Enterprise IT architect certifications appear most often at the apex of certification programs, where less than 1% of IT professionals ultimately ascend. Even so, many IT architect certifications are available, and you don’t need to invest in one certification sponsor’s vision to reach the top.

Many IT certifications in this area fall outside vendor umbrellas, which means they are vendor-neutral or vendor-agnostic. Nevertheless, the number of vendor-specific IT certifications exceeds vendor-neutral ones by a factor of more than 2 to 1. That’s why we devote the last section of this article to all such credentials, as we encountered them in search of the best enterprise architect certifications.

For IT pros who’ve already invested in vendor-specific certification programs, credentials at the architect level may indeed be worth pursuing. Enterprise architects are among the highest-paid employees and consultants in the tech industry.

Study Group +1 is an effective way to help CWRU students diversify and maximize their study time. This program is designed to enhance the learning experience for undergraduate students. Students can strengthen their understanding through discussion of course content in a peer tutor-supported study group of no more than five students. Study Group +1 can help students prepare for lecture, class discussion, a quiz or exam, or to work through a challenging homework assignment. 

Benefits of Study Group +1

• Share strengths and strengthen weaknesses. 
• Accomplish more by collective problem solving.
• Refine and Boost class notes and note-taking skills.
• Diversify your study routine.
• Acquire new skills by interacting with your fellow students.

When you're ready to form your study group, complete and submit the online form to get started.

Forming a Group

Before forming a Study Group +1, students must first consider the following:

• How many students should be in the group? Four or five tends to be the right number because smaller groups are susceptible to distraction and larger groups make it more difficult to ensure that members are doing their fair share of work. 
• Who should be in the group? Friends are not always the best choice for a study group unless they aspire to the same level of academic success in the course. Group membership should include students who attend and pay attention in class and who generally have good academic habits.
• Where should group sessions be held? Study Groups +1 should meet in a location free from distractions and where there is ample room to interact. Residence halls or other limited-access spaces are not recommended.
• How long should a study group meet? No more than two hours. Members may lose focus in a longer session and may not have enough time to meet their objectives if a session is too short.
• When should study groups meet? Meeting at the same time and place each week is best. Having a set schedule allows members to plan ahead and prepare for each session.

Once your group has formed and settled on a meeting time and place, a member of the group needs to submit a request for a peer tutor using the online Study Group +1 Tutor Request form. The request must include the name and CWRU ID of each member of the group. In some cases, the assigned tutor is not a good match for the group. If your study group finds that your tutor is not helpful or unable to meet the needs of the group, contact Shaun Hoversten, assistant director of academic support resources, and a different tutor can be assigned to the group. 

Study Group Guidelines

General Study Sessions

• Group members choose a predetermined amount of lecture notes. They individually identify the most important concepts. They they work with one or two others with the same material and refine their identified important concepts. Each member writes a list of the concepts on a board for the rest of the group to view. These lists can be used to generate a review sheet for the material.
• Each group member identifies up to three items or subjects from lecture notes or assigned memorizing that they do not understand or would like to understand better. These issues should be written on a whiteboard or paper for the group to organize and prioritize by importance. The group can then work to clarify these issues/questions as a group. These items/topics can be used as part of an test review in the future.
• The study group works to together to develop easy-to-remember mnemonic devices for processes or words in a list.
• Group members pair off and review/compare their lecture notes from the past week. They then identify three or four of the most important concepts and attempt to summarize them in their own words. These concepts and summaries can later be used to help generate a review sheet.
• Before the group meets, members generate lists of vocabulary words and/or key concepts from their notes or textbook. These should be words or short phrases, not complete sentences. When the study group meets, write these vocabulary words and concepts on the board and have each group member take turns explaining the terms or concepts to the rest of the group. This list can be used later to help the group determine what material is most important and what is less important in preparing for a test.
• For concepts that can be compared and contrasted (such as types of mutations, different biochemical processes, historical events, etc.) each group member (alone or in small groups) reviews notes and identifies major subjects from the material covered. Note any relationships among the subjects because these observations often make good material for essay questions. Then the study group creates a chart by placing the major subjects in the left column. In the header row, they either break down the major subjects into analytical categories or provide applications, definitions and examples.
• For articles or non-textbook readings, group members can work in pairs to create summaries of the assigned readings, then share their results with the group. The summaries should describe main ideas and concepts instead of simply restating what was read.
• Group members take turns drawing and explaining diagrams/processes/structures from class notes or readings. The diagrams/processes/structures can be assigned or group members can list them on scraps of paper and choose randomly.
• Each group members draws a picture of a structure or a process on the board without using their notes or textbook. Then, other group members either label the drawing or write out the steps to the process without using their notes or textbook. Once information has been exhausted from the entire group, use notes and textbooks to complete the structure or process.
• Before the group meets, the peer tutor identifies concepts, ideas, processes, formulas, etc., that will appear in lecture or in the textbook. During the study group, members review their notes and the peer tutor assigns each group member an item to illustrate and explain without the help of notes. Other group members then use their notes to correct, refine or add to the illustrations or explanations.

