the biggest open source data platform in Europe that is underpinning a new bottom up ecosystem for digital public services;(
and Tor that are using bottom up privacy-preserving decentralised infrastructure for the open Internet constituted by open standards, open data, free and open software,
and open source software. Crowd-Mapping DSI organisations and their activities: The types of organisations working on DSI in Europe,
In particular grassroots communities of civic innovators, web entrepreneurs, hackers, geeks, SMES, open source and DIY makers,
contents, software, and data, such as enhancing public domain and making digital contents and information more accessible and reusable by all citizens.
open source and open hardware developments), leveraging social networks (or distributed social networking, sensor networks and the Internet of things,
Database and Dynamic Visualisations will be shared back with the relevant open source communities. Open data about the mapping of organisations include:
Low-cost home 3d manufacturing tools (3d printers, CNC machines), free CAD/CAM software like Blender, 123d or Sketchup and open source designs are now giving innovators
People working on Open source Hardware are creating new organisations such as the Open source Hardware Association, to open new research avenues and coordinate projects,
open source cars such as Wikispeed, building farming tools, new fabrication machines like the Reprap and open objects.
These products are open source and free; and you can use, copy and improve as much as you want with a worldwide community of peers helping you
Projects like Open source Ecology are promoting a bigger shift towards a more sustainable lifestyle and society.
DIY culture, open source software and open data. Projects like Safecast or open source Geiger, the Smart Citizen Kit,
and open wearables are showing interesting potential in combining innovative technology trends to generate unexpected outcomes.
and Tor are using bottom-up privacy-preserving decentralised infrastructure for the open Internet constituted by open standards, open data, free and open software,
Status. net or easy-to run servers like arkos, which makes it easy to run your own secure cloud,
and the organisation behind Github, the collaborative service for open software writers. Academia and research institutions Universities and other research-driven organisations such as think thanks,
semi-open spaces with clusters of tables and Internet connections for groups and individuals to collaborate and socialise in projects, workshops, hands-on talks, panels.
a Maker space with a focus on open source, design, digital fabrication, and micro enterprises. An example of increasing interest is the possibility of setting up Urban Labs within city contexts.
open source and open access Goteo Communia Open hardware new ways of making and using open hardware solutions
and moving towards and Open source Internet of things Arduino Smart Citizen Kit Safecast Table 9 36 Through case study analysis we have sought to build up an understanding of to what extent these emerging technologies are being harnessed by digital social innovation.
An unlocked Android phone with touch screen, Wifi and GPS that sold for $300 four years ago now costs $30,
and knowledge to a social network of peers living with similar conditions. 40 Open Hardware Open source hardware consists of hardware
Ideally, open source hardware uses readily available components and materials, standard processes, open infrastructure unrestricted content,
Open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange of designs.
which can be programmed with simple, open-source software tools by the user. The idea is that anyone should be able to turn an Arduino into a simple electronic device.
Activity is embedded then in software and interpreted by algorithms through highly normative processes. This smart infrastructure is also increasingly getting to know people by aggregating personal and social data in massive data centres with little privacy and security.
i e. institutions that have arisen during the rise of the Internet itself. 46 This is precisely why telecommunications companies must reinvent themselves in the presence of new, digitally native companies such as Skype and Google.
and in fact, private institutions have near-monopolies over social networks and search engine data, giving them nearly exclusive access to the data
public funding) and investors Future development tasks Code and data Full information on the development so far and open source code can be found on the Github page here:
which can be programmed with simple, open-source software tools by the user. The idea is that anyone should be able to turn an Arduino into a simple electronic device such as a light switch and sensor.
The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and a boot loader that executes on the micro controller.
The project first started with 3, 000 euros for the production of 200 units, but when IDDI bought only 50 units,
Arduino has grown since to become popular selling around 200,000 units in 2011 largely because of its creators'decision to make the board's design open source and its quick adoption by hobbyists, artists, scientists, and‘makers.'
The arrival of Arduino is said to mark the move from open-source software to open-source hardware.
Furthermore, Arduino has lowered significantly the economic barriers to D. I. Y. electronics thanks to the product's low cost and open source business model.
