrong with zealotry, especially when it's for a good cause like open source software. Please bring a point and don't waste bytes. Roumen. P.S. BTW, your sig is stupid.
      • I don't see anything wrong with zealotry, especially when it's for a good cause like open source software.

        Zealotry is an excess of zeal. Excess is bad. Even when it's for a "good cause."

        Zealotry denotes zeal in excess, referring to cases where activism and ambition in relation to an ideology have become excessive to the point of being harmful to others, oneself, and one's own cause. (zealotry - Wikipedia, emphasis mine) [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:A prediction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A key difference is that it's unlikely Microsoft would give a University that kind of money with no strings attached and say "do unspecified good things with it". I've never seen them do so. This is what Google did, and I think it's pretty amazing.

    • Re:A prediction (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @09:09PM (#13877287)
      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.
      • But then again, they may simply be giving it away as a business strategy. They gave away Ms-DOS free as well. Students using your software -> students familiar with your software -> graduates with jobs who want to use your software...

    • Software freedom should be valued for itself. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @09:10PM (#13877293) Homepage
      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.
      • "You completely ignore the ethical ramifications of non-free software"

        Not to mention the practical ramifications. Non-free software brings lock-in and lack of flexibility, it's even against free market principles most of the times by helping monopolies and hurting free enterprise (especially small companies).

    • Re:A prediction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sivadnitsuj ( 469527 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @09:14PM (#13877312)
      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..
    • So your saying that people LIKE it when someone promotes their own agenda, and DISLIKE it when someone promotes an agenda diametrically opposed to their own? Scandalous!
    • Google news... Google news... Google news nuisance...

      I look forward to the day that Slashdot admins sell their Google stocks so there can come other news stories than these Google stock price nursings.
    • I would also like to point out that all people who use open source are zealots and should be labled as zealots at every opportunity. Nobody who works for microsoft is a zealot though. Even if they throw chairs around and curse. People who shill for MS also are not zealots along with people MS pays to astro turf for them. They are not zealots either.

      The only people who are zealots are people who speak about open source.

      "However I can't help but think that if Microsoft worked with a state and university to en
      • I would also like to point out that all people who use open source are zealots

        Not true. Despite what you see on slashdot, there are people out there that use open source because it gets the job done best (or they wouldn't use it).

        Because closed source is bad open source is good.

        That is zealotry.
        • "That is zealotry."

          No that's just a belief. I believe in democracy too does that make me a zealot? I belive that sharing is good does that make me a zealot.

          • I belive that sharing is good does that make me a zealot.

            No, that makes you a communist. Thanks for playing. ;)
             
            • And since all Americans were brainwashed somewhere around the 1980s to believe everything communist (not just the political system labeled communism in Russia) is bad that automatically makes you bad too.

    • Re:A prediction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LionKimbro ( 200000 )

      ROCK ON, PORTLAND!

      Face it: We're fighting a battle, and we see signs of winning! What's not to be excited about?

      Don't be shocked that we're happy and cheering! :) This isn't the place people go to for well reasoned arguments. They exist; They're just not here. This is where we cheer, talk, and give off-the-cuff strategy, ideas, encouragement.

      I don't know of any good effort that succeeds without room for clapping & celebration over small victories.

    • Re:A prediction (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @10:44PM (#13877718)
      Academia is by its very nature open source. Try publishing a closed source paper :P

    • well, they do (Score:2, Informative)

      by zogger ( 617870 )
      MS has long offered subsidised software to capture hearts and minds to schools. For years and years. Apple has, too. Go to local computer store, note MS retail prices, then check colleges discounts prices. They do the same with libraries, etc as well. And when they lost the anti trust case,(while still maintaining the monopoly OS install in most mainstream vendors retailed computers for some reason...) the so called "fine" was to subsidise software at free or cheap to schools mostly. I mean, really....googl

    • 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.

