Fwd: 7th Annual Election Night Hackathon & Facebook FOSS Talk

[Justin W. Flory]

In case you missed it, two things coming up on the horizon!


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	7th Annual Election Night Hackathon & Facebook FOSS Talk
Date: 	Mon, 16 Oct 2017 18:36:48 +0000
From: 	Daniel Schneiderman <dan(a)magic.rit.edu&gt;



Hey all,

 

Welcome to week 8! We have two main events coming up this fall that we
would like to invite everyone to:

 

*7th Annual Election Night Hackathon - November 7th, 5pm - 11pm*

 

Learn about civic hacking and watch the regional and national election
results arrive in real time. Hear from speakers from Second Avenue
Learning will discuss and demo their Elections Ed that uses real data
from historical elections to allow you to run your own elections. Then
hack the night away on current projects or propose new civic hacking
projects with new friends!

 

Pizza and other consumables will be provided. Please RSVP so we know how
much to buy.

 

*Register
at:* https://www.eventbrite.com/e/7th-annual-election-night-hackathon-tic...

 

 

*FOSS@MAGIC Talks - Open Source @ Facebook - November 15th, 4:30pm - 6pm*

 

FOSS@MAGIC would like to invite everyone to attend our next FOSS Talk on
Wednesday, November 15 as we welcome Christine Abernathy, the Open
Source Developer Advocate at Facebook. 

 

She'll be sharing insight into some of their challenges that they've
faced as they continue to scale their open source program and some of
the tools and processes they've used to help solve their biggest
engineering challenges.

 

Pizza and other consumables will be provided. Please RSVP so we know how
much to buy.

 

*Register
at:* https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fossmagic-talks-open-source-facebook-wi...

 

 

*FOSS Hours – Every Wednesday, 4pm-6pm*

 

We would additionally like to invite everyone to join us at our weekly
FOSS Hours in GCCIS-2500 (GOL Hall). Anyone who is interested in any
form of open source (software, hardware, design, art), or would like to
hang out and meet folks from the RIT open source community is invited to
join us. Be sure to invite your friends.

 

For more events and news, feel free to join us on Telegram or IRC, along
with watching for updates at foss.rit.edu <http://foss.rit.edu/>;.

 

Thanks!

Dan

-- 

Dan Schneiderman

FOSS@MAGIC Research Associate and Community Liaison

Rochester Institute of Technology

585.478.6898 <tel:(585)%20478-6898>

dan(a)magic.rit.edu <mailto:[e-mail]>

magic.rit.edu  <http://magic.rit.edu/> I  www.rit.edu <http://www.rit.edu/>

[David E. Narvaez]

On Monday, 16 October 2017 14:54:00 EDT Justin W. Flory wrote:
>  *7th Annual Election Night Hackathon - November 7th, 5pm - 11pm*
>  
>  
>  
>  Learn about civic hacking and watch the regional and national election
>  results arrive in real time. Hear from speakers from Second Avenue
>  Learning will discuss and demo their Elections Ed that uses real data
>  from historical elections to allow you to run your own elections. Then
>  hack the night away on current projects or propose new civic hacking
>  projects with new friends! 
It would be great, in the context of this event, to keep this in mind:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/hackathons.html

In particular (i.e., the tl;dr is):

"Hackathons should ask each participating project to pledge to follow this 
rule:

    If you ever release or use this code or design, you will release its 
source code under a free (libre) license. If you distribute the code in 
executable form, you will make that free (libre) also.

Many hackathons are sponsored or hosted by schools, which is an additional 
reason they should adopt this rule. Free software is a contribution to public 
knowledge, while nonfree software withholds knowledge from the public. Thus, 
free software supports the spirit of education, while proprietary software 
opposes it. Schools should insist that all their software development be free 
software, including that of hackathons they support."

-- 
David E. Narvaez

[Justin W. Flory]

On 10/16/2017 03:21 PM, David E. Narvaez wrote:
>  Many hackathons are sponsored or hosted by schools, which is an
> additional 
>  reason they should adopt this rule. Free software is a contribution to public 
>  knowledge, while nonfree software withholds knowledge from the public. Thus, 
>  free software supports the spirit of education, while proprietary software 
>  opposes it. Schools should insist that all their software development be free 
>  software, including that of hackathons they support."
>   
Hi David! Thanks for your comments here. :)

For all six previous years of this events, students are encouraged to
open source their projects and collaborate with others at the event.
There's also usually "open source gurus" around the event to help answer
questions and introduce open source licensing for people that have
questions.

However, forcing students to open source any of their projects they make
also doesn't feel like the right way either. Maintaining freedom of
choice for students to decide how they want to share (or not share)
their projects is at their own liberty. And I think it's better to
introduce students to the benefits of open sourcing their code and help
them understand why, then telling them that to participate in the event,
their code must be released open source. It doesn't feel like the truly
"free" thing from my point of view (this is also a personal viewpoint as
a student too, and I don't represent the organizers or MAGIC with that).

-- 
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7(a)gmail.com

[Stephen Jacobs]

FOSS@RIT hackathons encourage FOSS licensing.  Often, as when we are local sites for
larger events like Space Apps, they mandate Open Licenses.  As this event, and our Spring
one, we will focus on civic and humanitarian hacking, spaces in which FOSS licenses are
generally expected, especially since many will be working on existing open projects.

SJ



>  On Oct 16, 2017, at 3:56 PM, Justin W. Flory
> <jflory7(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  On 10/16/2017 03:21 PM, David E. Narvaez wrote:
> > Many hackathons are sponsored or hosted by schools, which is an additional 
> > reason they should adopt this rule. Free software is a contribution to public 
> > knowledge, while nonfree software withholds knowledge from the public. Thus, 
> > free software supports the spirit of education, while proprietary software 
> > opposes it. Schools should insist that all their software development be free 
> > software, including that of hackathons they support."
> > 
>  
>  Hi David! Thanks for your comments here. :)
>  
>  For all six previous years of this events, students are encouraged to
>  open source their projects and collaborate with others at the event.
>  There's also usually "open source gurus" around the event to help answer
>  questions and introduce open source licensing for people that have
>  questions.
>  
>  However, forcing students to open source any of their projects they make
>  also doesn't feel like the right way either. Maintaining freedom of
>  choice for students to decide how they want to share (or not share)
>  their projects is at their own liberty. And I think it's better to
>  introduce students to the benefits of open sourcing their code and help
>  them understand why, then telling them that to participate in the event,
>  their code must be released open source. It doesn't feel like the truly
>  "free" thing from my point of view (this is also a personal viewpoint as
>  a student too, and I don't represent the organizers or MAGIC with that).
>  
>  -- 
>  Cheers,
>  Justin W. Flory
>  jflory7(a)gmail.com
>  
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