Various educational and innovative projects and products have been built on the back of Arduino's hard and software.
or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e g. Flash, Processing, Maxmsp. 59 The boards can be built by hand
and the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license,
and users are free to adapt them to their needs. While the hardware used to power Arduino is open-source,
Arduino software is also open-source. The source code for the Java environment is released under the GPL
'Arduino has in many senses heralded a paradigm shift from open-source software alone to open-source hardware.
and software for the Arduino board. Arduino design plans can thus be downloaded and manufactured by anyone;
because the Arduino board is a piece of open source hardware, free for anyone to use,
Many questioned if it would be possible to forge a sustainable business model considering the entire basis for Arduino relies upon open source technologies (in fact,
Creative Commons Licensing Arduino release all of the original design files (Eagle CAD) for the Arduino hardware.
Open source Software Not only the Arduino hardware is open; the Arduino software is also open-source. The source code for the Java environment is released under the GPL
and the C/C++ micro controller libraries are under the LGPL. 61 Avaaz At a glance:
and includes a physical server farm, a content distribution network, and some resources served through Amazon's cloud services.
Croscon (who perform ongoing security audits of the site's servers) and Arbor networks (who provided defensive hardware
and the open source platform is available free of charge to any group, city or country around the world interested in using the platform to source ideas from citizens.
where the city uses the platform to source ideas from citizens to be debated in the city council on a monthly basis. Type of Organisation The Your Priorities software is open source
Through making the Your Priorities platform available as open source to other organisations, the Citizens Foundation is actively facilitating the easy spread and uptake of their new service.
Open source and Open Collaboration: The platform is open source and free for anyone to download and use,
which has led to the spread of the model via the Internet beyond Iceland. Open Active Democracy is the software that powers Your Priorities.
As well as being made available on Github so that like-minded civic hackers can contribute to and improve this coding,
As a nonprofit organisation, donated funds ensure continual development and maintenance of the Your Priority software.
The user interface has been simplified in every generation of the software to enable more people to participate more easily.
Citysdk consist of 23 partners, 9 countries, 3 open source APIS Website: http://www. citysdk. eu/Organisation Name City Service Development Kit (Citysdk) Short description City SDK is a European consortium of partners helping cities
For each of those domains, an open software API is developed in one of the participating cities or regions,
At the same time it provides cities with an easy, open source, standards based way to publish real-time open Data type of organisation Citysdk is a European Consortium consisting of 23 partners in nine countries,
such as the Greater manchester Realtime Scheduling application, the Park Shark City Platform and the City Navigator, a fully Open source, mobile HTML5 public transport journey planner and navigation application for on the go-go use.
Open source Software, which enables the uptake and extension of the software by the development community forgoing stifling discussions on IP and closed development silos Open Data,
as it builds software to publish Linked Open Data in standardised formats that enables app developers to make royalty-free applications that scale Open API's,
that provide a nonproprietary way for data-owners to publish (real-time) datasets use those in applications Agile Software Development, by way of SCRUM tools and methodologies Next to these,
standards are used like GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) and Open 311, and languages like JSON and RDF API's written in Ruby and Sinatra.
video conferences and Google docs for communication and Github to share code and specifications. Citysdk itself would not have been possible even five years ago.
Open source DSI activities: Operating a DSI service, Network Key facts: As part of the project the consortia developed Europe commons, a catalogue of applications with demonstrable impact Website:
It simultaneously taps into current technological trends such as open data, open source, as well as digital volunteerism (crowdsourcing), in a way that has a clear social impact.
the aim was to also develop a reusable IT open source solution. In the Berlin State Museums alone six million objects await to be recorded.
This flexible approach to technology is reflected in the wide range of technologies employed by the different fellows who will work with their own preferred web platform (using open source languages like 83 Python
and sharing of open source code. To this aim, the fellows work together on a joint Github account
In the case of Europe Commons the site's open source coding is hosted on Drupal. org,
While collaborative coding tools such as Github have challenged somewhat the often asocial aspect of software coding,
The project brings in additional users (researchers) with a common entry point and additional resources (nodes, servers, links) in sparsely populated areas.
The nodes are usually running an open source distribution such as Linux (Openwrt) or Freebsd. A Community-Lab node consists of two or three devices:
the community device, the research device and an optional recovery device to force the research device to reboot in case of malfunction.
The project has also set up http://opendata. confine-project. eu/using the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) 23 software.
These services face enormous challenges due to the limited capacity of servers and links 93 and the structure of the network.
The overarching aim of the Everyaware platform is to develop an integrated hard and software platform
A central server efficiently collects, analyses and visualises data sent from arbitrary sources. The Everyaware platform will handle both sensor and subjective data acquisition.
and Android app that helps people to understand the soundscape around and to help live a healthier life.