Homework Activities

If not prohibited by the course professor, group members compare answers to their homework and identify those areas where they are uncertain. White the problems on a board or in a document to be shared with the group. The entire group then discusses the problems and attempts to solve them. The Study Group +1 tutor can help by providing guidance on the proper steps for solving the problems.

Test or test Preparation Activities

• Group members brainstorm to predict a given number of test questions each week. An assigned group member will keep a running list of questions for each chapter, lecture or course for the group to review or practice before a test or final exam.
• Create your own test review sheet. A group member divides course material among the group members and has them use the homework, notes and/or readings to figure out what is most important and then reports back to the rest of the study group. This can be assigned at the end of one session and shared at the beginning of the next study group.
• Create your own practice test. In the study group that takes place two weeks before a test, assign a chapter or lecture to each individual in the group. Each individual looks through his/her notes or section of the textbook to devise at least five challenging test questions for the next study group session (the week before the exam). Ideally, the questions would resemble the types of questions  (multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, essay, etc.) and represent the range of question levels (knowledge, comprehension, application, evaluation, synthesis, etc.) you might encounter on the real test, so this may work best for the second exam. Each individual shares his/her questions with the group so that everyone takes away a full set of questions. If time allows, you can start tackling the questions, preferably without the use of notes to simulate the real test situation.
• Use old or trial tests approved by the professor for additional practice problems. Assign each group member problems and give them time to work on them. Each group member or pair then presents their answers to the group.
• After a test has been returned, group members can make a list of difficult questions and analyze them to determine what made the questions difficult and how they could have better answered the question. Group members can discuss what they did to prepare for the exam, what worked and what did not and how they might better prepare for the next test.

Run Your Own Study Group

Are you interested in starting a study group but not sure where to start? Or do you have a study group and want to enhance its effectiveness? Look here for advice on starting and maintaining a productive, inclusive study group.

First things first

Keeping the group running smoothly

Troubleshooting

Looking for more support?

If you would like to consult with an experienced undergraduate study-group leader who can offer advice on organizing and running your own study group, contact us at asla@northwestern.edu.

If you'd like to join a quarter-long study group, check out our Peer-Guided Study Group program!

Contents

1. The Goal of Study Group Learning
2. Benefits of Study Group Learning
3. What to do at Your First Meeting
4. Your Role in Your Group
5. Common Problems and Possible Solutions
6. Study Group Locations at UMass Lowell

The Goal of Study Group Learning

It is believed that students learn by doing. As opposed to being spoon-fed knowledge in lecture, study groups encourage students to go above and beyond what is being taught and to develop their own understanding of subject material. The goal of study group learning is to help students take ownership of course material; to learn to learn.

Benefits of Study Group Learning

• You can verify with each other any confusing or complex subject material.
• Learning math is more fun.
• Math is better understood and retained.
• Prof/TA will be seen as more approachable.
• You will have a chance to dialogue with classmates and therefore opportunity to make friends; hopefully you will feel less isolated.
• Fellow students can be a source of encouragement.
• Math-anxious students will see themselves as tutor/teachers, not just recipients of someone else's knowledge.
• An increase in confidence of mathematical ability.
• You will have opportunity to learn new study habits from peers. In a nutshell, learning math is more personally relevant, and intellectually stimulating.

As you can see from this list, being in a study group can be really helpful. BUT these benefits come only to those who are serious about making their group work well together and serious about learning. So, although I expect you to have fun (eh, there is no reason why you can't have a study group meeting at a pub once in a while) the study group component of your course is serious stuff.

Are you interested in joining a group but don't know how to start? Talk to your classmates or instructor.

What to do at Your First Meeting

We hope that, 10 years from now, you will look back upon this first meeting of your study group with good sentiments. We realize that not all of you will form those "college-days" relationships that TV glamorizes, but some of you will. You just never know what might happen. Here are some things that will help get started on the right track:

Check off this list as you go.

