FOSS @ RIT is an initiative to promote Free/Open Source Software related activities at RIT that...

• Pursues Applied Research in and around RIT and with Sponsors and External Entities
• Supports Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships
• Develops and/or supports FOSS Academic Efforts including Courses and Independent Studies
• Coordinates and/or Sponsors FOSS Events like Hackathons, Speakers and POSSE
• Offers students employment opportunities for part-time work and Co-Ops

Our Lab, the FOSSBox, can be found in the MAGIC Center.

Our History

OLPC was the Trojan Horse to Open Source for Professor Stephen Jacobs, director of RIT’s Lab for Technological Literacy (LTL), the entity in which the FOSS@RIT initiative is housed. The LTL grew out of Jacobs early interest in computers as devices for education and media. Seymour Papert spoke at Parkmount Junior High School while he was a student there and his first computing job was running a Turtle Robot for the Capitol Children's Museum in DC when he was in High School. Intrigued by the OLPC Jacobs acquired three OLPC XO 1.0 laptops in 2007 via the first "Give One, Get One" program. His intent was to make them available to students for experimentation and to possibly create a seminar course in developing games for the platform.

The LTL also ran a campus Users Group with then lab associate Eric Grace from January to June 2008. Fred Grose, an active OLPC community volunteer, joined the LTL campus users group meetings and worked with an RIT usability class to assess OLPC usability in 2008. He also made a generous donation to the lab to fund some early OLPC work.

The seminar course was first offered in the spring of 2009 through the RIT Honor’s program. To support the class, Jacobs and Grace decided to create a community wide users’ group around the OLPC to support the class. Key members of the group were Grace, Grose and Karlie Robinson, an entrepreneur who runs the Open Source distribution business OnDisk.com.

Robinson, a long-time Open Source advocate, connected the class to Sugar Labs’ Math 4 initiative and the Fedora Community, which donated 25 laptops to the LTL for use in Sugar development in general, and Math software and games to support 4th grade curricula in specific.

The course was offered in March 2009, with Jacobs and Grace co-teaching and developing the materials and Grose and Robinson as user group representatives who visited the class regularly; roles they reprised in the next two iterations of the course. The class also attended regular user group meetings to meet with community members and discuss projects and techniques. After the first course the LTL moved to RIT’s new Center for Student Innovation (CSI) and began FOSS@RIT. The efforts documented by, and hosted on this site began there.

FOSS@RIT picked up speed In Winter Quarter, 2009, Remy DeCausemaker, RIT alum, joined the CSI as an Alumni Fellow and has supported the course, and the efforts that emerged from it, through to the present. Also in that quarter, adjunct professor David Shein taught the course for the first time. He has contributed to the development of the current course and taught it in its most recent offering. In fall of 2010 the OLPC Users Group merged with the local Python user group, which began meeting in the CSI and the current version of the seminar, now a full blown course, continues the tradition of holding class meeting in conjunction with the Pythonistas once a month.

People

Current Staff

Stephen Jacobs

Director, Lab for Technological Literacy
email: sj@mail.rit.edu

Stephen is the Director of the Lab for Technological Literacy at RIT and is currently one of three faculty working on an NSF funded CCLI grant on teaching social Media. He has an MA in Media Studies, New School for Social Research. He teaches primarily graduate and undergraduate courses in Computer Game Development and On-Line Community. His strong communications background is combined with consulting and publication interests in the use of computing technology tools in all facets of communication, education and the arts. He has consulted for several multimedia corporations including Crayola and "Break It, Fix It, Ride It."

He is on the executive committees of the International Game Developers Association Writers and Education SIGs and of the Sandbox Symposium, a games conference co-located annually with the SIGGRAPH conference. He has had a second career as a journalist since 1987 and has published over 250 articles on games, entertainment and personal technology. He's been a regular columnist for the magazines: Videomaker, Television Business International, TV 2.0 and the technology news web site CNET. His "What the Tech!" radio show, aired for three years on NPR, WXXI AM 1370.

