We’re compiling over 5 years of open source strategy & resources; this post is a preview.
Why publish about this?
- Define what our community is about. We encounter growing numbers of community members who need to know how they can contribute. Our goals & mission are embedded throughout
- Highlight what’s best suited for SCUTTLE platform. There are 1000 flavors of open-source project but our unique position is more cross-disciplinary so we don’t fit the mold of existing projects.
- Begin a discussion: we want to solicit feedback from our users on what they need, in the context of open repositories and tools.
- Relate common knowledge to the open source style: Business strategy, business ethics, international collaboration, each includes a set of best practices. We can put some of these in context so to unlock the exchange of traditional businesses without misunderstandings.
- Carryover lessons from software into hardware territory. If we want the branches of SCUTTLE to look like the branches of Linux, we need creativity & understanding of what makes multidisciplinary projects unique.
Source Files:
Let’s pull knowledge from the brightest and most experienced minds in Open Source:
The Open Source Way 2.0
This guidebook is 149 pages of well-organized content on building open source organizations, and the authors have immense experience.
Enabling Global Collaboration
Brought to you by the Linux Foundation, the creators of the world’s most extensive open source project: Linux.
Bridge Into Hardware
The open source hardware foundation has less history than the former resources but their core values are parallel to ours.
Resources
Separately from resources for building SCUTTLE robot, we will share resources for building an open community and refining strategies for developers who share our vision.
For Education
Texas 4H
In our journey into k-12 education we discovered an impressive leader in modernizing education called Texas 4H. They drive extracurricular learning in thousands of schools with industry partnerships & hands-on curriculum devleopment.
As leaders in education with our style, the 4H makes content worth referencing as a guide for success.
Southeast Asia
An entire world of tech/government/education interaction is taking place in Southeast Asia that does not fall onto the radars of some of our favorite open-source leaders.
The country of Malaysia alone beholds a massive cluster of innovative pilot programs wherein some of the largest tech companies are engaging and sponsoring young STEM audiences to become Makers of our future. The push for Malaysia to advance into industry 4.0 creates opportunities that deserve attention from educators and researchers in the West who tend to be self-guided.
What is the point of a robot except for building a better future? The mentioned organizations are creating:
- Smart Cities
- Green Cities
- Autonomous vehicle proving grounds
- Drone-based delivery infrastructure
- Smart Agriculture
- Tech Training Centers
- Indoor Farming
These advances for society are literally the reason that we build robots and they give meaning to SCUTTLE users who create projects.
Tools
We have adopted and continue to discover better tools for creating content and publication. The “curator economy” is real – as new tech arrives at a blistering pace, our community is best poised to adopt the best technology instead of creating the best technology.
Lists of tools
- Open Source Alternatives to popular softwares
- Open Source Organizations to help our mission
ShareX
ShareX solved 100 problems when we found it. Particularly:
- conversion of videos
- screenshot & cloud upload
- upload to cloud, for files
- creating QR codes
- shorten URLs
This software is lightweight, fast, and bug-free. Incredible.
Draw.io
Amazing open software that fully works in-browsers or on desktop.
- Create diagrams
- Create icon libraries
- Export HTML pages
- Export SVG graphics
- Collaborate on cloud docs
- Import Visio, Powerpoint, & more…
NAPS2
PDF handling: Simple & versatile software for scanning documents, modifying PDF content and performing OCR.
Psiphon
Executable runs and automatically routes your web browser through a VPN. This is how we check resources around the world like google results, shopping for parts in other countries, etc.
OBS Studio
A fantastically fast screen-recording software with tons of other options. Layering, filtering, adding a particular microphone is a breeze. Select your output formats and hotkeys to make downstream tasks go quickly.
Who’s Who
The world of open source hardware already has remarkable key players that collectively offer almost everything you could ask for. But, there are some gaps since each business was formed by meeting a particular need. When we started SCUTTLE the need was a scalable, affordable open robot and we aim to create the content that isn’t quite accomodated between the others – not reinvent the wheel.
Roboticists: you can use this diagram as a point of discovery – we highly recommend all of the systems mentioned for their strength areas.
Contributors: you can see where we are aiming to produce solutions, and other cases where we can simply borrow open solutions from our neighbors.
