Sourcefabric, the Open Source Newsroom

The non-profit Sourcefabric builds digital open source newsrooms to support quality, independent journalism. Traditional news organizations have taken a major beating from the Internet, but the Internet has also created opportunities for a free press in countries that have never had one before, and Sourcefabric is part of journalism's path to the future.

Two of my favorite quotations are "Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" (A.J. Liebling), and "Money changes everything" (Cyndi Lauper and Tom Gray).

Tie these together with the Golden Rule, "the one with the gold makes the rules" and the struggles and turmoil of modern journalism come into sharp focus. It's a different game now as print news has drastically declined, TV news is limping along in a stale 40-year old format and inexplicably tries to replicate this moldy experience on the Web, and we get our news from a multitude of non-journalism sources like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Online news publishing should be a great boon because the cost of distribution is low, and the reach is Internet-wide. But the business model is difficult because users don't pay; it is primarily advertiser-supported and enslaved to SEO (search engine optimization) voodoo, which means Google is the giant tail wagging the publishing industry dog. News publications get paid for driving traffic, rather than for publishing good quality material.

Change is a multi-edged device, and while the Internet and high tech have damaged traditional news organizations (think buggy whips), they have also lowered the barriers to entry and widened journalism's scope. Digital photographs, videos, and audio streams are considerably easier to edit, produce, and distribute than in the olden ways. Journalists are truly mobile and news publishers are not tied to a physical location, or to large investments in printing presses and broadcast studios.

So it's a different world now, and potentially a better one because independent and non-profit news organizations can compete with the establishment mainstream press (what's left of it), and fill niches that the traditional news organizations are not interested in. Like working weekends and holidays, breaking news as soon as it's ready in multiple formats and media, and covering important topics that may not please advertisers but are of interest to readers and viewers.

Real journalism is more than sitting down to a WordPress blog and emitting deep thoughts. It is a skilled profession, and it has always been a technology-dependent business. It may not be apparent to the reader, viewer, or listener of news, but putting a story together and then publishing it is a complicated, labor-intensive process. This is where Sourcefabric comes in.

Sourcefabric is still a young project. You may have heard of the Campware (Center for Advanced Media-Prague) suite of news and content management software; Campware was created in 2005, and then spun off as an independent organization, Sourcefabric, in April 2010. Campware was originally created by the Media Development Loan Fund. The MDLF has been around since 1995, a "a mission-driven investment fund for independent news outlets in countries with a history of media oppression."

Sourcefabric provides software, hosting services, and training. Currently there are three main software applications: Airtime, Newscoop, and Superdesk. Each one plays a different role in gathering and publishing news, so let's take them for a spin.

Airtime is for managing an Internet radio station. It runs on Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, the RabbitMQ messaging system, and a whole lot of other good FOSS. It has a one-click installation on Debian and Ubuntu, and can be installed on pretty much any Linux distro. You can also try out a live demo, which is an excellent way to get acquainted with Airtime. You can upload your own audio, create playlists, and schedule and listen to your own programming. Its browser-based interface lets you control it from any computer anywhere (figure 1).

Airtime supports streams from your own server, and also Icecast and Shoutcast, and has an fallback function that switches to a live stream if it fails for any reason. You can play MP3 or Ogg files, customize the interface, and add the Mixxx live DJ software for additional functionality like managing live broadcasts. Airtime is the most mature Sourcefabric application, and the average Linux nerd won't have any trouble getting it up and running.

The hardest part is learning audio production if you don't already know how to do that: how to record, edit, and optimize audio streams for broadcast. There are other great FOSS applications for this like Audacity and Ardour.

Airtime has nice user management; you can allocate time slots to different people and then they manage their own slots. It has some JQuery widgets that automatically update a Web calendar for your users, and creates searchable archives.

Airtime is a free download, and the Pro version adds hosting and support, ranging from $50 to $500. You can also purchase custom services if the prefab deals don't meet your needs.

Newscoop is an open content management system specialized for journalists and newspapers. Like Airtime, it runs on a LAMP stack and requires a bit of work to install and configure. Here be good detailed installation instructions.

Newscoop manages the online text article publication process, and has a modular dashboard (figure 2) that shows scheduling, article status, and other information on one page. It follows the traditional print publishing layout model, with different sections (News, Arts, Politics, and such), and modern features such as commenting, RSS feeds, multimedia, and subscription services.

It has a caching module to speed up page delivery, and it automatically tailors the presentation for different browsers on different devices. It includes SEO (search engine optimization) tools, multi-language support, and geolocation support for customizing content delivery by location. Newscoop has support for OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, and Mapquest Open. It is theme-able, and has a live demo to play with.

Airtime and Newscoop manage online broadcasting and publication. Superdesk manages the story creation workflow. A story might pass through several hands before it's ready for publication: assignment editor, reporter, a second contributor, photographer, copy editor, editor.

Superdesk has a customizable workflow for tracking and editing content. It outputs content in formats that are compatible with external design software such as Adobe InDesign and InCopy. It uses calendars and notifications so you can store information for future stories, and then be reminded when the time comes. Superdesk pulls together news from RSS feeds, social network sites, and wherever else you want. And it has business tools such as sales trackers, classified ad builder, and order tracking. Superdesk is scheduled to be released sometime in 2012, and you can see the source code at the Sourcefabric Wiki (free registration required.)

The essence of journalism has not changed: gathering and reporting news. Sourcefabric provides modern tools for independent journalism, and free/open source software makes projects like Sourcefabric possible.

