We’re restarting the SustainOSS Academia WG this month! Our first meeting will take place on September 28th at 12:00pm ET, for an hour.
The format is going to be a short introduction and context setting, followed by a 20 minute presentation, 15 minutes for questions, and then any other business. If you have anything you would like to add to the agenda, add it in a comment in the agenda, or add a comment below.
This month, we’re going to be announcing and focusing on an Ecosystem Map - a incomplete but editable list of universities, organizations, terms, and resources related to academia and open source. Our goal is to make this a place where we can track what is what and how organizations fit in. We’re hoping to use this as a springboard for other work down the line.
Please share widely! Anyone is welcome to attend.
Add to Google Calendar: If you would like a non-Google invite, or if you would like to be added to the calendar event itself, send me a note at richard@sustainoss.org.
I’ve got a feeling that open source that born and supported in academia. Then academia allowed people more free time to pursue activities. Now with management practices, pursue of funding, efficiency, and responsibility from sponsors, there is less time, more distractions, so maintainers can no longer find the place in institutions.
@jlcanovas Thanks! Looking forward to seeing you there.
@abitrolly That’s not true, from my experience - academic institutions do a ton to help out open source projects. It’d be good to collect those stories and share them, though.
More links are in the calendar invite. Let me know if you would like to be added to the main event on the SustainOSS Google Calendar.
Topic
I have written up a document that outlines various themes that answer the question of “What do we talk about when we talk about open source software in academia?” These can be thought of as areas where open source and academia meet. It’s not a complete document. During this call, I want to:
Introduce the document to you, and explain the context behind it
Co-write content together on systemic risks that are involved with each section. Note the highlighted bit as an example of what this would look like.
Last time, we introduced the SustainOSS Academic map. Thank you to those of you who have contributed - if others would like to, you can either through the GitHub or by emailing me content directly.
All are welcome, tomorrow. Invite colleagues if you can!
Our next meeting is on Thursday, November 30th, at the usual time of 12:00pm ET.
This time, we’ll work on how to answer the following questions posed by an academic researcher:
If I only have ten minutes to spare, how can I make my project more sustainable?
If I have an hour, what can I do?
If I have ten hours, what then?
If I have a significant timeline and community buy-in, what then?
This is only one small aspect of academic open source work, but it’s a recurring question that I’ve heard from participants from the last two meetings. I’ve been asking members what they would like to talk about regarding the sustainability of academic open source – if you have more ideas, let me know!
Meeting details:
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 889 0720 5947
Passcode: 792060
One tap mobile
+19294362866,88907205947#,*792060# US (New York)
+16469313860,88907205947#,*792060# US
Dial by your location
• +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)
• +1 646 931 3860 US
• +1 305 224 1968 US
• +1 309 205 3325 US
• +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
• +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
• +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
• +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
• +1 360 209 5623 US
• +1 386 347 5053 US
• +1 507 473 4847 US
• +1 564 217 2000 US
• +1 669 444 9171 US
• +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
• +1 689 278 1000 US
• +1 719 359 4580 US
• +1 253 205 0468 US
The more scientific method is to make an anonymous poll and publish the dataset.
It will be interesting to prove if there is bias in self reporting. My hypothesis is that people are unwilling to report financial problems to be able to support their projects. In the end it is Open Source - I use and publish it, because I don’t like to be forced to pay.
A poll would be out of scope at this time for the academic working group, I think. I’m interested in hearing what the people who show up would like to work on, and asking some of them directly seemed the easiest way for me to do it. There haven’t been a large amount of open source maintainers with specific projects who have shown up at the recent meetings – instead, it’s largely been people in academic open source support roles.
Thanks for notes and past news! Just realized some academic folks might be interested in this attempt to define “Software Commons” as the FSL/BUSL license model.
I was mentally celebrating that some of us got them to use neither the word “open” nor the word “source” in their marketing definition, but totally spaced on their definition of “Commons” as “will eventually be a potential commons, but is commercially controlled for now”.
It is interesting! And I have been following it. I wonder - does this appeal to academics working on open source, or to academic practitioners of open source? If the latter, I think there might be some more work to be done finessing how this applies to them.
Or, put another way: What open source tools used in academia need different licenses and considerations that the normal OSI-approved licenses aren’t suitable for? What would those licenses be like?
I’d be happy to talk about this in the next call, but we’d need someone who knows the area inside and out to come and at least present on this. What do you think, Shane?
If you would like a non-Google invite, or if you would like to be added to the calendar event itself, send me a note at richard@sustainoss.org.