Workshop on Open Source and Open Content 2008

The Workshop on Open Source and Open Content (WOSOC) will be held from 30th of November till the 3rd of December 2008. The venue is Bali Dynasty Hotel, Denpasar - Bali, Indonesia. The theme for the WOSOC is “Making the Open Source and Open Content work for people”. It is expected to attract international and region participants and will bring together participants representative of government, businesses, civil society organizations and academics.

The WOSOC 2008 will investigate several questions with respect to the use and development of Open Source and Open Content in various countries particularly in developing countries. Exploring these questions is crucial for the capacity building, capability formation, competency building and knowledge creation in ensuring a sustainable development model. Practical examples of the possibilities and consequences of open source adoption are taken from industrialized countries and highlighting initiatives in developing countries.

Many developing countries identify that information and communication technologies (ICT) offer significant opportunities to address current demands and repositioning for a better future. Unfortunately, developing countries always face the high cost of software license, making it the principal reason for unauthorized copying. Furthermore, the proprietary and closed source software sometimes makes developing countries unable to afford customization in order to fulfill the local needs. Open Source Software (OSS) enables developing countries to solve these problems and adapt software to meet local needs without licensing problem.

WOSOC 2008 introduces two main tracks :

* Open Source Track
* Open Content Track

Track 1. Open Source

The availability of OSS may be critical to technology trajectories in ICT. OSS has the potential to help democratization and help find solutions to the most pressing problems faced by developing countries. Due to the lower labor cost in developing countries, cost of re-training users and hiring skilled people to migrate and run OSS based systems is not as high as it is i n developed countries. More importantly, this training cost is contributing to the local economy rather than paying expensive software license fees.

Government and public sector organizations have initiated the use of OSS as a key part of their policy in information technol ogy. It is motivated by the reduction in cost of IT investments, as well as independence of development, a drive for security and autonomy, and a means to address intellectual property rights enforcement. Some governments already employ software procurement policies, which require the use of OSS.

In implementing information systems, government and public organizations have to consider many factors including flexibility, features, scalability, cost, and security. Information systems that are used to capture, create, store, process or distribut e classified information must be properly managed to protect against unauthorized disclosure of classified information, loss of data integrity, and to ensure the availability of data and system. The perception that OSS is less secure than “professionally” developed closed source proprietary software is a common one, but is substantially flawed. Discussing the real situation of OSS with respect to security, trust and privacy will prove that OSS can be more trusted in the wide deployment.

OSS provides an opportunity to achieve a public sector that is just, effective, transparent and accountable. To establish the sustainability of OSS in public sector, OSS must create business opportunities for private firms, reduce cost of IT inves tment in the private and/or public sectors of the economy and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government. Theref ore, OSS can assist in bridging the digital gap between developed and developing countries. Thus, a framework for understan ding the policy implications surrounding open source software should be developed in order to ensure the success of implementation.

The openness of OSS creates opportunities to provide bigger accessibility of the ICT. Accessibility is used to describe the degree to which a system is usable by as many people as possible. It is about inclusion of all people. Particular groups of users are still being neglected in the development of ICT such as women and people who has limitation in language. Women constitute over half of the population, by far a majority yet their numbers are not evident in ICT applications and the ICT industry. Other aspects is the language, predominant technology is supplied in European languages yet for many developing countries this is not their mother tongue and they are limited to accessing either later in life or through a second language.

The focus of this track is the discussion about development and implementation of various open source software and solution for various domains. The topics of interest of the track include:

1.1. Studies of OSS deployment

* OSS as solution for the public sector: Government, Education, Health Care or Defense
* OSS as solution for private sector
* Mining and analyzing the OSS projects repositories
* Knowledge management, eLearning platform using OSS
* Quality metrics for the OSS artifacts
* Software assurance method for OSS development
* Social impact and cultural issues in use of OSS
* Policy issues in use and development of OSS
* Assessment and development methodologies for OSS projects and projects employing OSS
* User-centered design, human factor and usability aspects of OSS
* Training strategies for OSS deployment
* Trust, security and privacy in OSS
* OSS and dependability system
* Scalability issues
* Case studies

1.2. Specific OSS solutions for IT

* OSS solutions for infrastructures, middle-ware
* OSS solutions for data grid computing
* Health services management and E-Health
* Biomedical Ontologies and Very Large Databases
* Semantic web technologies
* Enterprise system using OSS such as ERP, CRM and Decision Support System
* Application and development of OSS database management systems
* Embedding OSS code in larger applications
* OSS data sharing solutions: distributed file systems, data spaces, P2P environments
* OSS for data intensive applications
* Service Oriented Architecture
* Business-oriented and consumer-oriented system
* CASE tools for system development
* Open source in smart phones and mobile networked devices
* Open hardware and licensing
* Case studies