Sensorbox, Airprobe, a dedicated Web server and Web application, together form a system that measures concentrations of pollutants in the air and localises them through a GPS.
and is based on open source design and open hardware such as Arduino. One example of this is Alignment laser,
The free or low cost access to open source hard and software means that Fablab communities both benefit from
and contribute to the value of these, which benefits a global DIY community using the same open tools.
This open approach extends to plans for the phone itself and the software, although there is some way to go on this. 114 How is funded the organisation?
https://github. com/Organisation Name Github Short description Github, a San francisco-based company, was started in 2008 as a way for open source software writers in various locations to rapidly create new
to build better software together. Source code management was historically a particularly asocial (and sometimes antisocial) practice.
and code management for open source and private projects, by tapping into this community of collective coders.
the creator of Linux. Over time, Github's mission evolved from offering a paradigm 116 shift in the way programmers had coded largely in isolation to something more.
At its simplest Github can be described as open source tool for people to come together online and collaborate around a project,
in the majority of cases the projects people use Github to collaborate around are code for websites and software solutions.
because the code is open source). This enables a developer to copy a code that he
Homebrew a platform used by developers to make code run more smoothly with the MAC OS was the most heavily trafficked project on Github in 2012.
Instances of Github can be licensed to run on private servers inside a company's firewall under the Enterprise plans ($5000/year/20 seats.
'This plan enables clients to download a version of Github to live locally on their servers,
Overall the‘open source'culture of Github translates into their business model in one particularly obvious way:
programmers or companies can use the collaborative platform for free as a place to build open-source software,
a platform set up with the aim of helping governments become more open source, open data, and open government.
This portal is aimed specifically at helping governments all over the world to open source datasets, legislation and information so that citizen programmers can help solve local problems.
Github uses Git, a multi-platform version control application created for use by developers of the Linux kernel,
Though developed for software code, any types of files can be part of a Github repository,
and Lilypond music notation software files) can take advantage of Git's version tracking and merging features.
As the system of record for software, it is natural that the rest of the software development ecosystem (bug trackers, project management,
and will result in better quality software. Github has remodelled how programmers engage with Source code Management (SCM) a fundamental tool for programmers, that stores,
Because modern programming tends to be about assembling code in the form of libraries, open source work,
and merge software code, this same logic can be applied to any types of files that make up the Github repository,
what was closed in the past a, asocial aspect of software coding. By making its coding repository far more transparent,
or register for barely usable software before they too can get involved, etc. What were the main barriers to innovate?
Open source vs. Closed: While Github has stood out as an outrider of how e-businesses might operate in an open-source landscape;
(i e. a series of tests designed to test a software program has specified a set of behavior),
http://goteo. org/Organisation Name Goteo Short description Goteo. org is an open source social network for crowdfunding as well as distributed collaboration based in Spain.
'Type of organisation Goteo is managed by the nonprofit organisation Fundacion Fuentes Abiertas (Open source Foundation. History and mission The explicit mission of Goteo. org is to help finance
when Platoniq (a collective of cultural activists, open source practitioners and Internet researchers) came together to explore initiatives for giving monetary support online to different people and causes with a social purpose.
The aim of the exercise was to understand how compatible crowdfunding was with crowdsourcing lessons learned from the open source world.
free knowledge and/or open source. Unlike most other crowdfunding platforms Goteo operate with two funding windows for a campaign, each with a duration of 40 days.
'Therefore projects are built on collaborative, open source and open design principles. As an example the Infinit Loop cloth mentioned above is built for example with an open design license.
and software standards developed by and for the open source community, such as creative commons to set the standard for how campaigns launched on the platform should use
and open hard and software solutions to develop their products. The Nodo Móvil project campaign is built,
http://liquidfeedback. org/Organisation Name Liquid Feedback Short description Liquid feedback is free open source software
Developed by the Public Software Group based in Berlin, Germany, the platform combines aspects of representative and direct democracy enabling participants in the platform to both vote directly on issues
Type of organisation The Public Software Group who developed the Liquid Feedback software is a not-for-profit organisation based in Berlin, Germany.
History and mission The Liquid Feedback software was published first in October 2009 by Public Software Group.
The software was used first by Germany's Pirate Party that same year, and has, amongst others,
However the developers are fully independent from the users of the software. The Liquid Feedback software is published under an open MIT license
and free for anyone or any organisation to download and use. 130 At the core of Liquid Feedback sit an ambition to create a platform that addresses the gap between representative democracies where people elect representatives to represent
The basic activity of Public Software is to make the Liquid Feedback software freely available to organisations interested in using the platform to create a more deliberative process around shaping
Finally, and on a more general level, Liquid Feedback is built on an open source licence. The rationale for this is that everyone interested in adopting the platform to their organisation should be able to do so freely.
