What is the Open Source Lab?
The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships and industry events like the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the Lab's staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care and other sectors.
 What is Open Source Software?
"Open source" means that the building blocks for a program are freely available to use, modify, and improve. This provides for rapid software development by contributors worldwide, and the resulting program is available for anyone to use, anywhere, free of charge.
For more information on open source software and the Open Source Lab, click here.
 Open Source is all about contributions.
Countless numbers of developers are all giving of their time and talents to code, document, test, design, and deliver software so that the end user may benefit from it. The Open Source Lab is here to contribute resources to the community, allowing developers to focus on what they do best rather than having to spend time worrying about system resources and hosting. To continue operating, we need your contributions as well.

Latest OSUOSL News

OSCON 2006From July 24-28, 2006 the annual Open Source Convention OSCON 2006 will be held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. The Open Source Lab is proud to participate again in this exciting and dynamic event, featuring lots of the most important names in the Open Source world! At OSCON, you have the opportunity to discover more about the OSL as well as its numerous partners and other exciting Open Source projects and initiatives.

Check us out at our OSL booth, number 810. We are looking forward to talk to you about the Open Source Lab, its unique environment and capabilities. Feel free to step by!

(If you pre-register with OSCON online, access to the floor with all exhibitor booths is free on Wed., July 26 and Thu., July 27.)

FireFox Day Button Firefox Day celebrates the birthday of the Mozilla Foundation. In true Mozilla form, every event comes with some user participation, and this is no exception. Between July 15th, 2006 (the birthday itself), and September 15, when you get a friend to download Firefox, both of your names will be included in the source code for Firefox 2.0. You can sign up at worldfirefoxday.com.
OSL video

OSU has produced a video about Open Source and the Open Source Lab. Watch the show to see the Lab and put faces to the names:


640x480 333mb AVI
360x240 88mb OGG


Windows users: to view Ogg files, go to http://www.xiph.org to download and install the "Ogg Codecs for any version of Windows" plugin. After installing it, Windows Media Player will be able to play all Ogg file types.