What is the Open Source Lab?
The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships and industry events like the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the Lab's staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care and other sectors.
 What is Open Source Software?
"Open source" means that the building blocks for a program are freely available to use, modify, and improve. This provides for rapid software development by contributors worldwide, and the resulting program is available for anyone to use, anywhere, free of charge.
For more information on open source software and the Open Source Lab, click here.
 Open Source is all about contributions.
Countless numbers of developers are all giving of their time and talents to code, document, test, design, and deliver software so that the end user may benefit from it. The Open Source Lab is here to contribute resources to the community, allowing developers to focus on what they do best rather than having to spend time worrying about system resources and hosting. To continue operating, we need your contributions as well.

Latest OSUOSL News

Drupal Logo

Oregon State University Open Source Lab has begun a new Drupal training program aimed at OSU faculty and staff. Drupal has already been deployed by Central Web Services for many departments on campus, and we hope that by providing Author and Administrator training we will help other departments on campus adopt Drupal as the content management system for their web sites.

More information about the OSUOSL Drupal Training can be found on our Drupal Training Page.

The training sessions are available to OSU faculty and staff, but anyone can download and use the training materials. Currently, only the Author Training is complete, but check back soon for more information on the Administrator Training.

OSU Faculty and Staff can sign up now for the training.

The Open Source Lab is now hosting an OLPC Community Support Site.

The support site provides a portal to various OLPC resources such as forum, chat, and email lists. If you own an XO laptop, are thinking of purchasing one, or just want to check things out, be sure to head over to the site: http://forum.laptop.org

DemocracyLab 1/03/08

We're pleased to announce DemocracyLab is now hosted at the OSL.

A self-described interactive online think tank, DemocracyLab is a nonprofit and non-partisan organization founded with the goal of creating a virtual community dedicated to improving the democratic process and producing collaborative solutions to public policy problems. The project underway is creating a system that takes participants’ posts and votes to build a dynamic map of political thought designed to facilitate consensus building and collaborative problem solving. The intended result is a web-based "public forum where the best thinking rises to the top, creating a community-driven alternative to traditional politics".

More information is available at: http://democracylab.org