The Open Sourcerer

Packt Publishing Supports Open Source by $300,000 (So far)

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve reviewed a couple of books for Packt before; they asked me and I was happy to (I got a free book for my time and learned some new stuff). Last year I felt rather honoured when asked to be a judge on their popular Open Source Awards – In the Open Source E-Commerce Applications category.

They’re a a modern Publishing business which. since last year, has a specialist brand Packt Open Source. It’s a business I’m quite happy to help promote and support as they reciprocate by supporting the communities and projects we all use everyday.

Today they announced a bit of a milestone.

Packt Publishing Believes in Open Source, Donates Over $300K to Projects

Birmingham, UK. 2nd March 2011

Packt today announced that its donations to open source projects have surpassed the $300,000 mark. Following its first donation to the phpMyAdmin project in April 2004, the company has gone on to provide sustained support for over 70 different open source projects.

Packt has introduced initiatives such as the annual Open Source Award and Open Source Project Royalty Scheme to provide sustained donations to projects over the last six years.

“Most of the money that we’ve used, donated from Packt has gone towards running jQuery conferences for the community and bringing together the jQuery team to do development work together.” said John Resig, the founder of the popular JavaScript library, jQuery. “The financial contributions have been very valuable and in that regard, have resulted in a team that’s able to operate much more efficiently and effectively.”

The Open Source Awards, now in its fifth year, has been adapted from the established Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award with the wider aim of encouraging,
supporting, recognizing and rewarding all open source projects. “The support that Packt has shown, through its book royalties and awards, has contributed to that success and helped the Drupal project handle its growth”. Added Dries Buytaert, founder of the CMS Drupal, winner of the 2007 and 2008’s Overall CMS Award, and a project which also benefits from Packt’s Open Source Project Royalty Scheme.

The Open Source Project Royalty Scheme allows projects to benefit from the publication of a Packt book, as they are allocated a percentage of every copy sold. “This is a support system that we provide to every open source project that we publish on” said Julian Copes, a spokesperson for Packt Open Source. “Packt is proud to have reached this significant milestone and remains committed to keeping donations at the heart of its long-term publishing strategy.”

Open source software is freely available and free from restrictions. Open source projects survive largely on financial donations and support to cover the essential costs of running an
open source project. Therefore, regular donations are vital for their ongoing development and relevancy. “Moodle is grateful for the royalty donations that Packt have volunteered to send us as part of their Open Source Project Royalty Scheme.” said Martin Dougiamas, founder of Moodle the hugely popular open source course management system. “The money donated helps us fund a developer for a few months a year and thus contributes directly towards Moodle core development, support and improvements in the future.”

Are you an open source project that Packt has published a book on? Packt believes in Open Source and your project may be able to receive support through the Open Source Project Royalty Scheme. Simply contact Packt: royalty@packtpub.com.

Interested in which projects receive support through the Open Source Project Royalty Scheme? Click here to view all projects involved.

I wonder how long it will be until they reach $500,000 in contributions…?

2 Sore Feet, 200+ CDs, 400+ Teachers: BETT 2009

After having a bit of lay-in this morning (but not as long as I’d hoped for), I thought I should mention what we got up to at BETT last week.

Along with our friends at the OpenForum Europe and helpers from a few other Free Software or Open Source related organisations, we exhibited much of what it is best about FOSS to the international education community.

We had a couple of shiny new Samsung 2343BW widescreen monitors showing off Edubuntu/Ubuntu to full effect. There were a variety of sub-notebook class devices demonstrating various Free OSs and just what £99 can get you if you care to look.

We discussed – sometimes at great length – philosophical, financial, technical, security and educational benefits that can be had from using FOSS solutions in an education context. (Why would anyone in their right mind use proprietary software if they had a choice or a clean sheet to start from?)

We promoted and extolled the virtues of many individual FOSS projects including, Moodle, Elgg, Mahara, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, and countless others.

We met up with colleagues old and new from various places such as: Elonex, Sirius and Alpha Plus. We found some new and interesting products. For me the most exciting was seeing first cross-platform interactive whiteboard solution being demonstrated on Windows, Mac OSX and Ubuntu live by Mimio.

As a comparison to last year, we made contact with nearly 200% more individuals, and gave away around 200 more Ubuntu Desktop CDs (and quite a few Server CDs too).

My personal take on this year’s BETT was pretty encouraging.

• I had many fewer conversations this year that started with me having to explain what FOSS is. And many schools and education authorities are familiar with and already using FOSS successfully.
• There was considerable interest in finding out more and in looking for ways to introduce FOSS into what is a very closed-shop (MS) environment currently.
• There was a really good throughput all week of teachers, ICT staff and Heads/Governors who expressed a passion for FOSS and its use in their schools and colleges.
• There was a great deal of criticism for the lack of leadership from Government regarding FOSS and the way in which the education sector is very largely tied to MS, especially with the SIMS product from Capita. This was a very frequent discussion; how to integrate non-Microsoft products such as OpenOffice.org with the almost ubiquitous Schools MIS platform.
• A healthy dose of scepticism from other visitors made us the educator for a while and hopefully we helped to open some eyes to the possibilities that FOSS can deliver.
• And I met a FAN! After looking at my business card and seeing our logo, the visitor I was talking too grabbed my hand, shook it passionately and declared with some gusto – “You are The Open Sourcerer!”. Fame at last eh. Thanks Phil, it was a pleasure to meet you.

Now the show is over, the stands are torn down, and everyone has left. This is when the real work starts. Following up with all those hundreds of educators who want our help to introduce FOSS into their environment.

My feet are still sore (and this is more than 24hrs after getting home) but it was bloody well worth it. I met some great people and feel as though we have achived a great deal more this year. All being well, next year’s BETT will be even bigger and bolder for us – the planning is already underway.