Oregon State’s computer department isn’t a joking matter anymore. In October, the school’s Open Source Lab, which Kveton runs as associate director, got a $350,000 grant from Google Inc.-the search-software company’s first academic donation to support open source. The goals: to attract software companies to Portland, establish a development center for writing apps for use by state governments, and craft an open-source college curriculum. The grant also supports the lab’s hosting of computer systems for the Mozilla Foundation (developer of the Firefox browser) and other software projects. The Google windfall, plus a $75,000 grant from Mozilla this fall, have raised the 19-person lab’s profile in a city poised to play a strong third to San Francisco and Seattle as a West Coast tech hub.
Link: Information Week
