The Center's Mission (Score 2)

The Anonymous Coward got it right:

• Who said this has anything to do with software?

  They plan "... to study how to apply the open source movement to a broader range of uses."

  In other words, why does it cost 10,000s of dollars to get a college degree?

  Why can't an instructor teach the same class at a different university without getting sued by his previous employer? Can education be open-sourced?

  What about an automobile engine? Can its design be open-sourced? What about its manufacturing process?

The press release about the Center was purposefully vague. One, because it was written by lawyers, and two, because we want to leave the door wide open for the Center and its board of directors to decide how it will go about its business. Certainly, the Center will fund software development. It will be done in cooperation with, and very likely *through*, organizations like OSI, SPI, FSF, Linux International, etc.

But the real mission of the Center is to facilitate Open Source-style thinking in fields outside of software development. There is an incredible amount of interest and confusion about this topic that increase as you move further away from coding. What the Center hopes to accomplish is to cause people to realize that Open Source is not as radical or "niche" as it may seem to the untrained eye. In fact the opposite is true: Open Source is founded on principles that are the bedrock of a free society. Principles that are not new. Principles that have been driving segments of our society for hundreds of years, in science, the law, governance, etc.

In the end, all of us in the Open Source community are trying to do the same thing: help other people understand, benefit from and become part of our incredible community. The Red Hat Center for Open Source is going to try to do this in a unique way - by showing people they already believe in Open Source!

-Marc

PS - The Center's Board is now in the process of figuring out exactly what it will do and how it will go about it. Stay tuned for announcements from the Center in the next month or two.