Vladimir Putin and Common Sense on IT

Vladimir Putin may be known for showing off his pectorals riding horses bare chested, but he also seems to have a substantial amount of gray matter between the ears.<br /><br />Our country, including the healthcare IT sector, could probably learn something from him:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576065641376054226.html"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Walled Wide Web for Nervous Autocrats </span></a><br />Wall Street Journal<br />Jan. 8, 2011<br /><br />By EVGENY MOROZOV<br /><br />At the end of 2010, the "open-source" software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks, found an unusual ally: the Russian government. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Vladimir Putin signed a 20-page executive order requiring all public institutions in Russia to replace proprietary software, developed by companies like Microsoft and Adobe, with free open-source alternatives by 2015.</span><br /><br />The move will save billions of dollars in licensing fees, but Mr. Putin's motives are not strictly economic. In all likelihood, his real fear is that Russia's growing dependence on proprietary software, especially programs sold by foreign vendors, has immense implications for the country's national security. Free open-source software, by its nature, is <span style="font-weight: bold;">unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va</span>.<br /><br /></blockquote>It's also less likely to feature a backdoor to a hacker's basement, or a lot of bugs ("glitches") that some health IT vendors and customer organizations allow to accumulate into the thousands before lifting a finger.<br /><br />This brings to mind the adage that "if you want something done right, do it yourself."<br /><blockquote><br />... For ordinary Internet users, there is one silver lining: The embrace of open-source technology by governments may result in <span style="font-weight: bold;">more intuitive software applications</span>, written by a more diverse set of developers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">[Read the whole article at the link above - ed.]</span><br /><br /></blockquote>More intuitive IT applications could solve a lot of the current health IT problems, such as the <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/hostileuserexper">mission hostile user experience</a> of many closed-source products from major vendors.<br /><br />Afrer major IT debacles including the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-soumerai/dont-repeat-the-uks-elect_b_790470.html">£13 billion abyss</a> of the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT), the UK also seems to be learning:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.ehi.co.uk/news/EHI/6687/new_approach_urged_for_government_it">New approach urged for government IT</a><br />E-Health Insider<br /></span> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px;font-size:0.9em;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>2 March 2011</span> <span><br />Lyn Whitfield</span></span> </div> <div style="margin-top: 3px; margin-bottom: 10px; float: right; margin-left: 15px;"><br /></div> <p>A new report into government IT failures has warned that previous inquiries may have embedded problems by focusing on inappropriate ‘best practice’ instead of looking for alternative approaches.</p> <p>The report, from the Institute for Government, says <span style="font-weight: bold;">“existing ‘best practice’ project models do not deal with the fundamental issues</span> at the heart of government IT.”</p><p><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">[As I've stated </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">here</span></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">, one has to consider the "worst practices" as well, the "thou shall not's." Typical Milquetoast, touchy-feely "best practices" models and their <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">"</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">sanitized accounts of successful projects</span>"</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> (cf. </span><a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/healthcare-it-as-cybernetic-miracle.html"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Greenhalgh</span></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/healthcare-it-as-cybernetic-miracle.html"> et al.</a>) avoid such inconvenient realities like the plague - ed.]</span><br /></p> <p>It also argues that: “<span style="font-weight: bold;">By implementing these same, flawed project techniques in an increasingly rigid fashion, these traditional solutions can act to exacerbate the problems further.” </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">[This sounds familiar, typical of the inflexible, dogmatic business IT culture, descended from the punched-card programmable tabulator culture of the 1920's - </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">see</span> <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/05/seedie-society-for-exorbitantly.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">this link</span></a></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> - ed.]</span><br /></span></p> <p>Instead, it calls for a new that focuses on using government’s huge buying power to get better deals for what it calls ‘platform' technologies – such as server capacity and PCs – while <span style="font-weight: bold;">encouraging departments to adopt ‘agile’ methodologies to deliver systems to meet the particular challenges they face</span>.</p><p>... Andrew Adonis, Director of the Institute for Government said: “The billions spent on cancelled IT projects, such as ID cards and National Programme for IT in the NHS, demonstrate precisely why we need a much more flexible approach to government IT.</p> ... The report cites the national programme as one ‘symptom of failure’ in government IT; the tendency for projects to run late and for departments to struggle to keep suppliers on board or hold them to their original delivery requirements as a result. </blockquote><p></p><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development">Agile software development methodologies</a> have traditionally been anathema to the culture of IS departments involved in mercantile, manufacturing and management varieties of business computing. As I've written many times, however, those methodologies are <span style="font-weight: bold;">essential</span> in healthcare IT, such as <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=Cardiology%20story">here</a> and <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/09/health-it-danger.html">here</a>. At the latter link I observed:<br /><br /><blockquote>... In fact, in my observations IT personnel are the true Luddites <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">[as opposed to clinicians who are often accused of that reactionary characteristic- ed.]</span>, clinging to inappropriate, rigid business-IT views on the healthcare IT development and implementation process (vs. more appropriate and modern <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming">agile methodologies</a>), holding unshakable, stereotypical views about physicians, and remaining unreasonably obstinate on clinician complaints about "clunky" health IT user experiences.</blockquote><br />Perhaps Mr. Putin and Mr. Adonis deserve a copy of the book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Informatics-Electronic-Collaboration-Innovation/dp/0763739251">Medical Informatics 20/20: Quality And Electronic Health Records Through Collaboration, Open Solutions, And Innovation</a>", Jan. 2007, by the <a href="http://www.ehealth.va.gov/EHEALTH/CPRS_Demo.asp">VistA</a> (open-source EMR) pioneers.<br /><br />The<span style="font-weight: bold;"> "Open Solutions"</span> part of that title says it all.<br /><br />-- SS

