David Milch is a public intellectual.

David Milch on the Hayes Code, the laconic cowboy, the anarchy of the American West, the celebrity of Wild Bill Hickock, and the importance of sacrament to community. Watch it immediately. Also: everyone should watch Deadwood. All the time.

#9: Flowers for Support

Dave and Gunnar talk about two-factor, open source health, homomorphism, OpenStack security, and why Dave needs to send flowers to Red Hat Support

Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns

Some very, very sound (and super-quotable!) advice for anyone interested in starting an open source project. http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/corporate-open-source-antipatterns

Open Source for America responds to the draft “Shared First” policy

Embracing the open source approach, though, and using it to encourage sharing between agencies, departments, other governments, and the general public is the purest expression of the goals of the Shared First policy. Open source excels at the Shared First Design Goals, including visibility, commoditization, reusability, extensibility, and standardization, and we believe it should be … Continue reading Open Source for America responds to the draft “Shared First” policy →

What government engagement looks like

So I signed a petition at We the People about making government archives available digitally. I like the work that Carl Malamud and Yes We Scan are doing, so why not, right? I thought we'd get some kind of perfunctory "Thanks for writing, we're glad for the feedback, etc." response and that'd be the end … Continue reading What government engagement looks like →

New York CIO Dr. Daniel Chan

Chan said he believes in open technology approaches – including re-using solutions developed by other states – whenever feasible to avoid unnecessary expenses. The strategy was cemented by the success of myBenefits.ny.gov, a 2008 portal he helped develop as CIO of the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. In building the site, his office … Continue reading New York CIO Dr. Daniel Chan →

Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.

Over the last couple years, many of us involved with open source in government have had discussions about what it means for citizen coders to become involved in state, local and federal efforts. There are all kinds of legal, ethical, and logistics questions that haven't been answered. Everyone seems to be solving them individually, but … Continue reading Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out. →

Fighting Forks

This is the ignite presentation I gave for the Mil-OSS WG2 conference today. It's a tremendous group of sandal-shod revolutionaries who want to bring open source and the US Department of Defense together. You can sign up for the mailing list here. If you use your imagination and insert a lot of stumbling, fumbling, and … Continue reading Fighting Forks →

Lockheed Goes Open Source. Blankenhorn Hates It.

I was really pleased to read the announcement that Lockheed Martin's social networking platform, EurekaStreams, was released as an open source project today. Lockheed is a very conservative company, and while they're happy to use open source internally and on projects for their customers, this is their first experiment with actually running a project themselves. … Continue reading Lockheed Goes Open Source. Blankenhorn Hates It. →

Developers for Glory

Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn't be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem. Though they all offer cash prizes to the … Continue reading Developers for Glory →