tech giants funding ed for open source

NetSquared
Posted 7 years 27 weeks ago
by NetSquared
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In October, Sun Microsystems announced that it was spinning off

...the Global Education and Learning Community(GELC) as a nonprofit organization serving the needs of the education community.... The GELC provides an online portal for teachers to share resources and knowledge that would otherwise go undiscovered, breaking new ground in free and open source computing and helping educators meet the needs of students by sharing best practices around the globe. As a nonprofit, the organization will have access to more resources, including participation from other major corporations and governmental entities...

NewsForge ("The Online Newspaper for Linux and Open Source") notes that the offering is "aimed squarely at the company's own Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris platforms," and contrasts the Sun move with IBM's Academic Initiative (formerly, the IBM Scholars Program), announced late last year. The article quotes the associate director of Oregon State University's Open Source Lab...

"Sun I'm sure would love to be able to get more people hacking on their software, both Solaris and Java. The key difference here is that IBM's is focusing on open standards-based software," he said. "Yes, they have a bit of their own software in there, but they aren't excluding alternatives. IBM, as well as companies like Google, understand that having a healthy open source community is good for their business. I'm afraid that Sun hasn't made that connection yet. I look at the GELC and see another 'come and play with open source as Sun sees it' initiative."

On the day following the Sun announcement, the financial investment magazine, Red Herring, reported on another company intent on building stronger ties to academia...

Microsoft has created a $1.2-million fund to help academic researchers tackle technology challenges related to improving health, education, and socioeconomic conditions.... [T]he Digital Inclusion... initiative is intended to reach people who have little or no access to technology, especially in developing countries...