Vladimir Putin and Common Sense on IT

Vladimir Putin may be known for showing off his pectorals riding horses bare chested, but he also seems to have a substantial amount of gray matter between the ears.Our country, including the healthca…

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Five years of introducing students to open source

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s1600-h/GSOCLogo2009.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350768142386402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiNBefv5FOOWCcB3oCsVMdrya1YtaF2TyRmOEIwgWaC6dvDYoz-ltMKqiLiyZaJKCs88EO8EBqGTPSUFYbycNNLnNDlsuYdkNpEKLTr5UHXq6nm2rAVELvXQwXgYSvfkEPcNBMhNdRMtpm/s320/GSOCLogo2009.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" /></a>We've just concluded our fifth <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of Code</a>, our <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/supporting-students-in-open-source.html">flagship global program</a> to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been impressive. Nearly 2,000 mentors from 64 countries participated in the program. They worked to bring 1,000 students from 69 countries into the communities of <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009">150 free and open source projects</a>. We're particularly excited this year to have introduced several students to open source development that has a direct impact on social causes, from <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/mifos">microfinance software</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sugarlabs">global educational initiatives</a> to <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/sunlight">making government data more transparent and accessible</a>. Three months and hundreds of thousands of lines of code later, 85 percent of our student participants have successfully completed their projects. We'll be publishing more extensive program statistics and wrap up reports in the coming weeks on the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/">Google Open Source Blog</a>, so stay tuned there for more news about Google Summer of Code.<br /><br />We'd like to congratulate all of our student participants for their hard work and tremendous achievements this summer. We're excited to hear that many of our students have planned out the next few months of their coding work with their chosen open source project. Finally, our sincerest thanks to all of our mentors for volunteering their time and expertise to help these students more actively engage with open source development.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s1600-h/soc.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374350985593503762" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL033tQbAwIUwnaaqHP1SPoq07cHjn9TPUJqrk4O_fUsfFqK-yd1K_Xjijvq1KMIgwsfcX3czt5WXnuii4VzWjaF6TlxC5Lm7G0HVE5vPutWlj5qXNGILu-Wgn9RWKEUkZyb8TQXp1TRtz/s400/soc.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team</span>

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Five years of introducing students to open source

We've just concluded our fifth Google Summer of Code, our flagship global program to introduce college and university students to open source development. Once again, the results this year have been i…

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Growing open government with Transparency Camp West