      Open source is a feature of software that benefits some users and purchasers of software. Closed source is the lack of that feature. With that in mind, I think I would object to a

    • Encourage closed source software at universities. Er whats the point, heres the software, use it, you can't see whats in it because it is closed source and proprietary (if you try you might get sued, DMCA), trade secrets you know.

      Excuse me but how would the microsofties make any money if they gave away all the software to universities with unlimited licences for the students (their work gets graded and passed around and openly reviewed), after all the is the inherent specific difference between Windows an

  • Me want info! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mister_llah ( 891540 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:42PM (#13877137) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like a new and improved Sourceforge... interesting.

    I'd like to know what would qualify you to computing resources...

    I'd also like to know if this is intended as philantropy or investment...
    • There is no difference in this case. The best thing that can happen for the tech world is decrease the dependancy on MS. Of course, I expect that chair companies all over the world will cry foul over that.
      • Well, sure, dependency on MS decreasing may increase diversity... but if all the diversity is just in a single group (i.e. if Google is talent-farming, for instance) ... we might wind up with another monster in the place of the former one.

        I'm rather cynical about any matter involving any form of power... because I know how human beings are.

        But, hey, yeah, I agree... the interim period of competition will be very good at the very least :D

  • Why was Oregon U Chosen? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by * * Beatles-Beatles ( 909211 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:48PM (#13877170) Homepage Journal
    Did Oregon they feel invisibly sandwiched between Washington and Silicon Valley North California - as not also being on the forefront of the non stop tech - revolutions coming from the northwest USA?

    • Re:Why was Oregon U Chosen? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by genericacct ( 692294 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:55PM (#13877201)
      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 [pdx.edu] and Oregon State [oregonstate.edu] don't have anything about it on their front pages.

    • Not so invisibly.

      On the other hand, we've got Intel. And Linus. There's actually lots of tech here, it's just cheaper to live.
    • Wow, yeah.

      The Silicon Forest of Portland, Oregon is going strong.

      Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Freightliner, and a few other companies call the Portland area home, as well as others mentioned.

      I've never had too much issue finding work when I needed it in Portland either.

      Portland is a great home for a geek.
    • Silicon Valley is ridiculously expensive..

      Commercial real estate is not too bad here, with over-capacity after the internet bubble burst. But, it's not exactly cheap compared to the rest of the country.

      Housing prices are insane (2 bedroom condo for $500K, small houses for $1M).

      Salaries are higher than other areas (though, not high enough to pay for housing).

      Silicon Valley is the land of the high roller startup, getting 10s of millions from VC firms. Obviously, this is not the standard operating procedure
    • Did Oregon they feel invisibly sandwiched between Washington and Silicon Valley North California - as not also being on the forefront of the non stop tech - revolutions coming from the northwest USA?

      Yeah, I bet they totally feel that way. The poor Oregonians have to spend all day looking at cute semi-naked gothic girls, listening to indie pop music, and buying Diesel Sweeties T shirts. I'm sure they really miss your non-stop tech revolution.

      * I haven't actually been to the US. But when I will, Portland Ore

  • They're doing too much stuff (Score:4, Funny)

    by nEoN nOoDlE ( 27594 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:51PM (#13877180)
    in the last 6 articles today, every other article is about google. Google is doing too much stuff, they need to spread their projects around a bit so I could get news about others companies and technological innovations as well.

  • OSH? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by werewolf1031 ( 869837 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:51PM (#13877183)
    ...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.

  • Core curriculum (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:55PM (#13877203) Homepage
    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:Core curriculum (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eivind ( 15695 )
      Bull.

      CS-students learn about computer-science primarily, and only a distant second about licensing. In-depth studies over licensing is law, not CS. Sure, CS students should know the very basics, enough to avoid breaking the law themselves, or atleast enough to know when to consult a lawyer, but licenses are not central to a CS-curriculum.