Remy DeCausemaker

Hacktivist & Storyteller, Lab for Technological Literacy
email: remyd@civx.us

Remy serves as Stephen Jacobs' "FOSSBoss" presiding over the FOSSBox in the Center for Student Innovation (bldg 87-1680)--RIT's dedicated space for all things Free and Opensource. He coordinates each of the FOSS@RIT campaigns, including OpenVideoChat, CIVX, and Wikiotics. When he's not coding himself, he mentors the students and professors of the OLPC Honors Seminar Courses. As RIT's resident Hacktivist he facilitates hackathons and codesprints each quarter, including the Great American Hackathon, CrisisCampROC: Hackathon for Haiti, BarcampROC5, and the CapitolCamp & Developer Summit. Being the Center for Student Innovation's Head Storyteller, Remy sydicates ongoing coverage of the FOSS@RIT campaigns through the innovation.rit.edu blog to places like Opensource.com and Teachingopensource.org.

Before being invited back to RIT on his fellowship, his most recent campaign work was volunteering with the Software Freedom Law Center in Manhattan, where he organized NYC's Software Freedom Day '08, and collaborated with Students for Free Culture and Creative Commons on the Columbia and New York University campuses. DeCausemaker serves on the board of CIVX.us--a not-for-profit organization improving access, openness, and transparancy of public information--of which he is a co-founder and campaign architect.

Taylor Rose

OpenVideoChat Team, NTID/PEN International
Wikiotics Team, LTL

Taylor Rose is not only RIT's Star Rockclimber, he is also a FOSS rockstar. Taylor has been previously hired to work on 2 FOSS@RIT co-ops, and was again hired to work on our first client project, Wikiotics; an Opensource Language Learning Platform. Taylor also helped to prop up the web2py backend for the CSI Beta Site, and continues to contribute to other FOSS@RIT campaigns when he's not leading the pack over at the Red Barn.

Nathaniel Case

CIVX Team, LTL
Wikiotics Team, LTL
Lemonade Stand, Student Developer, HFOSS Course

Nate was part of the first flight of students taking the OLPC Honor's Seminar Course, now a full fledged course at RIT under the title Humanitarian Free and Opensource Software Development. After proving his python chops, Nate was hired by the CIVX project as a researcher and back end developer. He was able to glue together multiple libraries and stacks, and push the state of the art in scraping Javascript and other kinds of "difficult data".

Nate was then contracted by the LTL on behalf of the wikiotics project to work with Taylor on improving their language learning platform, and adding to their suite of language lessons.

Former Staff

Justin Lewis

Open Video Chat Lead Dev, NTID/PEN International
Student Fellow, Center For Student Innovation
Fortune Hunter/Engine/Maker Lead Developer, LTL
FOSS@RIT Lead Developer, LTL

Jlew, as he is known around the net, has been vital to every FOSS@RIT project since we hired him as our first student developer. He is now the lead developer of our FOSS@RIT campaign, and has committed code to just about every stack and bot we have. Justin was then hired to work on the new Beta site for the Center for Student Innovation, and helps maintain his extensive code base with the Fortune Hunter project.

Eric M. Grace

Lead Researcher, Lab for Technological Literacy

Eric is the lead researcher for the Lab for Technological Literacy at RIT. As a New York State Certified K-12 Art Educator with a Master of Science in Teaching from Rochester Institute of Technology, he taught in the Rochester City School District for three years. During those years he started his own educational organization developing programs for Monroe County's Rochester Works!, City of Rochester's Summer of Opportunity, the Rochester After School Academy, the Rochester City School District, Rochester Institute of Technology, and many other local organizations.

Eric is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors for a local educational organization, ArtPeace Inc. He is focused on narrowing the educational and digital divide both locally and abroad to enhance and enrich lives.