<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >(If you're interested in meeting the team of Googlers working to strengthen the public sector and civic engagement through technology, check out our <a href="http://googlepublicsector.blogspot.com/2009/08/hello-world.html">Public Sector blog</a>. -Ed.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span></span><br /><br />Organizing public sector information isn't easy, and companies like Google rely on the good work of open government advocates to access useful data. Last weekend more than 150 developers, NGOs, wonks, activists and government representatives from as far away as Russia and Israel gathered at our <a href="http://maps.google.com/?q=Google%20Inc.@37.423156,-122.084917&hl=en">Mountain View campus</a> for <a href="http://transparencycamp.org/">Transparency Camp West</a> to discuss efforts to make governments more transparent and accessible to the public.<br /><br />Sponsored by the <a href="http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/">Sunlight Foundation</a>, a non-partisan organization founded in 2006, Transparency Camp allowed open government advocates to freely swap ideas about a wide range of topics: voting, journalism, public transit, healthcare, citizen engagement and more. The theme of openness also extended to the Sunlight Foundation's board meeting on Saturday. While most organizations hold their board meetings in private, the Sunlight Foundation opened their board meeting not only to staff, but also to members of the public.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxdHmobJyroNWs5Jm_ZnBKRNvreutmWKpNrVy3moY6aEF4zG6ntp8PMxc4FZAzDYZghTJmnTmUN3znp0CSFuiCJPig6gWnkrNb5FHFRAOFHUHEYBoHzdRSbEEbw2OL7CEarcsZp0UovWG/s1600-h/IMG_1651.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369855161033368850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxdHmobJyroNWs5Jm_ZnBKRNvreutmWKpNrVy3moY6aEF4zG6ntp8PMxc4FZAzDYZghTJmnTmUN3znp0CSFuiCJPig6gWnkrNb5FHFRAOFHUHEYBoHzdRSbEEbw2OL7CEarcsZp0UovWG/s400/IMG_1651.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The "un-conference" format let attendees decide session topics</span><br /></span></div><br />At Google we're inspired by efforts to connect people to the political process, to useful public information and to their governments — and we're eager to participate. To hear more about the different kinds of bottom-up change proposed at Transparency Camp, head to the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/08/let-sunshine-in-transparency-camp-west.html">Google Open Source blog</a> for a summary by Clay Johnson from the Sunlight Foundation.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio1WH5043k2_0L23kj0K3DWvkKcUeSxXKRqfojKnmq4aQ0A8SRDKJ3C1Dip1MEWuUVrx-4DI0kiiMMPjsLS8EBsotVtRYytj4ia179gOSryITRxwMaisjlij2fqS0LRT2wJ1NwypVARXn/s1600-h/IMG_1603.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369855498157078226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio1WH5043k2_0L23kj0K3DWvkKcUeSxXKRqfojKnmq4aQ0A8SRDKJ3C1Dip1MEWuUVrx-4DI0kiiMMPjsLS8EBsotVtRYytj4ia179gOSryITRxwMaisjlij2fqS0LRT2wJ1NwypVARXn/s400/IMG_1603.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">This and previous photo courtesy of Heather Bussing</span></span><br /></div><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager</span>

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Growing open government with Transparency Camp West

(If you're interested in meeting the team of Googlers working to strengthen the public sector and civic engagement through technology, check out our Public Sector blog. -Ed.)Organizing public sector i…

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Supporting students in open source software development

<a href="http://code.google.com/soc/">Google Summer of Code</a>, our program to introduce students to open source software development, is now in full swing for 2009. Over the past four years, we've paired nearly 2,500 "graduates" with more than 2,500 mentors from industry to academia, with some spectacular results: millions of lines of source code produced and over $15M in funding provided to open source development. This year student participants have more than <a href="http://socghop.appspot.com/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2009">150 open source software and technology–related projects</a> to choose from when submitting their applications, from operating systems to content management systems.<br /><br />During the <a href="http://code.google.com/soc/2008/">2008 program</a>, we had more than 975 students successfully complete their projects. Each participant received a $4,500 stipend and an ultra-awesome t-shirt to go along with their newly honed programming skills. We're particularly excited by the social ties our students form through the course of the program, as well. We've connected people in more than 98 countries, and hope to bring people from even more places into the Google Summer of Code community this year.<br /><br />We'll be accepting student applications through April 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm PST. If you're interested in learning more, check out our <a href="http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html">Frequently Asked Questions</a> or subscribe to our <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss">discussion list</a>. You can also check out the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/search/label/gsoc">Google Open Source Blog</a> for regular updates on the program. When you're ready to get started, visit the Google Summer of Code 2009 site to submit your application. Best of luck to all of our applicants!<br /><br />For an overview of the program, check out this video.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vBRRR0BQyz0&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vBRRR0BQyz0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team</span>

