A Professor's Perspective on Open Source in Academia

ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

In the past, I've written about Mel Chua and Red Hat's POSSE (Professor's Open Source Summer Experience). Now Heidi Ellis, Associate Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and Information Technology department at Western New England College, shares her thoughts on the differences between the open source and academic communities. Ellis says, "The open source way is very opportunistic and flexible, while academia is very planned and structured." Ellis goes on to say, "Clearly, there are also large differences in culture. But I think that collaboration between open source and academic realms can work, as there are also some strong commonalities between the groups." Read her excellent article on the opensource.com site.