      You can only usefully learn from a program you can study. You can only reasonably study a program where you are allowed picking the program apart and look at the innard

    • Re:Core curriculum (Score:3, Interesting)

      by slapout ( 93640 )
      I could see the Freshman starting with learning the data structures, etc. Then having the Seniors work on OSS for their work as opposed to a project that the prof makes up.
       
    • "Learning ONLY about OSS software is just as bad as learning ONLY about proprietary and/or closed source software."

      Where do you get that idea that they are going to learn "ONLY about OSS software"?

      Also, a piece of code is a piece of code no matter what license you slap to it. I doubt there's such thing as OSS skill set and closed source software skill set. Of course there's different experience depending on the environment you work in, but I doubt they can teach that in school anyway.

  • An attack on Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:56PM (#13877208)
    Anykind of investment in open source is an implicit attack against Microsoft. Google knows this, and they know that with little money, they can create lots of open source software as demostrated by the Google Summer of Code program.

    Now I ask you this, creatively think of ways of what Microsoft can do with little investment that can be interpreted as an attack on Google.
    • I really don't see it like that. Google is really just trying to build a positive reputation (which they seem to excel at with the Slashdot crowd) and get improve upon open source code so that they (Google) and their users can have good software. If supporting open source development were expensive, then you can bet that Google would not be embracing it to the level it does.

      There's no reason to say that this is a shot across the bow of Microsoft. Google is just encouraging an ideal of openess that happens

  • Oregon Trail? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hope google doesn't get dysentery
    • don't worry, they have lots of oxen. I'd be interested in seeing a google-simple UI to OSU's "maintain" DNS and DHCP program (although maintain is already a simplification of isc's dhcp and djbdns, something like that would be a real boon to admins who don't want to deal with dhcp and dns via CLI all the time).

  • Welcome (Score:4, Funny)

    by The-Perl-CD-Bookshel ( 631252 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:58PM (#13877218) Homepage Journal
    Welcome to the new Googledot. Enjoy your stay!

  • not sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CDPatten ( 907182 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @09:00PM (#13877231) Homepage
    how this helps Google's investors. They won't own the rights to the software, or anything created with these schools.

    While I think its a "cool" "fun" "nice" thing Google is doing, it isn't creating revenue or raising the bottom line (other then the media having pre-mature orgasms over it).

    Google is turning into an amazing manipulator of the media, but they still don't have any tangible revenue streams other then their click ads revenue. They are following the path of all the dot bombs to date.

    Even look at GMail, wich many of us love, it has a puny share of the email market (hotmail and yahoo), and creates no real revenue.

    I hate to say it, but Bill Gates is right. Google is just in a long honey moon phase prolonged by being a media darling. They are just throwing money around like there is no tomorrow.

    It concerns me as an investor. PayPal/eBay won't go down without a huge fight. Google's attempt to cut into Amazon's market with Froogle flopped, and quite frankly, I don't see them unseating eBay anytime soon.

    I say give them two more years and their stock will be below yahoo and dropping fast.
    • It concerns me as an investor. PayPal/eBay won't go down without a huge fight. Google's attempt to cut into Amazon's market with Froogle flopped, and quite frankly, I don't see them unseating eBay anytime soon.

      Google's attempt to what? Does Amazon have search engine that finds the lowest prices? Google isn't actually selling anything with Froogle. They seem like completely different services to me.
    • It builds goodwill. And goodwill shows up on balance sheets with an estimated value.

    • Re:not sure... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by darkmeridian ( 119044 )
      I think we ain't seen nothing yet from Google. The projects are synergistic. Once it all comes together, then watch out.

      Froogle wasn't meant to compete with Amazon because Google never stocked products. But pretend Google gets a good micropayment system going. GMoney lets you buy from vendors that show up on Froogle. Or GMail/GTalk gives you an ad from a GMoney accepting vendor. So Google makes money from the ads and from the GMoney transaction fees.

      GVideo? Yep. Micropayments.