Supporting students in open source software development

Google Summer of Code, our program to introduce students to open source software development, is now in full swing for 2009. Over the past four years, we've paired nearly 2,500 "graduates" with more t…

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The first Android-powered phone

Today, T-Mobile announced the <a href="http://www.t-mobileg1.com/" id="jmdz" title="world's first Android-powered phone">world's first Android-powered phone</a>. This marks an important milestone in the young history of Android. It was less than a year ago, on November 5, that the Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, <a href="http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html" id="bh8f" title="announced plans">announced plans</a> to create a complete mobile platform that would facilitate the development of advanced mobile applications and give users the best the web has to offer on a mobile device.<br /><br />Software developers are key to driving innovation on the web, and also for mobile. That's why, over the past year, we've released several early versions of the Software Developer Kit (SDK) and worked with developers from around the world to make it better and more complete. This has culminated in today's release of the Android 1.0 SDK R1. Through the SDK, developers have unprecedented access to the hardware and software capabilities of the device, enabling them to innovate freely. More than 1,700 applications were developed as part of the <a title="Android Developer Challenge" href="http://code.google.com/android/adc.html" id="atcv">Android Developer Challenge</a>. Google engineers have also been busy developing Android applications. Many of our products (Search, Gmail, and Maps, among others) are available on a wide range of phones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices, and many more. Today, they're also available on Android, and you can check out the <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-on-android.html" id="rz5x" title="Google Mobile blog">Google Mobile blog</a> for more details.<br /><br />But there's more to the Android story. Not only does it allow all applications open access to the phone's functionality; the platform itself will also be open. The Open Handset Alliance has announced its intention to open source the entire Android platform by the end of the year. Along with the other members of the Alliance, we hope that Android can provide a meaningful contribution to all players in the mobile ecosystem: the developers, the wireless carriers, the handset manufacturers, etc. Everyone will be free to adopt and adapt the technology as they see fit. By doing so, we hope that users will get better, more capable phones with powerful web browsers and access to a rich catalogue of innovative mobile applications.<br /><br />Developers will soon be able to distribute their applications to real handsets through the beta version of <a href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2008/08/android-market-user-driven-content.html" id="bqwf" title="Android Market (beta)">Android Market</a>. Handset manufacturers and wireless carriers will be able to incorporate Android innovations into their own new handsets and service offerings. And users will get better handsets and more choice. We think it's another step towards realizing the full potential of the mobile phone.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Erick Tseng, Lead Product Manager, Android Team<span><br /><br /></span></span>

The first Android-powered phone

Today, T-Mobile announced the world's first Android-powered phone. This marks an important milestone in the young history of Android. It was less than a year ago, on November 5, that the Open Handset …

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Celebrating young computer scientists

Last week, the ten grand prize winners for the first <a href="http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/" target="_blank">Google Highly Open Participation Contest</a>, our initiative to get pre-university students involved in open source development. We were very excited to welcome these burgeoning computer scientists and their families to Silicon Valley in a celebration of their many accomplishments.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgneKRnVMQBvLbX3OqE2vhd3yyIJJjbz1DNsimYim2nqokU8Dbtr__m17NDGM1L4WMdvyxs_-uWL5eY_urBGLvKcczouh3pix2C4pTSoi5KvfRMw3rwKlVZcqKK9LfevrSk76rZyozHwQ1I/s1600-h/GHOP_group.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223745625448254562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgneKRnVMQBvLbX3OqE2vhd3yyIJJjbz1DNsimYim2nqokU8Dbtr__m17NDGM1L4WMdvyxs_-uWL5eY_urBGLvKcczouh3pix2C4pTSoi5KvfRMw3rwKlVZcqKK9LfevrSk76rZyozHwQ1I/s320/GHOP_group.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Our grand prize winners and the Open Source team</span></div><br />Chosen from more than 350 students worldwide, our winners created software, documentation and marketing materials for ten different open source projects, getting all this work accomplished in just over two months. For more details, including interviews with the winners and their mentors, check out the <a href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/07/grand-prize-winners-visit-googleplex.html">Google Open Source Blog</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager - Open Source</span>

Celebrating young computer scientists

Last week, the ten grand prize winners for the first Google Highly Open Participation Contest, our initiative to get pre-university students involved in open source development. We were very excited t…

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OpenSocial continues to grow: Welcome, Yahoo!

