OPEN-SOURCE
COLLECTIVE AT ACADIA
Gary Hepburn (School of Education) is chairing an open-source “collective” that is charged with disseminating information on open-source projects, applications, and technology to the Acadia community. One thrust of the collective is to champion open-source initiatives and provide information to instructors and researchers. If you want to know about OpenOffice.org, GIMP/Inkscape, R, Filezilla, or Linux, this is the place to get answers! [The establishment of a grass-roots movement and a trickle of soap-box promotion may be an ulterior motive, but overturning the status quo is not the initiative. J]
Acadia’s move to the Moodle Learning Management System as the much-needed ACME replacement is one example of the power of open-source. In fact, many of the ‘heavy lifting’ tasks that power the Acadia network are accomplished with open-source tools. Our bet is that there is an open-source application (or several) that will replace your current commercial product with at least equal ability as well as considerable cost savings. Take the challenge!
To participate, please see the Open-Source Collective at Acadia (OSCA) website opensource.acadiau.ca for instructions on how to sign-up for the opensource@acadiau.ca listserve (or see below), information on open-source applications that can be used instead of closed-source (commercial) counterparts, and a host of other open-source tidbits.
The listserve operates just like ace-fyi, but each person must subscribe. A user can request subscription to the list by sending an email to opensource-request@acadiau.ca with the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the body of the message. Text in the subject line is irrelevant. The sender will receive an automated message asking them to confirm their subscription request. Once confirmed, the list admin will approve the request and the user will be able to post and receive messages.
The Collective
Gary Hepburn
Trevor Avery
Jim Diamond
Donald Teed