There's an excellent article in the most recent Educause Review called "In Search of Certitude" by Brad Wheeler. It's about the needs, challenges, and support systems used to find quality information. It deals with the abundance of information and how the support systems and technologeis are adapting to provide those seeking information with an appropriate level of confidence in what they find.

The post is an interesting read from an information seeker perspective, which we can all easily identify with. It's even more interesting if you're involved at all in architecting systems (people, technology, organization) to support the complexity of connecting information seekers with the appropriate information. My experience at rSmart, and in the Sakai, OSP, and Kuali communities all have elements of this.

I read an interesting whitepaper this morning from the Collaborative Software Initiative. It describes CSI's cooperative software(sm) model which leverages open source and cooperative development to help businesses save money and reduce development time. They focus on applications they define as contextual. These are applications that are critical to a particular vertical but don't represent a competitive advantage. For these applications CSI is helping businesses work together and build a sustainable community to ensure the longevity of the contextual applications.

A few years ago when Stuart Cohen, CSI's CEO, was the CEO at the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) I spent some time with him talking about the community source model that Sakai and Kuali leverage to do what CSI is doing in the Education vertical. It's very interesting to see the model abstracted and applied the way they are.

Very cool new initiative called FOSSBazaar launched by HP to foster best practices in open source governance. I just registered for FOSSBazaar after reading HP Launches Open Source Governance Initiative. I haven't fully digested the initiative yet but at first glance a couple of things impress me: 1) There's a lot of interesting and unique resources that appear to be well organized; 2) People I know and respect are involved. 

Brad Wheeler, CIO at Indiana University, is quoted in a brief 'public cio' sidebar about some of the unique aspects propelling the open source movement in Education. I draw out three key points:

1. Open source progress is measured by moving "up the software stack" from OS's to Applications.

2. The OSS movement in Education is leading the way partly because the culture of Education is attuned to the Philosophy of open source.

"Ford and Chrysler can't really sit down together and design a resource management system, but Cornell and Indiana universities can pool resources. It fits with the values of the academy - a collaborative culture."

3. The current movement is part of a larger, cyclical progression enabled partly by new communication and information technologies that make global collaboration on software more efficient. It's interesting when I talk with rSmart's Chairman, John Robinson about this because he's been a part of each of the three phases Brad mentions.

"Years ago, universities used to build their own applications; in the 1990s they started buying it all, Wheeler noted. Now they're moving to a model in which they can borrow it. "It's our default method of development now, and I think it makes sense for other public-sector organizations," he said. "You just need a mechanism for making it happen."

I just stumbled on a post called "Educational Patents, Open Access Journals, and Clashing Values", which is a great introductory resource on what's going on with Blackboard and their educational software patents against education. One additional resource not directly mentioned in the post
are the tutorials the companies posted to help illustrate their positions.

I've been pretty involved in the whole patent thing since it began so the introductory information isn't what caught my attention. It's what Peter writes about clashing values that I found most interesting. Peter proposes that the values of the educational community, and the values of the business community are at odds.

"I think we have examples of clashing values — the values of the higher
education community and the values of the business community. The
values that drive the latter are characteristically geared towards
profit-seeking for shareholders and others with a financial interest in
the business. The values of the former tend to be towards collegial
cooperation."

Given the examples that lead up to this conclusion, I can't hardly disagree with his point.

"After all, if you are at an academic institution, do you want to see
your license and maintenance dollars go to funding lawsuits against
competitors? In analyzing Blackboard’s actions, some have speculated
that this is what can happen when a technology company runs out of
intellectual capital — it has to resort to lawsuits to hold off
competitors, paralyze the open source community, remain profitable, and
stay afloat."

He does seem to be capturing the essence of one of the most visible examples capturing media attention today. However, there are also good examples of businesses who are indeed part of the education community. I'm one of the founders of a company called rSmart that was started on this basis, that works with open source communities like Sakai and Kuali, and indeed has been an integral part of forming and cultivating these initiatives. Even giants like IBM are transforming to adapt and support open source communities with a similar collegial cooperation characteristic of the education community.

So we should be careful not to over generalize. There are clashing values between some businesses and the education community. Blackboard might even be the poster child for values that clash. But there are businesses out there that operate with the same collegial cooperation, and share the values of the education community. Indeed some are part of the education community.

I finally got around to reading the coverage of what IU is doing with ChaCha and found it pretty interesting. I experimented a little with the guided search and found that they've implemented it very simply. I'm a pretty good searcher... I rely on my Firefox search bar more times in a day than I can count and have it loaded up with plenty of specific search engines. So I can't see ChaCha being my search engine of choice for general searches, but I'm really curious about it's use in specific communities like what it sounds like IU is doing. I can think of other speecific contexts where people-guided search would be really interesting. The open source communities I'm a part of would benefit tremendously from something like this where the Guides are community mavens who know the information base and people in the community really well. I'm also very curious about how we might employ something like this at rSmart to extend and streamline a service we already provide our clients as we support open source software from these communities.

I gave a talk at Campus Technology in D.C. this past week after being in New Orleans for Kuali meetings and NACUBO where we announced that University of Southern California has joined the Kuali Foundation as an investor in the Kuali Financial System project. One of the key points of my talk was that the open source communities like Sakai and Kuali are very different than other communities I'm familiar with. Within the communities we refer to what we're doing as Community Source to emphasize the differences. In my talk I used the Cathedral and Bazaar metaphor to talk about Community Source as a blend that benefits from the energy, transparency, and pace of the bazaar and still benefits from the coordination, planning, and predictability of the cathedral.
Investments and institutional commitments like the one USC just made provide the means for Community Source projects like Kuali to achieve the blend. After a few of us read The Ignorance of Crowds recently, Brad Wheeler joked that "Community Source is that Pub between the Cathedral and the Bazaar where we get our work done."

I read an interesting article in Campus Technology this morning called "Campus IT Collaboration Evolves" by Terry Calhoon. It's mostly about IT collaboration in higher education. Terry submits that folks in higher ed are more collaborative than others. This is something I think about quite a bit since nearly everything I do professionally is centered on important collaborative efforts like Sakai and Kuali.