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Organizing Open Source Efforts at NASA

"When I think of open source, Linux is the core," says William Eshagh, a technologist working on Open Government and the Nebula Cloud Computing Platform out of the NASA Ames Research Center. Eshagh recently announced the launch of code.nasa.gov, a new NASA website intended to help the organization unify and expand its open source activities. Recently I spoke with Eshagh and his colleague, Sean Herron, a technology strategist at NASA, about the new site and the roles Linux and open source play at the organization.

Eshagh says that the idea behind the NASA code site is to highlight the Linux and open source projects at NASA. "We believe that the future is open," he says. Although NASA uses a broad array of technology, Linux is the default system and has found its way into both space and operational systems. In fact, the websites are built on Linux, the launch countdown clock runs on Fedora servers, and Nebula, the open-source cloud computing project, is Ubuntu based. Further, NASA worked with Rackspace Hosting to launch the OpenStack project, the open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds.

Why is NASA contributing to open source? Eshagh says that NASA's open systems help inspire the public and provide an opportunity for citizens to work with the organization and help move its missions forward. But the code site isn't only about sharing with the public and making NASA more open. The site itself is intended to help NASA figure out how the organization is participating in open source projects.

In the initial phase, the code site organizers are focusing on providing a central location to organize the open source activities at NASA and lower the barriers to building open technology with the help of the public. Herron says that the biggest barrier is that people simply don't know what's going on in NASA because there is no central list of open source projects or contributions. Within NASA, employees don't even have a way to figure out what their colleagues are working on, or who to talk to within the organization about details such as open source licenses.

At NASA, the open source process starts with the Software Release Authority, which approves the release of software. Eshagh says that even finding the names of the people in the Software Release Authority was an exercise, so moving the list of names out front and shining a light on it makes it easier to find the person responsible. The new guide on the code site explains the software release guidelines and provides a list of contacts and details about releasing the software, such as formal software engineering requirements.

Phase two of the code project is community focused and has already started. Eshagh says there's a lot of interest in open source at NASA, including internal interest, but the open.NASA team is still trying to figure out the best way to connect people with projects within the agency.

Eshagh says that the third phase, which focuses on version control, issue tracking, documentation, planning, and management, is more complicated. He points to the Goddard General Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT), an open source, platform independent trajectory optimization and design system, as an example. There is no coherent or coordinated approach to develop software and accept contributions from the public and industry. "What services do they need to be successful? What guidance do they need from NASA?," Eshagh wonders. "We're trying to find best-of-breed software solutions online; GitHub comes to mind," he says.

Phase three also will include the roll out of documentation systems and a wiki, which Eshagh and his team want to offer as a service, but in a focused, organized way to help projects move forward. He says that NASA doesn't promote any project or product – they just want the best tool for the job. "We're taking an iterative approach and making information available as we get it and publish it," Herron says. They've already received a bunch of feedback about licenses, for example.

How will the open.NASA team measure the success of the code site and their other efforts? "We're trying to build a community," Eshagh explains. "We've kind of tapped into an unsatisfied need for public and private individuals to come together."

He says they'll measure success by how many projects that they didn't previously know about come forward and highlight what they are doing. "People are actually reaching out and I think that's a measure of success," he says. Also, the quantity and quality of the projects and toolchains, as well as how many people use them, will be considerations.

In December, Eshagh announced NASA's presence on GitHub, and their first public repository houses NASA's World Wind Java project, an open source 3D interactive world viewer. Additional projects are being added, including OpenMDAO, an open-source Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) framework; NASA Ames StereoPipeline, a suite of automated geodesy and stereogrammetry tools; and NASA Vision Workbench, a general-purpose image processing and computer vision library.

In March 2011, NASA hosted its first Open Source Summit at Ames Research Center in Mountain View California. GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath and Pascal Finette, Director of Mozilla Labs, were among the speakers. Eshagh says that at the event, he learned that when Erlang was first released on GitHub, contributions increased by 500 percent. "We are hoping to tap into that energy," he adds.

"A lot of our projects were launched under SVN and continue to be operated under there," Eshagh says. Now open.NASA is looking at git-svn to bridge these source control systems.

"A lot of projects don't have change history or version control, so GitHub will help with source control and make it visible and available," Herron adds. Since they've posted the GitHub projects, Eshagh and his team have already seen some forks and contributions back, but he says the trick is to figure out how to get the project owners to engage and monitor the projects or to move to one system.

Which NASA projects would Eshagh like to see added to GitHub? "We have so many projects, we don't have favorites," he says. "If this is a viable solution, increases participation, and makes it easier for developers to develop, then we'd like to see them there." He adds that his team would like to see all of NASA's open source projects have version control, use best practices, and be handled in a way that the public can see them.

At the end of 2011, Nick Skytland, Program Manager of Open Government at the Johnson Space Center, posted the 2011 Annual Report by the NASA Open Government Initiative. His infographic says that there were 140,000,000 views of the NASA homepage; 17 Tweetups held with more than 1,600 participants; 2,371,250 combined followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+; and 50,000 followers on Google+ within the first 25 days.

"The scope and reach of our social media is not insignificant," Eshagh says. Herron points out that the nasa.gov site is the most visited US government site. He says that the community is very engaged. "People love to see our code," he adds. "People are excited about it." In fact, the open source team hopes to use their code to keep people excited about the space program.

NASA is now in an interesting phase, Eshagh explains. He says that after the space shuttle program ended last year, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver was speaking to a group of students when one of them asked her whether she's now out of a job. (She's not.) The new code site helps illustrate how many projects are still active and growing at NASA. "We still have a lot of work to do and a lot of people are pulling for us," Eshagh says.

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