FOSS @ MAGIC

One of the most unique initiatives at MAGIC is the FOSSBox, an applied research lab that originally grew out of the Department of Interactive Games and Media's course in educational game development for the OLPC. Today, FOSS@MAGIC sponsors numerous projects, hackathons, meetups, and events throughout the year in conjunction with the MAGIC Center, the School of Interactive Games & Media, the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences, and other elements of the campus that span the entire university, as well as numerous external partners. Since 2009, this group has brought FOSS speakers to campus, sponsored professional development opportunities for faculty, housed externally sponsored faculty and student created research and development projects, and has brought regional FOSS conferences to the RIT campus on several occasions. This group is an active and vibrant part of the Rochester Open Source movement, and is engaged with a variety of institutions throughout the region and the nation.

Specifically, FOSS @ RIT is an initiative to promote Free/Open Source Software related activities that:

• Pursue applied research in and around RIT and with sponsors and external entities
• Support Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships
• Develop and/or supports FOSS academic efforts including the Open Source Minor, project courses and independent studies
• Coordinate and/or sponsors FOSS events like hackathons, speakers and POSSE
• Offer students employment opportunities for part-time work and co-ops with projects that are released via open-source license

The initiative grew out of the School of Interactive Games and Media's first seminar in educational game development for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in 2008. Starting in 2009, student, faculty, staff and community interest across the institute and throughout Rochester have grown the initiative to sponsor...

• 50+ hackathons regional get-togethers, birds-of-a-feather gatherings
• internationally renowned speakers such as Richard Stallman, Hal Abelson and Walter Bender
• Professional development opportunities for faculty, staff and graduate students including three annual week-long instances of POSSE
• Outreach to other Colleges and Universities, K-12 schools and community organizations like Hacks/Hackers Rochester and the Girl Scouts
• 30+ Undergraduate Research Fellowships, Co-Ops and part-time student positions doing humanitarian project work including nation-building work with UNICEF’s Innovation Lab in Kosovo, OLPC Corps Africa, and Educational Games for OLPC SugarLabs downloaded around the world and honored at the White House.
• Applied research projects for RIT, Red Hat, Mozilla Open Badges, OLPC and Sugar Labs
• Civic Hacking events such as AT&T Rochester Civic App Challenge and Random Hacks of Kindness
• Additional academic courses for IGM, including the first Minor in Open Source Software and Free Culture, which will be offered beginning in Fall Semester of 2014 by IGM

Get Involved

Join our IRC Channel #rit-foss and #rit-innovation on irc.freenode.net. This is a great place to introduce yourself and get in contact with anyone involved in foss@magic. We have an IRC bot running under the name foss_bot which sits in and logs any channel we fell is important to the Foss project. You can also visit us on Facebook, and connect with us through MAGIC.

Key Programs and Departments Engaged in FOSS @ MAGIC

• School of Interactive Games & Media, Golisano College of Computing & Information Sciences: The School of IGM is home to several courses and projects, as well as the Minor in Open Source and Free Culture, the first of its kind at any academic institution in the USA.

Background and Need for Research

Support for Open Source methodologies and practices is in its early stages in higher education. Computing programs around the world use tools, develop code libraries, and share their work with others, but often publish in ways that are restrictive, non-collaborative or less 'open' than they might appear. Traditional academic publishing is a closed, and in some cases predatory, practice. The current commercial sector is dominated by players that produce closed-source solutions, but this is rapidly changing; with several major corporations now producing libraries and toolsets available through Open Source licenses. Open Source is now a growing strategic component of the software world, but that is only scratching the surface. While the methodologies and practices of the FOSS movement often seem a good match to the ethos of the university, we feel universities must go further and provide direct educational and experiential opportunities for students to learn about Open Source processes and practices. Only by directly engaging in work with these tools, practices, and communities will students effectively incorporate the benefits of the Open Source approach in their own work and contributions.

Our work is humanitarian in focus and is generously supported by Red Hat and by Fedora (who donated the original 25 XO laptops that started us off for RIT's first FOSS class.) OLPC, Sugar Labs, and others have donated hardware and/or sponsored co-ops and Hackathons. Our funding is used largely to support Open Source student projects, library contributions, and development opportunities. In addition, such funding supports hackathons, outreach and engagement events with the local community and regional and national institutions. Our work engages students, faculty, and staff in exploring the possibilities as software becomes a freely available resource, both to draw from and contribute to. We're solving the world's problems through code.

In addition to the partners of the MAGIC Center that the FOSS@MAGIC initiative draws upon as a part of its work, the initiative also works with several partners that are distinctive to the particular focus of our work in free and open source software:

BarcampROC

In the spirit of FooCamp, BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Computer Science House (CSH)

Computer Science House, founded in 1976, is one of the oldest and most popular Special Interest Houses at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. Located on the third floor of the dormitory Nathaniel Rochester Hall, CSH provides a revolutionary living environment for over fifty students and many members who live off-floor.

Fedora

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in Free and Open Source Software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community and anyone is welcome to join.

InterlockROC

Started in 2009 as the first Hackerspace in Rochester, NY it provides members with a place to share, learn, and develop their ideas in a community environment. Members have access to the space 24/7 and can use it to store their projects, hold meetings, attend classes, or just hang out with other people doing extremely interesting stuff.

OLPC

The One Laptop per Child is a non-profit that develops a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children. Their mission is to provide educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by giving each child a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop; and software tools and content designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

Sugar Labs

The mission of Sugar Labs® is to produce, distribute, and support the use of the Sugar learning platform; it is a support base and gathering place for the community of educators and developers to create, extend, teach, and learn with the Sugar learning platform. Sugar is based on the following principles: (1) everyone is a teacher and a learner; (2) humans by their nature are social beings; (3) humans by their nature are expressive; (4) you learn through doing; and (5) love is a better master than duty.

Undergraduate Research Symposium Projects, Presentations & Downloads

• Open Video Chat
• Open Video Chat Presentation
• Fortune Hunter Engine Paper
• Fortune Hunter Game & Animation Engine Presentation

Additional Papers & Presentations

• Round Table on curriculum at Teaching Open Source Summit
• HFOSS Symposium Round Table
• Open Source Software Mini-Summit
• RemyD at TEDx Buffalo
• Connectology 2011
• CIVX CapitolCamp 2011
• CIVX WeLiveNY Summit