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FOSS for students

Lee Schlesinger

August 21, 2008 7:00:00 PM

Whether you're a high school student or just starting out with your college coursework, the free software community has provided a wide range of solutions to make life easier. Browsing the package repository of my Linux distribution led me to applications for everything from gene sequencing to particle physics, but there are a few real gems I think any student could benefit from, including math and chemistry tools such as TiLP, wxMaxima, Kalzium, Gnome Chemistry Utils, and OpenOffice.org Math.

Wikindx facilitates academic writing in a browser

Lee Schlesinger

May 27, 2008 4:00:00 PM

Anyone interested in writing academic and research papers knows that the process includes researching existing works, planning a research study, collecting and analyzing the results, and writing up the findings. In such papers, reference and citation information is essential. GPL-licensed Wikindx lets you store bibliographic references, quotations, and notes in a database, from which you can easily insert appropriate citations into a paper using its built-in Web-based word processor.

A chat with Linux Astronomy's Eugene Clement (video)

Nathan Willis

March 18, 2008 8:00:00 PM

At SCALE 6x in February, one of the first things on the expo floor to grab my attention was the scaffolding of a large telescope jutting up towards the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The device belonged to the Linux Astronomy project, which built the entire system from scratch.

Online library reaches million book milestone

Lee Schlesinger

December 20, 2007 9:00:00 PM

An international venture called the Universal Library Project has made more than one million books freely available in digitized format. The joint project of researchers from China, India, Egypt, and the US has the eventual aim of digitizing all published works of man, freeing the availability of information from geographic and socioeconomic boundaries, providing a basis for technological advancement, and preserving published works against time and tide.

Open Access bill vetoed

Lee Schlesinger

November 16, 2007 3:00:00 PM

Supporters of the open access movement (OA), the open-source-inspired community that promotes free access to academic research, are disappointed but not discouraged by the defeat of a bill that would have required research published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States to be available to the public. Instead, they see the bill as an important step in raising awareness about OA among American legislators and the general public. Nor do they rule out the eventual passage of the OA provisions.

PRISM Coalition lobbies against open access

Lee Schlesinger

September 24, 2007 9:00:00 PM

Forces are mashaling to oppose the open access movement, the open source-inspired movement to make academic research publicly available online. The American Association of Publishers (AAP) recently announced the creation of the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM), an apparent lobby group organized to resist efforts to compel academic publishers to make publicly funded research generally available. PRISM's methods appear eerily similar to those used to oppose legislation to make public documents available in an open format, as well as the actions against free downloads by such organizations as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

NCSA's CyberCollaboratory community thrives on open source

Lee Schlesinger

August 23, 2007 9:00:00 PM

In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) gave us Mosaic, the first Web browser with a graphical user interface. Today, the NCSA is still innovating, creating a project that monitors how global climate change is affecting plants and wildlife, one that tracks oil spills, and another that predicts the possible effects of seismographic activity on bridges and other structures. To facilitate communication and collaboration between stations, NCSA is making use of the Web infrastructure it helped to launch almost 15 years ago, in a research program called the CyberCollaboratory. Not surprisingly, open source software is an integral part of the Web-based intiative.

Academia's Open Access movement mirrors FOSS community

Lee Schlesinger

August 02, 2007 9:00:00 PM

Free and open source software (FOSS) has roots in the ideals of academic freedom and the unimpeded exchange of information. In the last five years, the concepts have come full circle, with FOSS serving as a model for Open Access (OA), a movement within academia to promote unrestricted access to scholarly material for both researchers and the general public.