• Fill out the form called: Study Group Roster with your group members names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. Guard this sheet. You never know when it will come in handy (or, put the information in your funky address book...just make sure you have it.)
• Get to know one another. How? Well, ask each other what your majors are or where you are from or how much you love to work in groups...etc. Make sure you have fun.
• You may want to look around at the rooms that are suggested in this booklet for your study groups. You are going to spending a lot of time in these places (or wherever you hold your meetings).
• Establish when and where you will hold your next meeting. In fact, I would advise you to decide exact dates for some of your meetings. Make dates--solid dates--right up until the end of term. This way, you will be sure to be able to keep these dates.
• Establish a network by which you can contact each other for impromptu meetings.
• Talk more. give your group a name if you want.

What to Do at Other Meetings

Below is a list of things you should/can do at your meetings. Suggestions in bold I would recommend you do at every meeting.

• Establish what you hope to accomplish at your meeting.
• Review lecture notes together, discuss anything you did not understand.
• Discuss key concepts from lecture.
• Work on assignments.
• Assign yourselves questions and work on them.
• Study for tests or exams.
• Discuss what questions you expect to be on tests and exams.
• Go over copies of past exams.
• Set aside time to talk about anything under the sun other than math.
• At the end of each session, determine or verify location and time of you next meeting.

Your Role in Your Group

This page contains a section called Problems and Solutions. It's a good idea to read it so you know what can happen and so that you can recognize it when a problem arises. A lot of the problems can be prevented if you work hard not just at the math, but at making your group work. Below is a list of guidelines that, when followed, help to avoid the common pitfalls.

• Listen carefully to each other. Try not to interrupt. Respond to, or at least acknowledge, comments made or questions asked by other group members. To do so shows respect.
• Do not accept confusion passively. If you do not understand the information that someone is presenting, try to paraphrase what was said, or ask someone to help you paraphrase it.
• Ask for clarification whenever someone uses a word in a way that you find confusing (you will likely help him or her.) The correct use of terminology is an essential part of successful communication in math. If you can say it, you understand it.
• Do not split up the work. I know it's so tempting...but it leads to SOOO many problems. Everyone should focus their attention on the same thing at the same time. It is much easier to resolve conflicts when group members work together and check for agreement frequently.
• Make a habit of explaining your reasoning or of "thinking out loud," and ask others to do the same. The process of constructing and refining explanations helps everyone to relate the information being presented to what they already know.
• Be aware of time constraints. It is appropriate (and important) to ask each other how what you are doing will help your group complete an assignment
• If your group gets stuck, review and summarize what you've done so far. This process creates new opportunities for group members to ask questions, and often it will reveal important connections that have been overlooked.
• You should always feel comfortable to switch from talking about math to talking about how your group is working. If you have a concern about how your group is functioning, bring it up. Be direct, honest and calm.
• When someone raises a concern about your group, listen to it carefully. If you have a problem with his or her problem, be sure to criticize the problem and not the person.

Common Problems and Possible Solutions

There are some problem situations in which a study group might find itself. Occasionally a group just doesn't have any interaction among its members. More frequent is the problem of one student is doing all the work, either because no one else will or because he or she doesn't trust the other group members to do a good job. These problems undermine the whole idea behind study groups and are actually detrimental to learning. Not to over-dramatize this but: BE AWARE!!! Just knowing about what can happen helps to prevent or nip in the bud serious problems.

The following list is offered to increase your awareness of potential problems as well as to offer advice on how to deal with them. We cannot stress enough how important it is to discuss your problems in your group. This is why it is so important to establish an open working environment in which you can be objective about how things are going in your group and comfortable enough to point out problems.

Problem: Lack of interaction

Possible Cause: Lack of Experience with Learning in Study Groups

Suggestions:

• Talk about the problem.
• As a group, review the section of this booklet entitled, "Your Role in Your Group." You may find that you have not been following one of the guidelines. For example, the impulse to split up the work just kills group interaction.
• I know this sounds a little corny, but maybe you need to practice how to learn in your groups. Forget about math for the moment and try this activity: choose a really hot issue like abortion or immigration. Let someone in your group make a clear statement about a point of view (it does not have to be their own point of view). Then another person has to counter that opinion without criticizing the first person. Interruptions are not allowed. Go around in a circle until the issue is exhausted.

