Entries in Life

Almost two years ago, when I started working at IntraHealth, dcm told me about IntraHealth Open. Being a neck-bearded freetard, the idea really appealed to me: Use open source in the education of students in developing countries across Africa to build a workforce that could support the IT infrastructure of the continent without using Western consultants.

The use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is essential to the goal. Using software that is freely licensed for perpetuity avoids the "First Hit is Free" model many software companies use to get developing countries hooked on their software. Building the use and understanding of FOSS into the curricula gives the students the skills they need to use software on the job. And deploying freely-licensed software like Ubuntu, OpenOffice, iHRIS Suite and OpenMRS into these developing countries will create a local demand for workers who can use, understand, and maintain the very software they've learned about in school.

I'm very excited about the new IntraHealth OPEN initiative. You can even take part. Senagalese musician Youssou N'Dour is working with other musicians to help raise funds for the OPEN initiative by making his music and remixes of it available for free download under a Creative Commons license. So go download some music and consider making a donation to IntraHealth OPEN.

UPDATE: Listen to dcm talk about Open in the Launchpad podcast.

One of the never-ending subjects of Free Software is "Where are the Women?"

While I see it as mostly a non-problem -- that is, there are some obvious problems that need to be fixed with time, but no one is going to rectify them right now -- I'm doing what I can to encourage my daughters and son in the field.

In the meantime, The Decline of Women in Computer Science from 1940-1982 has some fascinating anecdotes:

Computing was unique, however, in the sense that the fledgling profession was still in its infancy and had no strong pre-war gender socialization.  This fact must have helped the women in that the returning men lacked programming expertise, and clearly had no expectation of “returning” to a programming job.  The lack of structure in the industry was also a boon to women programmers who wanted to continue working even after they became pregnant and had children.  Most notably, “Computations, Inc., of Harvard, Massachusetts (outside Route 128), formed in 1958 by Elsie Shutt and several other programmer-mothers who worked part-time and largely at home on problems contracted out to them by their former employers, such as Minneapolis-Honeywell and Raytheon”.  These women, widely known as the “Pregnant Programmers” were mentioned by speaker Richard H. Bolt at the M.I.T Symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering in 1964.  Bolt, who was a lecturer in Political Science at M.I.T and also a former Associate Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1960-1963, also mentioned the following:

 “I asked one of the unmarried women, a computer programmer in industry, if she thought a woman’s activities as a mother and homemaker would interfere with her opportunities in a career.  ‘One good thing about programming,’ she said, ‘is that you can work part time.’”