Google Hands Oregon State $300,000 for Open Source

by Sam Dean - Jul. 25, 2008Comments (5)

Google has given Oregon State University's Open Source Lab $300,000, following a previous gift the company gave of $450,000. The gifts have come under the wing of the Campaign for OSU--an effort to raise funds for the university's research and other projects. Can companies like Google and Microsoft benefit themselves from this kind of gift-giving?

While the many gifts and donations that Microsoft has given universities over the years have caused some critics to call the efforts "good PR and a huge tax write-off," there have been numerous examples of Microsoft-funded university-level research coming back to benefit Microsoft. I've been to the Microsoft Research Labs many times, and it has produced many products that have gone on to success for the company. The people who work there are almost all from hard-core academic backgrounds--not business folks. In many cases, the research these eggheads were doing at universities got funded by Microsoft before the researchers jumped over to the company.

Beyond that kind of example of synergy between universities and a big corporation, there is also promise for investment in the efforts of application developers, including--and maybe especially--open source developers. Apple has a $100 million fund to seed applications for the iPhone, and RIM, which competes with the iPhone, has a similar $150 million fund. Google's gifts to Oregon State University have been small ones, but there is room for lots of out-of-the-box thinking about how big tech companies can fund grassroots and academic efforts to innovate.


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5 Comments
 

Apple used to this quite successfully where they donated Apple computers to computer labs. This got a many students hooked on Apple, especially during the drought years before current success...

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Hi, This is jeff,Oregon State University's Open Source Lab has friends in high places: Internet search giant Google has given $300,000 to the lab.

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jeff99

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I feel that the people who work there are almost all from hard core academic backgrounds. But not business folks,for this reason they keep on jumping to other company's. ============================= Synjones Oregon Alcohol Addiction Treatment

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I feel that the people who work there are almost all from hard core academic backgrounds. But not business folks,for this reason they keep on jumping to other company's. ============================= Synjones

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It appears that Google has gone and done a great thing for open source by giving Oregon State $300000 towards open source projects,has just upped its Open Source support to the tune of more than a quarter of a million dollars, with a $300,000 donation to Oregon State University's Open Source Lab. The OSL which has served as host for projects like Apache, Firefox, Drupal, and more is well known within the Open Source community for providing an incubator for Open Source projects, sponsoring conferences, and working with projects like Google's annual Summer of Code. The donation, part of the University's Campaign for OSU, will provide opportunities for students as well as others within the Open Source community, to continue to produce projects under the Open Source banner.

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