Possible Cause: You Feel Coerced to Participate

Suggestion:

• Recall that your study group is for your benefit. If your study group isn't serving your needs you should discuss the matter in your group. Try to come up with strategies for making the group work better for you. Remember, your primary obligation is to yourself and to your group members, not to your professor, UMass Lowell, or some set of rules.

Possible Cause: Physical Arrangement

Suggestion:

• Make sure you are all sitting facing each other and no one feels isolated by the seating arrangement. When your meeting starts, mentally put yourself in the place of other group members. Is there anyone who you think might feel cut off from the group?

Problem: Group members are participating unequally

Possible cause: Intolerance of Silence

Some people feel a strong need to fill in moments of silence with speech. In the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, some people abhor silence in conversations.

Suggestions:

• Ask for silence. You could cut into someone's aimless babbling by saying
  "Wait a second! I need some space to think about this!"
• Bring up the problem carefully with the person one-on-one. Often people who rush into a conversation to keep it going don't realize they are doing it. Explaining that you like long pauses in conversations in order to think could solve the problem.
• Make sure you are not talking non-stop.

Possible Cause: Dominant Speakers Monopolize the Discussion.

Suggestion:

• Talk to dominating speakers privately. Find out why they are talking so much and whether they are aware of the problem. Often such people are simply outgoing by nature and are unaware of the problem. If they are aware of the problem, usually they feel they have not had their point fully appreciated, or they feel some need to compete. In all three cases, just talking to them in private can reduce the need for them to dominate conversations.

Possible Cause: A Group Member Has No Interest in Speaking.

Some students feel that they learn better by listening than by talking. Others feel that speaking and helping others requires too much effort.

Suggestion:

• Try to draw the person into the conversation without being obvious about it. Occasionally ask for their opinion.
• Make it clear that you appreciate what the person does contribute.

Problem: A Group Member is Doing All the Work

Possible Cause: Lack of Trust between Members to Work

Suggestion:

• Tell the group member directly that you would like to help. Interrupt the group member with an "excuse me," and voice your ideas. Sit beside the group member and give your opinions about what he or she is doing. Question this group member about what he or she is doing.
• Talk to the group member in private. Explain how you want to help with the work. After a private discussion with the person, he or she may come to view you as a serious student and open up to your ideas. Demonstrate cooperative learning to this student by involving the rest of the group in the work at hand.
• If you are the group member who doesn't trust anyone else to do the work, then it is your responsibility to work with your group to make changes so that trust is reestablished. Although you may have a personal goal to complete assignments perfectly, it is a fundamental principle of study groups that everyone in the group understands the material presented in assignments.

Possible Cause: The Rest of Your Group is Slacking Off.

Suggestions:

• Don't be so eager to be the person who asks to get started. Wait until someone else takes the initiative to start the work. It may take a long time for someone else to pick up the reins, but after you do this a couple of times, the others will realize that they can no longer expect you to be the baby-sitter. Let them see the consequences of their inaction.
• Enlist the help of other members either by asking them for it directly or by pretending you don't understand something. When they see that you can't do all the work on your own, they have to help.
• Talk about your problem with your group as a whole. Say that you are ticked off (I realize that it takes a lot of courage to say that you are miffed— What if the rest of the group doesn't care that you are ticked off? Then again, maybe the only way for your group to care a little is for you show some emotion. Maybe they do not realize that you are upset.)

Possible Cause: A Group Member is the Brightest Student In the Group.

Suggestions:

• Talk to the brightest student. It may be as simple as saying "It's clear that you really get this stuff. But since we are all supposed to understand, going slower would help."
• If you think you are head and shoulders above the rest of your group, then your task is particularly challenging. Although it is difficult, you must strike a good balance between contributing your own ideas and listening to others to ensure they understand your, their own, and others' ideas. One of the best ways to learn is by doing. Clearly, your group members need the opportunity to do mathematics. Make sure your zealousness doesn't take that away from them. Also, accept that there are many ways to approach a problem. Even when you know one solution to a problem, there is a lot to be learned from listening to alternative approaches. You also learn more by helping other students understand the material. Professors will tell you that they really began to understand math/stats well when they started to teach it!

Problem: A Group Member is Being Uncooperative.

Suggestions:

• Try talking to the group member in private. He or she may have a problem with how the group is being run but doesn't feel comfortable bringing it up with the whole group.
• Hold a group meeting and invite your professor to discuss the problem.

