In 2015, LSS conducted a pilot test of Pressbooks (an open-source book publishing tool built upon the popular WordPress CMS) for creating OER in the College of Letters & Science in Fall 2015. The pilot was a success, and in January 2016, I wrote to Unizin (a consortium of several public research universities that UW-Madison belongs to) to see whether they’d be willing to host instances of Pressbooks (and some additional plugins) for their members schools. Unizin agreed to our proposal and after a brief testing period with UW-Madison, Ohio State University, and the University of Minnesota, Unizin began hosting a full production instance of Pressbooks for UW-Madison on August 1, 2016. Our small but growing catalog of openly licensed texts developed and published by UW affiliates can be found at https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/.
Working Group for Distance Learning in Legal Ed – WGDLLE Meetup – Online – 1pm EST January 27, 2017
Date: Wednesday, January 27th
Time: 1PM Eastern
Format: WebEx WebinarTopics:
- Distance Learning Track at CALIcon 2017
- Introduction to CALI’s LessonLive Service/Tool
- Online Module Showcase: Ginger Hunt, University of Arizona (each month we will ask a WGDLLE member to showcase a blended, hybrid or online learning module)
Source: Working Group for Distance Learning in Legal Ed – WGDLLE Meetup – Online – 1pm EST January 27, 2017
2017 – The Year to Free California’s Case Law “for Publication by Any Person” « Citing Legally
Alone among California’s branches of government, the state’s appellate courts remain stuck in a pattern of legal publication designed around books. Other states now furnish unrestricted digital access to final, official, citable versions of their judicial precedent. California does not. The current “official reports” publication contract with LexisNexis runs until June 2017. At that point the state’s judicial branch could do the same. There are compelling reasons why it should.
Source: 2017 – The Year to Free California’s Case Law “for Publication by Any Person” « Citing Legally
Open Law Library Asks “Why isn’t there a Google for the law?”
It’s the difference between searching Google for “weather right now” or “Chinese restaurants”, and “I’m being evicted, what are my rights?”. The first two queries reliably provide accurate information about current weather conditions and nearby Chinese restaurants for most people. But the top result for someone trying to avoid eviction is a website from the UK, even for searches made from the US. At best, this information from another jurisdiction isn’t very helpful. At worst, it might mislead someone on the edge of eviction into a false sense of security if the UK offers greater protections for tenants than wherever they live.
Source: Open Law Library – Why isn’t there a Google for the law?
A very good question of course and one that many have been trying to answer since before there was a Google. I’ve been a bit out of the loop for a couple of years so I probably missed the launch of the Open Law Library. Looks like an interesting approach. Anyone out there have more info to share?
Fear and Machine Learning: AI and Legal Practice – Slaw
Fear and Machine Learning: AI and Legal Practice – Slaw http://www.slaw.ca/2016/11/21/fear-and-machine-learning-ai-and-legal-practice/
Cornell launches effort to cut administrative red tape, starting with shadow work
Cornell launches effort to cut administrative red tape, starting with shadow work https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/08/cornell-launches-effort-cut-administrative-red-tape-starting-shadow-work
Disney Open Source
Open Source Software is important to The Walt Disney Company. Disney has established an Open Source Program to encourage our developers to utilize Open Source, contribute to Open Source projects, and to release software as Open Source. We’ve created this site to highlight Disney’s Open Source projects. We encourage you to explore our projects and we welcome your collaboration and contributions. This is just the beginning; there’s more to come, so stay tuned!
Source: Disney Open Source
This is intriguing. As one might expect many of the projects deal with animation and film making. I think this highlights the movement to open source the basic tools that are being developed to help corporations do their thing.
One Journal’s Defection from The Bluebook – Its Reasons and 6-Page Replacement « Citing Legally
One Journal’s Defection from The Bluebook – Its Reasons and 6-Page Replacement « Citing Legally http://citeblog.access-to-law.com/?p=733
Sage: Open Source Mathematics Software: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software
Companies can be incentived in various ways, including:
- to get to the next round of VC funding
- to be a sustainable profitable business by making more money from customers than they spend, or
- to grow to have a very large number of users and somehow pivot to making money later.
When founding a company, you have a chance to choose how your company will be incentived based on how much risk you are willing to take, the resources you have, the sort of business you are building, the current state of the market, and your model of what will happen in the future.
Good article that outlines an open source business model that may work without VC investment.
The LII & Education » LII Announce
The LII & Education » LII Announce https://blog.law.cornell.edu/blog/2016/10/03/the-lii-education/