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Rochester, NY
At the Fedora Project Remy served as Community Action and Impact Lead, bringing more heat and light to the distro's user and contributor base. As resident Hackademic, Remy led the Fedora Council's University Involvement Initiative, expanding and replicating the models used in RIT's courses on Humanitarian FOSS Development and Business/Legal Environment of FOSS that built the first academic minor in FOSS and Free Culture at a university in the United States. With help from Sugarlabs, TeachingOpensource, The Software Freedom Law Center, Aleph Objects, and many others, Remy brings The Open Source Way to campuses, conferences, and campaigns everywhere he can. You can keep up with his story via Twitter and his decauseblog.
Authored Comments
My heart lept highest during the segment about Opening Datasets, government information, and unprecedented transparency. In the words of one of our Luminaries "Many eyes make any bug shallow."
But my heart strangely sank when the issue of internet access was brought up. This is strange--downright backwards to me--as this was historically one of the issues that excited me most as someone coming of age during the information age. On the screen a map of 98% of Americans having access to the internet would used to have filled me with hope and represent "The free market of ideas." This map now looks to me more like a captive market at the mercy of colluding industries. In light of the recent DOJ approval of the Comcast/NBC Merger, coupled with <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/217312/verizon_challenges_fcc_net_neutrality_authority.html">Verizon's contesting the FCC's authority to ensure net neutrality</a> (and weakened watered down net neutrality at that)--I am hard pressed to believe this issue is being recognized as a real priority and public good it needs to be.
What good is 98% of the country being online, if the open nature of the internet, and freedoms of expression are subject to deep packet inspection that amounts to tiered (read::segregated) second class digital citizenship?
On behalf of the students and faculty at <a href="http://foss.rit.edu">FOSS@RIT</a> congratulations and thank you to all the folks who have made this community what it is. This is a wonderful outlet for our stories and campaigns, and we look forward to sharing even more this coming year.