OStatic

InformationWeek details the conception of House Resolution 6898. The bill's name is more cryptic than the shorthand on a prescription order, but could bolster both the US Health Care system, and perceptions of open source in both public and private sectors.

The Health-e Information Technology Act of 2008 offers incentives for health care providers to move to an open, shared platform for health records.

Many say that the web is becoming the desktop. How soon, and how completely, that will happen is anyone's guess, but it is undeniable more desktop applications are delivered through browsers. There are advantages: user interfaces don't change between operating systems, web applications aren't platform specific, and work can be done at any computer with a network connection.

There are sizable disadvantages. Who can access (or alter) information stored in a web application? Who actually owns it? Reading an application's Terms of Service is crucial on the user's end. Free Software Magazine explains why an open license is crucial for all involved.

eWeek has posted an insightful interview with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch. Though Adobe's approach to open source wasn't the entirety of the piece, Lynch made several statements illustrating that he really understands -- and appreciates -- what opening code can bring to an application.

Some of Adobe's open source efforts may not feel as though they are coming fast enough, or even feel open enough, presently. But Lynch's explanations of Adobe's position on open source, and how it may be changing, seem logical and encouraging.

The Linux Plumbers Conference may have ended last Friday, but the discussions -- and one discussion in particular -- will be analyzed, deconstructed, and argued for quite a bit longer.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's assertion is that Canonical doesn't contribute significantly to kernel development and the packages that make up the core of a Linux system. Canonical CTO Matt Zimmerman responded to this assertion. It seems at that point, much of the community, developers and users alike, took to examining their particular parts of the open source elephant.

Herein lies the problem.

The Digital Divide -- there isn't a nation where it doesn't exist, yet it seems so relative. In one place, a child going online via dial up using a PII seems at a disadvantage. Elsewhere, that child has a tool that could change his life. The opportunity to learn not only facts, but how everything fits together is platform independent. The PII is just as valuable as a new laptop costing thousands. Both are meaningless if children can't access all they offer. Any technology costs money.

Open source has much to offer here. Lower costs, good support for old hardware, and software that can be modified to individual needs. OLPC champions low-cost laptops for every child. Userful takes a different approach.

Red Hat, along with the City University of New York and Intel, announced yesterday that they are creating the New York City Open Source Solutions Lab. This lab, which will be headquartered at CUNY's Institute for Software Design and Development in Manhattan, is aimed at helping local and state government agencies in New York take advantage of open-source solutions. The lab will provide governments with the ability to develop and test a variety of open-source technologies running on Intel chips.

In an article headlined The Pitfalls of Open Source Litigation , published today at InternetNews.com, Richard Adhikari claims that enterprises using open source are being sued for not complying with the multitude of licenses the software comes with, He suggests that businesses should think twice before using open-source software, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit themselves. Fortunately for the open-source community, his claims don't hold much water.

The seventh August Penguin conference, for open-source programmers, managers, and users in Israel, took place in Tel Aviv earlier today. The August Penguin was sponsored by the Israeli open-source advocacy group, HaMakor ( the source ), and co-sponsored by a number of other organizations, ranging from the Israeli branch of the Internet Society, to small companies servicing the open-source sector, to Microsoft. About 300 open-source advocates gathered for half a day of technical and general lectures, as well as socializing, around the common theme of open source.

Successful open-source projects have strong communities. What can you do to ensure that the community around your project is as strong as possible? At least two talks at today's OSCon in Portland, Oregon, will address this issue. They will look at antipatterns, things that are known not to work when building a community. These talks come just a few months after the publication of Clay Shirky's new book, Here Comes Everybody, in which he describes how society is changing as a result of the fact that the Internet massively reduces the cost of communication, publication, and distribution.