Problem: Reinforcing Misconception

It is quite easy for a group of students to mistakenly agree, for example, that when they get zero over zero they can cancel to get one. Or to misread what it means for a function to be continuous. Or to confuse "if" with "only if." Who will be around to point out these errors?

Suggestions:

• Those who are sensitive to the careless use of language must make a practice of requesting clarification. If something doesn't sound right to you, say so. You may actually discover a wide-spread misconception.
• If you are uncertain about what is correct or incorrect, have someone in the group ask the professor at the end of the next class or during their office hours. Have the phrase repeated to the professor. You could also ask a prof or tutor in OS219A.

Study Groups Locations at UMass Lowell

• In Olsen Hall, the lobbies in the middle of floors 2 through 5 are large enough for a meeting.
• Most departments have a lounge for their majors. As long a one member of your study group is a major in a department, it should be appropriate for the whole group to use the lounge for meetings. Mathematics and Chemistry majors share a lounge in Olney 407.
• CLASS - Second floor of Southwick.
• Basement of Southwick- good for meetings, particularly at mealtimes.
• Off - campus
  • Places on University Ave. would love to have you as long as you buy a drink, at least. 

The early decades of software development generally ran on a culture of open access and free exchange, where engineers could dive into each other’s code across time zones and institutions to make it their own or squash a few bugs. But this new printer ran on inaccessible proprietary software. Stallman was locked out—and enraged that Xerox had violated the open code-sharing system he’d come to rely on.

A few years later, in September 1983, Stallman released GNU, an operating system designed to be a free alternative to one of the dominant operating systems at the time: Unix. Stallman envisioned GNU as a means to fight back against the proprietary mechanisms, like copyright, that were beginning to flood the tech industry. The free-software movement was born from one frustrated engineer’s simple, rigid philosophy: for the good of the world, all code should be open, without restriction or commercial intervention.

Today, 96% of all code bases incorporate open-source software. GitHub, the biggest platform for the open-source community, is used by more than 100 million developers worldwide. The Biden administration’s Securing Open Source Software Act of 2022 publicly recognized open-source software as critical economic and security infrastructure. Even AWS, Amazon’s money-making cloud arm, supports the development and maintenance of open-source software; it committed its portfolio of patents to an open use community in December of last year. Over the last two years, while public trust in private technology companies has plummeted, organizations including Google, Spotify, the Ford Foundation, Bloomberg, and NASA have established new funding for open-source projects and their counterparts in open science efforts—an extension of the same values applied to scientific research.

The fact that open-source software is now so essential means that long-standing leadership and diversity issues in the movement have become everyone’s problems. Many open-source projects began with “benevolent dictator for life” (BDFL) models of governance, where original founders hang on to leadership for years—and not always responsibly. Stallman and some other BDFLs have been criticized by their own communities for misogynistic or even abusive behavior. Stallman stepped down as president of the Free Software Foundation in 2019 (although he returned to the board two years later). Overall, open-source participants are still overwhelmingly white, male, and located in the Global North. Projects can be overly influenced by corporate interests. Meanwhile, the people doing the hard work of keeping critical code healthy are not consistently funded. In fact, many major open-source projects still operate almost completely on volunteer steam.

The 2010s backlash against tech’s unfettered growth, and the exact AI boom, have focused a spotlight on the open-source movement’s ideas about who has the right to use other people’s information online and who benefits from technology. Clement Delangue, CEO of the open-source AI company Hugging Face, which was recently valued at $4 billion, testified before Congress in June of 2023 that “ethical openness” in AI development could help make organizations more compliant and transparent, while allowing researchers beyond a few large tech companies access to technology and progress. “We’re in a unique cultural moment,” says Danielle Robinson, executive director of Code for Science and Society, a nonprofit that provides funding and support for public-interest technology. “People are more aware than ever of how capitalism has been influencing what technologies get built, and whether you have a choice to interact with it.” Once again, free and open-source software have become a natural home for the debate about how technology should be.

Free as in freedom

The early days of the free-software movement were fraught with arguments about the meaning of “free.” Stallman and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded in 1985, held firm to the idea of four freedoms: people should be allowed to run a program for any purpose, study how it works from the source code and change it to meet their needs, redistribute copies, and distribute modified versions too. Stallman saw free software as an essential right: “Free as in free speech, not free beer,” as his apocryphal slogan goes. He created the GNU General Public License, what’s known as a “copyleft” license, to ensure that the four freedoms were protected in code built with GNU.