      GData? Don't use Microsoft. Jus

    • Re:not sure... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @10:11PM (#13877553) Journal
      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.
    • I must say, I'm amazed at the overwhelming shortsightedness of this comment. Or maybe it's typical some people not to understand that not every return is immediate. So....

      1) Google employees loads of systems and software engineers. Giving money to a university based center like OSU, PSU, and the Open Source Lab seems pretty smart. Does it generate an immediate ROA? no...But lot's of companies looking to get into Open Source are complaining about access to talent. Contributing to cirriculum and research
    • If Google gets students hooked on open source they deny talent to MS. MS has publicly stated that they intend to kill google (and the CEO of google was named explicitly). I think this makes perfect long term sense for shareholders. MS is going to Kill google unless google does something to stop them.

  • Google must be pretty forgiving... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After the big middle finger they got from the OSU Open Source Lab last year: http://osuosl.org/news_folder/nutch [osuosl.org] Of course, in their defense, all the hard work their sub-department put into the conversion saved the university over $100,000 a year. Good work, guys!
  • When I opened up Slashdot today, I saw a googol - 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999997 articles today. That's a lot of news items about Google.
  • Wouldn't also mind if Google invested in Optic Fiber projects to the home.

    I understand the 'broadband over powerlines' might get stalled because of protests by ham radio people.
  • Step 1: Donate a huge sum of money to the people most likely to undo the M$ monoply so that they can work on the biggest competitor making it better, faster, easier, CHEAPER, more secure...and in the process, swicth a whole campus (or two)over to Linux. Step 2: ummm Step 3: Profit

  • Google mentioned more than Yahoo or Linux in Oct (Score:4, Informative)

    by elfguygmail.com ( 910009 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @09:19PM (#13877334) Homepage
    Interestingly, Slashdot had a Google story 22 times since Oct 1. Yahoo had 3 times and Linux 21 times.

  • Really Committed to Open Source? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I look forward to perusing all googles search engine source code.

    Or do they only want other peole to make their source code open?

    If they were really committed they would practice what they preach.
    • This is exactly correct, and suggests at a flaw in the GPL. Web service companies can edit GPL'd code all they want and they do not have to redistribute those changes. This clearly favors web service models over traditional ones.
  • Why there are no Linux (or BSD, etc) versions of the majority of Google's software? Kind of unusual, eh?
    • Well, look at it this way:

      Why should Google release software for an OSS platform when that platform will do it cheaper, easier, and "better" than the code they produce? Think about this: If they stay true to implementing and releasing standards-compliant products, then OSS can provide reference designs. Many of their services already work well with OSS projects already.

      • Gtalk-GAIM/Kopete (with sound support coming for several projects once they release the codec info).
      • GMail (works completely in FireFox, w
  • As long they're going crazy with spending money and funding new projects, they could always send me money. I don't do much but I am kinda hungry and could go for some food. Google Pizza Money (beta), anyone?

  • A whole 350K (Score:2, Troll)

    by MushMouth ( 5650 )
    Mr Brin must have had his maid stop polishing the gold bidet for a week.

  • Is that even enough for the furniture? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tivoKlr ( 659818 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @10:00PM (#13877510) Journal
    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...
  • A chair flung towards Oregon was spotted at Microsoft's Redmond,WA headquarters.

  • News at 10 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @10:15PM (#13877573) Homepage
    In other news, Oregon authorities have advised Oregon residents to keep an eye out for chairs being lobbed across the Oregon-Washington state border and are advised to duck.
  • Pretty sure the Open Source Initiative [opensource.org] already exists, guys. Could somebody with a passing knowledge of this site's audience please edit submissions?
  • Seems contradictory [oregonstate.edu].

    If Google wants to promote OSS, why not support Cal State, which is using OS directly for learning management systems, at CSU San Francisco [sfsu.edu] and CSU Humboldt?

    It works, too:-) [logogle.com]

Slashdot Top Deals

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

Close