briefing material

OSS Watch produces a variety of material including briefing notes, conference reports, opinion pieces, and book reviews. The five most recently published items are:

• European Union Public Licence - An Overview
• Open Source Junction 2: context-aware mobile technologies, Oxford, 5-6 July 2011
• Planning for sustainability
• What kind of licence should I choose?
• Open Source Junction: cross-platform mobile apps, Oxford, 24-25 June 2010

If you prefer to browse according to topic then you may be pleased to learn that OSS Watch resources have been grouped into subject areas or categories to allow easy viewing of pertinent resources in particular areas of interest. See our resources grouped by subject area.

newsletters

Up until July 2011 OSS Watch published a monthly newsletter tho showcase specially selected content and blog items from OSS Watch along with news and events. We distributed print copies of the newsletter at events that we attended and we made online versions of the newsletter in PDF format available to view or download.

For a complete list of all OSS Watch newsletters see the full list of newsletters page.

videos

OSS Watch has started producing some short videos and making them available via YouTube. These videos range from interviews with leading figures in the open source world to snippets from presentations that illustrate or explain ideas. To see the videos that we have made take a look at our OSS Watch videos page.

You may also like to subscribe to OSS Watch's channel in YouTube.

research reports

OSS Watch undertakes research to gain a better understanding of the needs of its stakeholder communities. Our most recent research has been:

• OSS Watch National Software Survey 2010
  In late 2010 OSS Watch conducted the fourth bi-annual survey of Higher and Further Education IT directors’ attitudes towards, and adoption of, open source software.
• OSS Watch National Software Survey 2008
  During 2008 OSS Watch once again conducted a national survey to assess the state of software policies and usage in HE and FE in the UK. This was the third time that the software survey has been conducted and so the report is able to identify trends and draw comparisons with data from previous years.
• Automatic survey of inbound mail (MX) servers in academic domains in the UK
  In September 2007 OSS Watch performed a semi-automated survey of inbound mail (MX) servers in all academic domains in the UK, with a focus on Further and Higher Education. This report presents not only the results of this survey but also details of the methodology used.

More research undertaken by OSS Watch and others.

slideshow presentations

OSS Watch gives presentations at many different workshops and conferences and we make those presentations available to you in PDF format. Our latest presentation is:

• Community and Governance, University of Southampton ECS, LSL Labs seminar, 2 December 2010

See previous presentations from OSS Watch.

conference packs and handouts

As well as attending workshops and conferences to give presentations we also go to events to exhibit and disseminate our materials. We often produce special conference packs or handouts that feature materials specifically of interest to those attending a particular event. For anyone unable to catch us at one of these events you can download our latest handouts here:

• Building Communties Around Free & Open Source Software
• Free & Open Source Software Licensing
• Procuring Free & Open Source Software

slides for re-use

In addition to giving presentations at events we produce a number of small slide sets, each set comprising a handful of slides that cover a specific topic in brief. These slide sets are for you to take away and we would be delighted if you chose to incorporate them into your own presentations. We have made each of the slide sets available in a selection of formats that will hopefully be of use to you in your favourite presentation software. These formats are: OpenOffice v2 (.odp); OpenOffice v1 (.sxi); PDF (.pdf); Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt). The currently available sets are:

• What is open source? (3 slides): odp sxi pdf ppt
• Open source pros and cons (3 slides): odp sxi pdf ppt
• Licensing and intellectual property rights (5 slides): odp sxi pdf ppt

In the interests of spreading basic knowledge of our subject area as widely as possible, we are happy to waive any requirement that any works containing this material be redistributed under our choice of licence. Therefore these slide sets are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence.

acknowledgements

This document contains Creative Commons licensed photos by Flickr user e.Moodie.