Oregon State University's Open Source Lab is running on fumes

Higher education across the USA is facing federal funding cutbacks – and now the Oregon State University (OSU) Open Source Lab (OSL) is in trouble. The boss of the OSU OSL, Lance Albertson, reports a critical shortage of funding – putting the future of the 22-year-old project in jeopardy. In the post, Albertson explained that …

[Tron]

Try Japan or the EU.

The Japanese government would really like to see their unis rise up the league tables and welcome opportunities to host high-profile, high-kudos academic facilities. The EU might want to spend some of their GAFA tax fines offering new homes to high profile US academic projects. The US academic system will suffer under Trump even more than the UK one did courtesy of Brexit. So find a safe harbour for the good stuff abroad. Academics and their research had to leave Germany in the 1930s and America in the 1950s. It happens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Try Japan or the EU.

Corvallis OR is just 372 miles (600 km) from Abotsford BC ... they can easily walk their gear over to, and past, the Canadian border there, at night, and solve that dehydrated Orange issue of cracked scaly funding in no time flat once and for all (hopefully)!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Try Japan or the EU.

But would Fraser Valley have the funding Oregon lacks?

[DanceMan]

Re: Try Japan or the EU.

The Fraser Valley votes right wing Tory.

[An_Old_Dog]

OSUOSL Potential Migration

Their Milne Computer Center is filled, in its first floor "fishbowl", at least, with racks of computers. Network switch gear and ECU used to be in the basement. They have a big-enough freight elevator. But this would not be a "rent a lorry and call twenty friends" sort of moving project.

There is nothing like a physical migration project to show you how under-documented and incorrectly-documented your systems are.

You need a pre-move verification process, so the dreaded Q&As of, "Where is this cable supposed to plug in? It was just laying loose under the raised flooring," and, "What does this computer do? There's no monitor, keyboard, or hostname label on it, but the power light is on and the hard disc and network activity LEDs are flickering ..." happen well-before the actual move.

[mark l 2]

How many of the American tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, Google, etc have benefited from what OSU has offered? I bet all of them in some ways whether directly like Meta in 2011 or indirectly by using some of the projects OSU helped to maintain. So they should be the ones putting back into the open source community by donating money to Oregon State Uni. And Id say far more than the $250k they need, add at least a zero or two onto that figure.

[Anonymous Coward]

This the real point.

Lots of profit-making enterprises making money off their work, but expecting the taxpayer to pick up the bill.

[hedgie]

Tech Bros don't ever give, only take and then rent or sell the proceeds.

[ecofeco]

Exactly. Never forget this.

[hedgie]

Even when companies (Apple, IBM, Oracle, even Microsoft) contribute quite a bit of money and resources to Open Source, it's like a Carnegie or any other Robber Baron getting into philanthropy. What they contribute is far less than the value they receive and said contributions are really only made for their own interests anyway (such as keeping a project going because the actual volunteers provide more value to them with free labour). One reason, I'm certain, why Apple sticks with *BSD licensed stuff, so they can grab what they want but only give a smaller amount in return. And here I'm bashing them on one of their devices and really need to charge the others.

[trevorde]

DOGE Response

We have found another $250k of savings! Well on our way to eliminating $1 trillion of waste.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's fairly safe to say that any initiative that relies on the US has a Mad King systemic risk that they have to factor into and mitigate.

[John Brown (no body)]

Esp. in a country where FOSS is seen in some sectors as "a bit Commie", what with being free and open and not closed, commercial in the True American Way.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Presumably this is why they have eschewed the original open-source Signal, and gone instead with a clone (TM SGNL) which permits archiving, breaking E2E encryption and which is quite likely possibly leaking to the Israeli government? article and analysis

Kind of surprised this hasn’t had more traction as a story - Signal is unapproved but secure; this revelation changes the game entirely.

[Draco]

Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody

There was a most important job that needed to be done, and no reason not to do it, there was absolutely none. But in vital matters such as this, the thing you have to ask, Is who exactly will it be who’ll carry out the task?

Anybody could have told you that Everybody knew that this was something Somebody would surely have to do. Nobody was unwilling; Anybody had the ability. But Nobody thought he was supposed to be the one. It seemed to be a job that Anybody could have done, if Anybody thought he was supposed to be the one. But since Everybody recognized that Anybody could, Everybody took for granted that Somebody would.

But Nobody told Anybody that we are aware of, that he would be in charge of seeing it was taken care of. And Nobody took it on himself to follow through and do, what Everybody thought that Somebody would do.

When what Everybody needed so did not get done at all, Everybody was complaining that Somebody dropped the ball. Anybody could have done it, then Everybody said, ‘It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.’”

-- Charles Osgood

[Anonymous Coward]

Mouse money....

USD250000 is chump change to even medium sized enterprises (and tax deductible at that) let alone big tech.

If the top 100 tech companies each made an effort to really stretch their congenitally short arms into their conventionally deep pockets and prised out a miserely USD2500 to support an effort from which they directly or indirectly benefit we might have a better opinion of them.†

_{† No not really. It's not Christmas and you don't get off that easily. A start.}

[FuzzyTheBear]

Morale of the story.

Don't count on the USA. Period. Their signature is meaningless , without any valuie or guarantee. It's run by a 6 times bankrupt wanna be dictator that has no idea what he's doing.As far as incompetent goes he's way up there Putin wouldn't have done a better job dismantling the USA piece by piece to destroy the American way of life and it's economy. LEaving them out of any plans the rest of the world makes is the right decision. Not buying American tech or services or any of their products is the rigfht idea. Why reward them for the harm they do to every country in the world ? Putting them on ignore and doing business with anyone but them is the right decision.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Morale of the story.

I suspect "morale" in the US is currently low.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Morale of the story.

That's only because "moron" is at an all time high.

[martinusher]

Opportunity knocks

The present academic climate in the US seems a bit hostile and since this didn't just happen overnight I don't expect it to just disappear overnight in the future. So we need to be resigned to these kinds of changes being effectively permanent. A bit sad, but our loss is someone else's gain. Unfortunately the only people who appear to be actively taking advantage at scale at the moment are the Chinese. I fear that the English speaking world (or at least, its governments) is far too bound up in "Five Eyes" to contemplate any action that would seriously discomfort our Dear Leader so I don't expect anything apart from piecemeal initiatives to try to rescue non-profit making work.

But the opportunity's there for anyone to take advantage of.