Finally, the open source approach, as described above, allows the platform to be adapted by organisations that are both diverse in type and their geographical base.
For example the event featured demonstrations on the DIY opportunities in the Arduino open source electronic board and Raspberry Pi.
Several advantages of open source hardware show its importance to the Maker Faire community: Help streamline the design Makers can reduce risk by basing designs on open-source hardware
it affects the software, which adds a reason to enhance and improve the overall performance of the software to take advantage of the new feature.
Low cost access open hardware gives grassroots audience the ability to turn their ideas into products or services,
Providing consultancy, bespoke software development and software products to organisations keen to meet the expectations of digital natives.
Developing free and open source software for individuals and organisations around the world who want to build copies of the sites mysociety builds.
Some of the most prominent websites and software solutions developed by mysociety are listed below. Fixmystreet-Fixmystreet Platform is built open-source software to help people run websites for reporting common street problems
like potholes and broken street lights. It has been used in many countries around the world, from Norway to New zealand to Georgia to Italy-where versions based on the original UK Fixmystreet website have been built.
& Freedom of Information software',designed for easy reuse in any country or jurisdiction. Citizens can use Alaveteli to request information from governments,
The software created for this purpose is called Pombola. It's free, open source and available for use anywhere in the world.
The core features of this website are: 139 A structured database that links people to places, organisations and roles.
mysociety's sites are all open source. Some of the mysociety codebases have been worked on extensively to make them easy to use for the newcomer.
Mapit's code is also available on Github, another open source project which can be installed locally,
One of the benefits of mysociety being a digital NGO is that presently software development is globally a relatively lucrative profession.
open source projects without having to employ a huge factory of staff. After recognising in the period following 2006 that official government funding streams had been wound down,
As part of this they began to solicit commercial requests to do software development or consulting. In order to keep this activity within the bounds of UK charities law,
while developing‘a reputation as a software company that can solve problems that more traditional web companies can't.'mysociety Ltd.,
Realities of open source: Before accepting contributions to a project, the practical considerations around the overheads of testing, checking,
The Open Ministry website was developed using a YUI API a free, open source Javascript and CSS library for building interactive web applications.
Web scraping (web harvesting or web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites.
Open source: Opencorporates wants to make its product and the database accessible and scalable. It would not be possible without a huge number of open source programmes, tools and resources, such as Twitter Bootstrap and Linux.
It is mostly feasible to have the open data database as well as the community accessible online.
Opencorporates is built on the Rubyonrails framework, uses the Mysql and Neo4j databases, on servers running Linux.
Web and Software Development: Through developing software OKF are trying to create tools that support a global open knowledge and open data community.
One of the most prominent of these is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN), one of the world's leading free open source data portal platforms.
CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organisations) wanting to make their data open and available.
In addition to building software tools for open data the OKFN also seeks to build the open data skills and capacity of governments and civil society organisations,
The open source software is used by more than 70 organisations from Berlin to Nigeria globally to release their data in to open data sets.
Through creating software that can be used to enhance the use of open knowledge, it supports organisations on furthering their work on, for example, open data.
A variety of technologies are being used in Open Knowledge Foundation, mostly web and software development related.
Naturally most of its projects rely heavily on open data, open data and open source standards.
but it also relies on open source platforms for developing and sharing the code for its projects.
P2p Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Makesense, Edgeryders, Transition Network, Open source Ecology, hackerspaces & makerspaces. What is the social impact it is seeking,
driven by digital fabrication tools like 3dprinters, facilities like Fablabs, open source hardware designs and DIY communities.
in contrast to the centralized client server model where client nodes request access to resources provided by central servers.
in contrast to the centralized client server model where client nodes request access to resources provided by central servers.
bandwidth) directly available to other network participants, without the need for centralized coordination by servers.
Peer-to-peer-based digital currencies, electronic money that acts as alternative currency, such as Bitcoin, an open source P2p money,
A peer-to-peer network is designed around the notion of equal peer nodes simultaneously functioning as both clients and servers to the other nodes on the network.
This model of network arrangement differs from the client server model where communication is usually to and from a central server.
P2p's network in practice creates a platform for‘unbounded knowledge with open sources and open access.'
When switched on, users are greeted first by a command line code (which in recent years has tended to remain in the background of closed software programmes),
which included 6 Raspberry Pi's. These have been networked via a switch to a wireless router to facilitate access to RACHEL (one of the Raspberry Pi's dedicated educational servers).
