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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News - Operating Systems & Middleware:
OSDL Creates New College, University Affiliate Program
The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium of technology
companies dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux, announced a new Lab
membership initiative dedicated to supporting qualifying institutions of
higher education.
The new program is designed to attract affiliates among colleges and
universities interested in Linux research and deployment. The first
institutions joining OSDL under the new program are Marist College, Oregon
State University, Stanford University, Tokyo University of Technology and
Waseda University in Japan.
"Higher education is the incubator for tomorrow's technology breakthroughs and
this is especially true for Linux," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "We want
to encourage broader deployment of Linux among colleges and universities as
well as to facilitate research to drive advances in Linux technology. This new
affiliate program will make it easy and attractive for colleges and
universities around the world to join OSDL and participate in our
initiatives."
Linux itself began as the project of a computer science student, Linus
Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in 1991.
Under the new program, accredited universities and colleges can join OSDL as
Affiliates and participate along with their corporate peers in initiatives
such as the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux, Data Center Linux and Desktop Linux
working groups. The goal is to provide a forum where commercial Linux vendors
and the academic Linux community can come together to share ideas and address
common problems. In addition, university researchers can access the OSDL's
data center computing facilities in the United States and Japan.
"Joining OSDL is an important strategic move in supporting further innovation,
research and competitiveness in open source development," said Dennis J.
Murray, president of Marist College. "Through cooperation with OSDL, Marist
can expand our work with businesses, government agencies, Linux developers, IT
vendors, and other universities to help prepare our students to take advantage
opportunities presented by the global growth of Linux."
"Our students and faculty benefit from using Linux and we're pleased to join
OSDL to contribute back to the Linux community," said Joe Little, principal
systems architect of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. "We
anticipate that interaction with IT vendors, Linux developers, corporate end-
users, and other universities will be beneficial to our university community."
OSDL is working with participating colleges and universities on a program to
advance Linux by:
- Providing a vendor neutral environment for collaboration.
- Linking universities with industry to improve opportunities for research
projects and student placement.
- Creating a forum for cross-institutional sharing of curriculum and other
academic issues related to open source.
- Providing insight on open source projects that are well suited for higher
education development.
- Fostering dialog between University and Commercial CIOs.
Beyond working group participation, college and university affiliates will
participate in a "Linux in higher-education" forum hosted by OSDL. This
program will begin as an on-line forum, but is expected to expand into
regularly scheduled conferences hosted at member institutions' campuses. This
forum will allow member institutions to exchange information on a range of
topics including:
- Discuss issues and topics specific to academia.
- Propose projects for grant consideration by other members.
- Solicit guest lecturers.
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