Linus Torvalds, the Finnish engineer who in 1991 created the now ubiquitous Unix alternative Linux, didn’t buy into this dogma. Torvalds and others, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, believed that the culture of open exchange among engineers could coexist with commerce, and that more-restrictive licenses could forge a path toward both financial sustainability and protections for software creators and users. It was during a 1998 strategic meeting of free-softwareadvocates—which notably did not include Stallman—that this pragmatic approach became known as “open source.” (The term was coined and introduced to the group not by an engineer, but by the futurist and nanotechnology scholar Christine Peterson.)

Karen Sandler, executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for free and open-source software, saw firsthand how the culture shifted from orthodoxy to a big-tent approach with room for for-profit entities when she worked as general counsel at the Software Freedom Law Center in the early 2000s. “The people who were ideological—some of them stayed quite ideological. But many of them realized, oh, wait a minute, we can get jobs doing this. We can do well by doing good,” Sandler remembers. By leveraging the jobs and support that early tech companies were offering, open-source contributors could sustain their efforts and even make a living doing what they believed in. In that manner, companies using and contributing to free and open software could expand the community beyond volunteer enthusiasts and Boost the work itself. “How could we ever make it better if it’s just a few radical people?” Sandler says.

As the tech industry grew around private companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Microsoft, and Apple in the late ’90s and early ’00s, new open-source projects sprang up, and established ones grew roots. Apache emerged as an open-source web server in 1995. Red Hat, a company offering enterprise companies support for open-source software like Linux, went public in 1999. GitHub, a platform originally created to support version control for open-source projects, launched in 2008, the same year that Google released Android, the first open-source phone operating system. The more pragmatic definition of the concept came to dominate the field. Meanwhile, Stallman’s original philosophy persisted among dedicated groups of believers—where it still lives today through nonprofits like FSF, which only uses and advocates for software that protects the four freedoms.

“If a company only ends up just sharing, and nothing more, I think that should be celebrated.”

As open-source software spread, a bifurcation of the tech stack became standard practice, with open-source code as the support structure for proprietary work. Free and open-source software often served in the underlying foundation or back-end architecture of a product, while companies vigorously pursued and defended copyrights on the user-facing layers. Some estimate that Amazon’s 1999 patent on its one-click buying process was worth $2.4 billion per year to the company until it expired. It relied on Java, an open-source programming language, and other open-source software and tooling to build and maintain it.

Today, corporations not only depend on open-source software but play an enormous role in funding and developing open-source projects: Kubernetes (initially launched and maintained at Google) and Meta’s React are both robust sets of software that began as internal solutions freely shared with the larger technology community. But some people, like the Software Freedom Conservancy’s Karen Sandler, identify an ongoing conflict between profit-driven corporations and the public interest. “Companies have become so savvy and educated with respect to open-source software that they use a ton of it. That’s good,” says Sandler. At the same time, they profit from their proprietary work—which they sometimes attempt to pass off as open too, a practice the scholar and organizer Michelle Thorne dubbed “openwashing” in 2009. For Sandler, if companies don’t also make efforts to support user and creator rights, they’re not pushing forward the free and open-source ethos. And she says for the most part, that’s indeed not happening: “They’re not interested in giving the public any appreciable rights to their software.”

Others, including Kelsey Hightower, are more sanguine about corporate involvement. “If a company only ends up just sharing, and nothing more, I think that should be celebrated,” he says. “Then if for the next two years you allow your paid employees to work on it, maintaining the bugs and issues, but then down the road it’s no longer a priority and you choose to step back, I think we should thank [the company] for those years of contributions.”

In stark contrast, FSF, now in its 38th year, holds firm to its original ideals and opposes any product or company that does not support the ability for users to view, modify, and redistribute code. The group today runs public action campaigns like “End Software Patents,” publishing articles and submitting amicus briefs advocating the end of patents on software. The foundation’s executive director, Zoë Kooyman, hopes to continue pushing the conversation toward freedom rather than commercial concerns. “Every belief system or form of advocacy needs a far end,” she says. “That’s the only way to be able to drive the needle. [At FSF], we are that far end of the spectrum, and we take that role very seriously.”

