About Waag Society
Waag Society is a knowledge institute operating on the cutting edge of culture and technology in relation to society, education, government and industry. With its knowledge Waag Society wishes to make a contribution to the design of the information society. In this it doesn't let itself be lead by technology but instead looks at the possibilities of people, their creativity and culture. The interplay of technology and culture is the driving force of all Waag Society's activities.
More information about Waag Society is available on our website.
Waag Society and Open Source Software
Developing software has been one of the main activities of Waag Society since its start in 1996. Over the course of the years, the KeyWorx platform has become more and more important. It has been used to power many of the projects that we have done (ScratchWorx, KidsEye, Amsterdam Realtime, etc.) Lately, we have repeatedly been asking ourselves why the development of software at Waag Society, and the development of KeyWorx in particular, has remained closed in an environment where open-source software development has become more and more important. These questions have been raised by people inside as well as people outside Waag Society.
Making KeyWorx ready to go open has not been easy. Over the last 3 months we have invested a lot of time into bringing the documentation on par with the code. We have set up a dedicated infrastructure to support both our in-house developers as well as external contributors. We've also had extensive discussions about which licensing schemes to adopt.
Why go open source now?
Open-source software development can be seen as a generalization of Waag Society's own approach to software development. Under the motto 'users as designers' we have followed a developmental approach that aims to integrate users closely into the development process. Opening up the development process to interested developers and potentially also to end users creates possibilities for users to exert influence on the design of the applications that they use. We believe that if this happens in a coordinated and well supported way, this will improve the quality of the resulting software.
Quality, however, is not our only motivation for adapting our development process. Much of our development is supported with public funds, either directly via (project) subsidies or indirectly in the form of commissioned development for publicly funded organizations, such as museums or schools. This encourages us to make the knowledge generated in the process available in the public domain. We hope that others will find information and gain insight and motivation from our contribution in the same way that we have profited from the wealth of knowledge that has been made available to us.
Finally, Waag Society subscribes to many of the principles on which the free and open-source software community is based. We have actively been advocating the use of open-source software and open standards. Opening up our own code is the logical consequence of these activities.
Other Open-Source projects at Waag Society
While KeyWorx is the first major application developed by Waag Society that has been licensed under an open-source license, this does not mean that this is Waag Society's first encounter with open-source software. This document provides a brief description of Waag Society's open-source related projects and activities.
Infrastructure
Almost all of Waag Society's servers (and there are more than 20 of them)run on GNU/Linux. The only exception to this rule is an Xserve G4 that runs Apple's OS X server. Waag Society operates an always-on video streaming facility that either streams whatever material is provided via a set of plugs in the outside wall of the building (see: plugin.waag.org for more information) or streams events taking place in the Theatrum Anatomicum (see: connect.waag.org for upcoming events and a video archive of past events). This facility is based exclusively on open-source software (MPEG4IP/Darwin streaming server).
Workstations
Waag Society operates a diverse mix of operating systems for its workstations. While the majority of development is done on Mac OS X based systems, the administrative work is done on standard PC. For these machines, Waag Society is in a transition process from proprietary to open-source software. Most of the systems still run Windows, but most proprietary application software has been replaced by open-source counterparts (MS Office has been replaced by OpenOffice, Outlook by Mozilla Thunderbird and Internet Explorer by Mozilla Firefox). Recently a number of workstations have completely switched to Linux (we use Mepis Linux) and it is the intention to gradually switch most Windows installations to GNU/Linux. Within Waag Society, OpenOffice document formats are used for document exchange.
Workshop Open-Source Software and Development Cooperation
In July 2003, Waag Society in collaboration with Hivos and Sarai organized an international workshop on the role of open-source software in the context of development cooperation (more information here). This workshop brought together software developers and persons working for development NGOs for three days of intense discussions and knowledge sharing. The participants issued a manifesto directed at funders and development NGOs to realize and implement the possibilities of open-source software in this sector.
Domain for Innovative Software and Content (DISC.NL)
DISC is a project by Nederland Kennisland and Waag Society. It aims at facilitating the use of open content and open-source software within Dutch civil society organisations by offering support and hosting, and by making implementation experiences and documentation available online. DISC has also been instrumental in the adaption of the Creative Commons licenses by the Dutch legal system (see: nl.creativecommons.org)
Within the DISC project, we have supported the development of a hosting environment called DISC hosting. DISC hosting is a web management interface for hosting non-profit websites and email. It aims to make it simple to host many small websites and to offer handy tools to the people maintaining the website. DISC hosting is licensed under the GNU Public License. Documentation and source files can be found at dischosting.sourceforge.net.