The Open Road

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March 27, 2008 9:26 PM PDT

Mormons for open source

by Matt Asay
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Open source has clearly gone mainstream when religions start requiring it on employment applications.

It does my heart good to see my church putting its tithing dollars to work in an inspired cause: open source. A friend just sent me a job posting on the LDS Church's website calling for a Linus Torvalds-like figure to lead open-source development efforts for the LDS Church and its IT projects.

You may not want those missionaries knocking on your door, but you've got to admit that every religion needs at least one Linus Torvalds. :-)

Go to the LDS Church's employment site and type "open source" into the search box. You'll find several requirements for open-source savvy engineers (including someone familiar with Hyperic - got something to tell me, Javier? Is my tithing paying for your Wii addiction?), but this is the one that I find fascinating (and encouraging):

Technical Program Manager - Community Development

Description:

This person has the exciting responsibility in leading the Church's efforts to establish community software development efforts. The Community Development Program Manager will work with key stakeholders to identify opportunities to leverage community resources to design, develop and maintain software applications that can be made generally available. Success in these endeavors will greatly accelerate the development and proliferation of technology that can be used by church members and local leaders.

... Read more
July 24, 2007 5:59 AM PDT

Learning through adversity

by Matt Asay
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Today is Pioneer Day in Utah, a day when Utahns reflect on the sacrifice that brought 70,000 people 1,300 miles across the United States into present-day Utah. My own family was part of this group. In fact, there's a wonderful quote from Brigham Young about the Asays when he bumped into them while traveling in Southern Utah. He critiqued their sloth in still living out of their wagons, but said they made him the best fish dinner he'd had. Some things never change.... :-)

As I look back on what my family and others did, I'm impressed by how hardship focused and shaped the thoughts and feelings of a people. While some of the pioneers suffered greatly in making the trek, for others it was more hearty inconvenience and discomfort. But for all, it was a formative time.

Years later, a group that hadn't been through the ordeal criticized those who had for foolishly leaving late in the year, such that the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies were caught in a terrible winter. Here's the response from one who had lived through it:

... Read more
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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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