Free as in puppy

Forty years on from the release of GNU, there is no singular open-source community, “any more than there is an ‘urban community,’” as researcher and engineer Nadia Asparouhova (formerly Eghbal) writes in her 2020 book Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software. There’s no singular definition, either. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded in 1998 to steward the meaning of the phrase, but not all modern open-source projects adhere to the 10 specific criteria OSI laid out, and other definitions appear across communities. Scale, technology, social norms, and funding also range widely from project to project and community to community. For example, Kubernetes has a robust, organized community of tens of thousands of contributors and years of Google investment. Salmon is a niche open-source bioinformatics research tool with fewer than 50 contributors, supported by grants. OpenSSL, which encrypts an estimated 66% of the web, is currently maintained by 18 engineers compensated through donations and elective corporate contracts.

The major discussions now are more about people than technology: What does healthy and diverse collaboration look like? How can those who support the code get what they need to continue the work? “How do you include a voice for all the people affected by the technology you build?” asks James Vasile, an open-source consultant and strategist who sits on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “These are big questions. We’ve never grappled with them before. No one was working on this 20 years ago, because that just wasn’t part of the scene. Now it is, and we [in the open-source community] have the chance to consider these questions.”

“We need designers, ethnographers, social and cultural experts. We need everyone to be playing a role in open source.”

“Free as in puppy,” a phrase that can be traced back to 2006, has emerged as a valuable definition of “free” for modern open-source projects—one that speaks to the responsibilities of creators and users to each other and the software, in addition to their rights. Puppies need food and care to survive; open-source code needs funding and “maintainers,” individuals who consistently respond to requests and feedback from a community, fix bugs, and manage the growth and scope of a project. Many open-source projects have become too big, complicated, or important to be governed by one person or even a small group of like-minded individuals. And open-source contributors have their own needs and concerns, too. A person who’s good at building may not be good at maintaining; someone who creates a project may not want to or be able to run it indefinitely. In 2018, for instance, Guido van Rossum, the creator of the open-source programming language Python, stepped down from leadership after almost 30 years, exhausted from the demands of the mostly uncompensated role. “I’m tired,” he wrote in his resignation message to the community, “and need a very long break.”

Supporting the people who create, maintain, and use free and open-source software requires new roles and perspectives. Whereas the movement in its early days was populated almost exclusively by engineers communicating across message boards and through code, today’s open-source projects invite participation from new disciplines to handle logistical work like growth and advocacy, as well as efforts toward greater inclusion and belonging. “We’ve shifted from open source being about just the technical stuff to the broader set of expertise and perspectives that are required to make effective open-source projects,” says Michael Brennan, senior program officer with the Technology and Society program at the Ford Foundation, which funds research into open internet issues. “We need designers, ethnographers, social and cultural experts. We need everyone to be playing a role in open source if it’s going to be effective and meet the needs of the people around the world.”

One powerful source of support arrived in 2008 with the launch of GitHub. While it began as a version control tool, it has grown into a suite of services, standards, and systems that is now the “highway system” for most open-source development, as Asparouhova puts it in Working in Public. GitHub helped lower the barrier to entry, drawing wider contribution and spreading best practices such as community codes of conduct. But its success has also given a single platform vast influence over communities dedicated to decentralized collaboration.

Demetris Cheatham, until recently GitHub’s senior director for diversity and inclusion strategy, took that responsibility very seriously. To find out where things stood, the company partnered with the Linux Foundation in 2021 on a survey and resulting report on diversity and inclusion within open source. The data showed that despite a pervasive ethos of collaboration and openness (more than 80% of the respondents reported feeling welcome), communities are dominated by contributors who are straight, white, male, and from the Global North. In response, Cheatham, who is now the company’s chief of staff, focused on ways to broaden access and promote a sense of belonging. GitHub launched All In for Students, a mentorship and education program with 30 students drawn primarily from historically Black colleges and universities. In its second year, the program expanded to more than 400 students.

Representation has not been the only stumbling block to a more equitable open-source ecosystem. The Linux Foundation report showed that only 14% of open-source contributors surveyed were getting paid for their work. While this volunteer spirit aligns with the original vision of free software as a commerce-free exchange of ideas, free labor presents a major access issue. Additionally, 30% of respondents in the survey did not trust that codes of conduct would be enforced—suggesting they did not feel they could count on a respectful working environment. “We’re at another inflection point now where codes of conduct are great, but they’re only a tool,” says Code for Science and Society’s Danielle Robinson. “I’m starting to see larger cultural shifts toward rethinking extractive processes that have been a part of open source for a long time.” Getting maintainers paid and connecting contributors with support are now key to opening up open source to a more diverse group of participants.