1.3. OSS communities and project management

* Working with OSS communities
* Organizational and management issues
* Coordination among member of OSS development projects
* OSS development projects across national boundaries
* Requirement engineering in OSS development projects
* Project management issues related to OSS development projects
* Sustainability of Open Source Projects
* Open Source and Open Standard as government policy
* Woman in Open Source development activities
* Law, culture, and non technical issues
* Open source in democracy, politics, government, and education
* Best practices for building a business model around open source
* Community, users and architecture of collaboration
* Interoperability frameworks and inter-administration in e-Government
* Case studies

Track 2. Open Content

In recent years, there is a strong interest among academics, policy makers, activists, businessmen and other practitioners in open collaboration and access as a driver of creativity. The focus of this track is to discuss the mechanism of free dissemination and access of knowledge. Internet offers the possibility of making knowledge universally accessible. Nowadays, research organizations advocate consistently using the Internet for scientific communication and publishing. Their recommendations in favor of open access are directed not only at research institutions but also and to the same extent at cultural institutes such as libraries, archives, and museums. As a result, publishing practices are expected to undergo considerable changes.

OSS has a complementary and reciprocal relationship to research and education. One needs an educated section of the population to fulfill the full potential of OSS, and at the same time OSS helps, enhances and complements education by providing tools to promote research and education. OSS provides opportunities: unrestricted access to the source code and knowledge, an environment of unlimited experimentation and tinkering and collaboration and interaction with a community of programmers, coders and users around the world.

The notions of open science and open data demonstrate the strong tradition of openness in the academic community. The open nature of open content, makes the collaboration for creative work more sustainable. Open access journals and other open content provide inspiring examples of collaborative creativity and participatory access, such as Wikipedia. Open collaboration is closely linked to access to knowledge issues, enabling active participation rather than passive consumption especially in developing countries. Open Collaboration and access are the driver of creativity.

Open access publishing is known to involve the free availability of the results of research mainly in the form of scholarly articles. For authors, open access can be achieved by publishing articles in open access journals, and/or by storing copies of articles in open access archives or repositories. Publishing articles in this mechanism is considered an alternative to publishing in the traditional journals. An Open Access journal allows all those who have Internet access to freely read, download, copy, distribute, and print articles and other materials. Open content often looks explicitly towards open source software for business models, and open science provides through its history a glimpse of the potential of openness,

The concept of aggregating, sharing, and collaboratively enriching free educational materials over the Internet has been emerging over the past several years. The movement has been led by faculty members and content specialists who believe that making lesson plans, training modules and full courses freely available can help improve teaching. Unfortunately, the movement to use open educational resources in higher education has not yet realized the full impact. It is still in its infancy and faces some technical and cultural challenges that affect its widespread adoption.

Interoperability — the ability of multiple initiatives on different technology platforms to seamlessly share metadata and resources–is at the root of the technical challenge for open education resources. While the present lack of interoperability is a challenge, it is also the nature of innovation, such as the make use of Open Standard. Open Standards are also increasingly seen as key enablers of the transfer of information across organizations, systems, and devices.

The closed-door, “this is mine” mentality and pride of ownership over content are still the great challenge to open educational resources. Issues of ownership and intellectual property rights are a related cultural – and legal – challenge. Still to be discussed is the value of licenses that allow for commercial or non-commercial use of content, and the importance of enabling the modification and adaptation of the content.

Open Source and Open Content can bring a global revolution in teaching and learning in which educators and students could be much more actively engaged as creators, users, and adapters of content. This transformation can only occur if educators, authors, publishers, and higher education institutions make more materials available and accessible for public use. Open education holds the promise of opening the door of higher education to millions. For example, open content can reduce the need to purchase expensive textbooks, which can constitute up to three-fourths of community-college students’ spending. A national policy document for developing countries could be used by government or their science-funding organizations to speed up the scientific progress

Human capacity, including skills and competencies, is vital to success in a knowledge economy, and OSS and Open Content provides a basis for building such skills because of low barriers to entry and innovation.

2.1. Open Content

* Case studies of Open Content usage
* Open Content for disseminating learning material
* Open Content in developing countries
* Sustainability of open content projects
* Open Standard format for document and data
* OpenGIS
* Open Content development and publishing model
* Legal aspects of Open Content

2.2. Open Access

* Case studies of Open Access
* Open Access Journal
* Dissemination of scientific work
* Disseminating the learning material
* Library and Open Access policy
* Open Archiving
* Freedom of Information Access

2.3 Bussines model for Open Access and Open Content

* Business model for using the open access material
* Government projects using the open contents material
* Government projects which encourage the development of open content material
* Capacity and community building projects using open content material

Papers should address the issues involved in building sustainable models for openness in science, software and content. They can examine technical, sociological, economic/business and legal issues, and can be conceptual or practical in nature. Case studies by practitioners are welcome.