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Dan Peterson, Product Manager</span><br /><br />Last November, <a title="OpenSocial was kicked off" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/opensocial-makes-web-better.html" id="acjj">OpenSocial was created</a> to help build infrastructure for the social web. OpenSocial provides a common mechanism for developers to easily hook into many different social networks and extend their functionality. Sites including MySpace and orkut have begun to provide OpenSocial applications to their users, and hi5 will be rolling out next week.<br /><br />Today we're pleased that <a href="http://ycorpblog.com/2008/03/25/announcing-the-opensocial-foundation/">Yahoo! has announced its support for OpenSocial</a>. We're looking forward to having Yahoo! users join the hundreds of millions of people who will soon enjoy OpenSocial applications. This addition means even more distribution for developers, encourages participation by even more websites, and, most importantly, results in more features for users all across the web.<br /><br />In addition, Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google are joining with the broader community to create a non-profit foundation to foster the continued open development of OpenSocial. To that end, we've also launched <a href="http://www.opensocial.org/">OpenSocial.org</a>, designed to become the main documentation hub and primary source of information about OpenSocial. To learn more, and to get involved, please review the <a href="http://sites.google.com/a/opensocial.org/opensocial/OpenSocial-Foundation-Proposal">foundation proposal</a>.<br /><br />With that, welcome, Yahoo! We look forward to growing the social web together.

OpenSocial continues to grow: Welcome, Yahoo!

Posted by Dan Peterson, Product ManagerLast November, OpenSocial was created to help build infrastructure for the social web. OpenSocial provides a common mechanism for developers to easily hook into …

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Summer of Code is back!

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source</span><br /><br /><a title="Google Summer of CodeTM" href="http://code.google.com/soc/2008/" id="bt92">Google Summer of Code</a>, our program to introduce students to open source software development is coming back. In the past <a title="three years" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/three-summers-of-open-source.html" id="uv9q">three years</a>, we've seen more than 1500 students 'graduate' from this program, working with 2000+ mentors across 90 countries to produce millions of lines of code. We're pleased to have funded more than $10M in open source development through Summer of Code, and we've increased our funding for it this year by another $1M.<br /><br />Last year alone, more than 800 students successfully completed their projects. Each received $4500 as a stipend and an awesome <a title="program t-shirt" href="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2327/2043654975_2ca729fc9d.jpg" id="gr3.">T-shirt</a>. We're looking forward to welcoming even more student participants and open source projects into the Google Summer of Code community this year.<br /><br />We're accepting applications from open source projects who'd like to act as mentoring organizations through March 13th, and will begin taking student applications on March 24th. If you're interested in learning more, just subscribe to the <a title="program discussion list" href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-discuss" id="r:gc">program discussion list</a>. We hope to see you there!

Summer of Code is back!

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open SourceGoogle Summer of Code, our program to introduce students to open source software development is coming back. In the past three years, we've seen …

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New Open Source Programs blog

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source Team</span><br /><br />Since its inception in 2005, our <a title="Open Source Programs Office" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/" id="kf5j">Open Source Programs Office</a> has been responsible for maintaining license compliance within Google. And over the past three years, our mission has grown encompass even more activities that we hope are useful to our colleagues in the open source community: <a title="project hosting" href="http://code.google.com/hosting/" id="tk:f">project hosting</a>, <a title="releasing Google created code into open source" href="http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label%3aGoogle" id="xw4u">releasing Google created code</a> and <a title="funding open source development" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/wine.html" id="lbyt">funding open source development</a>. We've also continued to get students involved in open source, recently debuting the <a title="Google Highly Open Participation Contest" href="http://code.google.com/opensource/ghop/" id="o:2i">Google Highly Open Participation Contest</a> for secondary schoolers as a complement to our university program, <a title="Google Summer of Code" href="http://code.google.com/soc/" id="nfjf">Google Summer of Code</a>.<br /><br />When you have this much good news to share, you just have to create your own blog --so we did. Come check out the new <a title="Google Open Source Blog" href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/" id="qu4.">Google Open Source Blog</a> for regular updates on all of the above and, if you like what you see, <a title="subscribe" href="http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/atom.xml" id="zr8m">subscribe</a>.

New Open Source Programs blog

Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Open Source TeamSince its inception in 2005, our Open Source Programs Office has been responsible for maintaining license compliance within Google. And over…

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