It actively encourages collaborative coding for instance the open source coding for its collaborative project with Google,
the Raspberry Pi is completely open source, which helps to keep costs down. From the circuit schematics to the applications and the operating system, anyone can examine
and contribute online. The Foundation provides a version of Debian Linux that presents users with a basic text login rather than a slick GUI 188 by default
with the entire operating system and user files stored on a swappable SD card. How has technology enable that was not possible before?
With regard to Raspberry Pi's hardware, the board's low cost was made possible thanks to advances in integration that have shrunk effectively all the components of a desktop computer into a single silicon chip.
DSI network effect Due to Raspberry Pi's programmable and simple open source model, a variety of Pi projects have emerged on the Web.
Raspberry Pi has collaborated also recently with Google to deliver a new open source coding tool called Coder.
and then host them on a miniature server located directly on the Raspberry Pi. The overall cost for the DIY programming project, using Google's recommended materials,
http://blog. safecast. org/Organisation Name Safecast Short description Safecast is both the name of a Geiger counter built by the open source community as well as a global sensor network where Safecast owners can map
and software solutions for citizens to contribute to the mapping of radiation levels in Japan following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.
While the Safecast team along with a wider open source community is providing the hard and software behind Safecast,
and developing open hardware and software. Safecast describes itself as not being anti nuclear, or pro nuclear but pro data.
Safecast relies heavily on working on and with several open source hard and software solutions. Open hardware such as Arduino forms part of the actual build of the Geiger counter, crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter have been used to raise funding for developing different versions of the Geiger counter
The hardware developed by Safecast is open source and, in their own words, people who buy it are free‘to open,
and open source approaches to develop the original prototype Geiger counters, Crowdfunding has been crucial in the funding
Following on from this Safecast has used open source platforms such as Github to develop the code that sits behind the platform.
and open source platforms in many ways can be seen as an example of digitally enabled collective intelligence.
which is also open source. The team also operates an open network, where all the sensors and kit-owners can share
the Internet and relies on a range of open hard and software tools. Open Hardware:
Open Data and Open source: The web platform is developed with Open-Streetmap, Leaflet, Raphaël, jquery, Cakephp, and many more.
The actual project is open source and available on the open source platform Github. The fact that it is open has led already to replications of the kit for other purposes,
It has developed software tools designed to stop people including government agencies and corporations learning web users location or tracking their browsing habits.
The software the Tor browser bundle can be downloaded and used to take advantage of that technology,
with a separate version available for Android smartphones. Type of organisation The Tor Project is a US 501 (c)( 3) nonprofit dedicated to research, development,
by encrypting and routing communications through many different Internet servers. Subsequently Tor has been developed by the US University MIT and by the California Internet rights watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Open source: The Tor software itself is open source and free for anyone to download and use.
Enhancing collaboration and engagement: DSI network effect The strength of the Tor network relies on being able to relay traffic through a large network of routers owned by a global network of volunteers.
*Open Knowledge Organisation Name Ushahidi Short description Ushahidi is a nonprofit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for the collection, visualisation and interactive mapping of information.
The current team (of 22 full-time staff) is comprised of individuals with a wide span of experience ranging from human rights 208 work to software development.
The main services provided by Ushahidi are three free software products that enable social activism and public accountability, through crowdsourcing of information from citizen observers by mobile phones or the Internet.
Swiftriver is an open source platform that aims to democratize access to tools for filtering & making sense of real-time information Crowdmap:
a free open source software that can be used to distribute and collect information via text messages.
with the shift to an open source development model (as of February 2013) it is hoped that a community of volunteer developers will be able to assist in the localisation support of the site (translating the content into other languages) thereby having a positive impact on the outreach of the Zooniverse projects.
the number of servers they're running can be scaled back to a minimal level(‘automagically'on Amazon web services).
and they're pretty much all open source. They're generally still bespoke applications each time but share common code for talking to Ouroboros.
In addition to this, the decision February 2013 to start making Zooniverse officially open source has allowed for new avenues for collaboration to be pursued other than the analysis of data.
While Zooniverse had made not the move to open source a priority (because behind the scenes they had been willing to share their coding with anyone who had approached them often talking them through the thought process that led them to design our software in a particular way) the decision to move to an entirely open source paradigm was made
so as to broaden the tools available to enable people to start projects of their own. This open source development model allows a community of developers to flag any bugs to the Zooniverse developers;
to contribute towards the creation of new projects; but also to assist in the site's localisation support (translating sites into multiple languages.
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