Paper Submission

WOSOC 2008 invites submission of high quality and original papers on the topics of the major tracks.. Prospective authors are invited to submit their full paper (about 5 to 7 pages - single space, font size of 10 to 12) to WOSOC 2008 Organizing Committee. Email submissions in ODF, LaTeX, or PDF formats are preferable. All reasonable typesetting formats are acceptable (later, the authors of accepted papers will be asked to follow a particular typesetting format to prepare their
papers for publication).

All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers for technical merit, originality, significance and relevance to the topics of the corresponding track. Each paper will be refereed by two experts in the field who are independent of the conference program committee. The referees’ evaluations will then be reviewed by one member of the program committee who will recommend a decision to the co-chairs of the track. The track chairs will make the final decision. Lastly, the Camera-Ready papers will be reviewed by one member of the program committee.

The length of the Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (IEEE style) pages. Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. The first page of the draft paper should include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, and email address of each author as well as the name of the conference the paper is being submitted. The first page should also identify the name of the contact author and a maximum of 5 topical keywords that would best represent the content of the paper.

Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and CD which published by patner of WOSOC organization.

All WOSOC 2008 speakers have their conference registration fee waived. Note that it is important that you get your papers in by the due dates. We reserve the right to withdraw the free registration if you do not get it in on time. If you are having problems meeting the deadlines, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can work with you to figure it out. 

There is specific registration fee for citizenship of Indonesia who stay in Indonesia, please contact Eri Prasetyo [eri_at_staff.gunadarma.ac.id], please change _at_ with @. Submission August 22nd, 2008
Notification September 12th, 2008
Camera Ready October 3rd, 2008
Author registration October 10th, 2008
Conference November 30th – December 3rd , 2008

Organization

Hononary Chairs
Eko Sri Margianti, Gunadarma University, Indonesia

General Chairs
Cahyana, Ministry of Information and Communication, Indonesia

General Vice Chairs
Yuhara Sukra, Gunadarma Univeristy, Indonesia
Budi Darmadi, Ministry of Industry of Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia [in process]
Suryadi, H. S., Gunadarma University, Indonesia

Track Organizer
Open Source Software track : Adang Suhendra, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
Open Content track : A. Benny Mutiara, Gunadarma University, Indonesia

Steering Committee
Alexander Rusli (Ministry of State Owned Enterprises, Indonesia)
Engkos Koswara (Ministry of Research of Technology, Indonesia)
Ernesto Damiani, Milan University, Italy
Haklin Alex Kimm (East Stroudburg University, USA)
Kokou Yetongnon (Bourgogne University, France)
Onno W Poerbo (Independence, Indonesia)
Peter B. Ladkin (Bielefeld University, Germany)

Local Commitee
I Made Wiryana, Gunadarma University, Indonesia (Co-Chair)
A. Benny Mutiara, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
Tb. Maulana Kusuma, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
I Wayan Simri Wicaksana, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
Eri Prasetyo, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
Adang Suhendra, Gunadarma University, Indonesia
Hotniar Siringoringo, Gunadarma University, Indonesia

 

Program Commitee
A Benny Mutiara (Gunadarma University, Indonesia)
AB Susanto (Ministry of Education, Diponegoro University, Indonesia)
Adang Suhendra (Gunadarma University, Indonesia)
Alexander Rusli (Ministry of State Owned Enterprises, Indonesia)
Ariya Hidayat (KDE,Germany)
Agus Rubiyanto MSc (Sepuluh November Institute of Technology, Indonesia)
Bernd Lutterbeck (TU Berlin, Germany)
Ernesto Damiani, Milan University, Italy
Engkos Koswara (Ministry of Research of Technology, Indonesia)
Eric Leclercq (Bourgogne University, France)
Harold Thimbleby (Swansea University, …) [in process]
Haklin Alex Kimm (East Stroudburg University, USA)
I Made Wiryana (Gunadarma University, Indonesia)
I Wayan Redana (Udayana University, Indonesia)
I Wayan Simri Wicaksana (Gunadarma University, Indonesia)
I Wayan Warmada (Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia)
Jan-Torsten.Milde (FH Fulda) [in process]
Junhua Tang (Shanghai JiaoTong University, China)
Kenji Saga (Japan) [in process]
Kokou Yetongnon (Bourgogne University, France)
Lukito Edi Nugroho (Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia)
Ma Ying-hua (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
Mohammad Aulia (Haeys Associate, YPLI, Indonesia)
Mohammand DAMT (Independence, Indonesia)
Onno W Poerbo (Independence, Indonesia)
Peter B. Ladkin (Bielefeld University, Germany)
Putu Laxman Pendit (Independence, Indonesia)
Richard Chbeir (Bourgogne University, France)
Romi Satrio Wahono MEng (Indonesian Institute of Science).

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