With that in mind, this year GitHub established resources specifically for maintainers, including workshops and a hub of DEI tools. And in May, the platform launched a new project to connect large, well-resourced open-source communities with smaller ones that need help. Cheatham says it’s crucial to the success of any of these programs that they be shared for free with the broader community. “We’re not inventing anything new at all. We’re just applying open-source principles to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” she says.

GitHub’s influence over open source may be large, but it is not the only group working to get maintainers paid and expand open-source participation. The Software Freedom Conservancy’s Outreachy diversity initiative offers paid internships; as of 2019, 92% of past Outreachy interns have identified as women and 64% as people of color. Open-source fundraising platforms like Open Collective and Tidelift have also emerged to help maintainers tap into resources.

The philanthropic world is stepping up too. The Ford Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, as well as smaller organizations like Code for Science and Society, have all recently begun or expanded their efforts to support open-source research, contributors, and projects—including specific efforts promoting inclusion and diversity. Govind Shivkumar from Omidyar Network told MIT Technology Review that philanthropy is well positioned to establish funding architecture that could help prove out open-source projects, making them less risky prospects for future governmental funding. In fact, research supported by the Ford Foundation’s Digital Infrastructure Fund contributed to Germany’s exact creation of a national fund for open digital infrastructure. Momentum has also been building in the US. In 2016 the White House began requiring at least 20% of government-­developed software to be open source. Last year’s Securing Open Source Software Act passed with bipartisan support, establishing a framework for attention and investment at the federal level toward making open-source software stronger and more secure.

The fast-approaching future

Open source contributes valuable practices and tools, but it may also offer a competitive advantage over proprietary efforts. A document leaked in May from Google argued that open-source communities had pushed, tested, integrated, and expanded the capabilities of large language models more thoroughly than private efforts could’ve accomplished on their own: “Many of the new ideas [in AI development] are from ordinary people. The barrier to entry for training and experimentation has dropped from the total output of a major research organization to one person, an evening, and a beefy laptop.” The recently articulated concept of Time till Open Source Alternative (TTOSA)—the time between the release of a proprietary product and an open-source equivalent—also speaks to this advantage. One researcher estimated the average TTOSA to be seven years but noted that the process has been speeding up thanks to easy-to-use services like GitHub.

At the same time, much of our modern world now relies on underfunded and rapidly expanding digital infrastructure. There has long been an assumption within open source that bugs can be identified and solved quickly by the “many eyes” of a wide community—and indeed this can be true. But when open-source software affects millions of users and its maintenance is handled by handfuls of underpaid individuals, the weight can be too much for the system to bear. In 2021, a security vulnerability in a popular open-source Apache library exposed an estimated hundreds of millions of devices to hacking attacks. Major players across the industry were affected, and large parts of the internet went down. The vulnerability’s lasting impact is hard to quantify even now.

Other risks emerge from open-source development without the support of ethical guardrails. Proprietary efforts like Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have demonstrated that AI can perpetuate existing biases and may even cause harm—while also not providing the transparency that could help a larger community audit the technology, Boost it, and learn from its mistakes. But allowing anyone to use, modify, and distribute AI models and technology could accelerate their misuse. One week after Meta began granting access to its AI model LLaMA, the package leaked onto 4chan, a platform known for spreading misinformation. LLaMA 2, a new model released in July, is fully open to the public, but the company has not disclosed its training data as is typical in open-source projects—putting it somewhere in between open and closed by some definitions, but decidedly not open by OSI’s. (OpenAI is reportedly working on an open-source model as well but has not made a formal announcement.)

“There are always trade-offs in the decisions you make in technology,” says Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at Hugging Face. “I can’t just be wholeheartedly supportive of open source in all cases without any nuances or caveats.” Mitchell and her team have been working on open-source tools to help communities safeguard their work, such as gating mechanisms to allow collaboration only at the project owner’s discretion, and “model cards” that detail a model’s potential biases and social impacts—information researchers and the public can take into consideration when choosing which models to work with.

Open-source software has come a long way since its rebellious roots. But carrying it forward and making it into a movement that fully reflects the values of openness, reciprocity, and access will require careful consideration, financial and community investment, and the movement’s characteristic process of self-improvement through collaboration. As the modern world becomes more dispersed and diverse, the skill sets required to work asynchronously with different groups of people and technologies toward a common goal are only growing more essential. At this rate, 40 years from now technology might look more open than ever—and the world may be better for it.

© Copyright 2023 Technology Review, Inc. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

A study published this week could help doctors to identify patients with brain injuries, in seemingly unresponsive states, who are more likely to recover.

In the study, published in the journal Brain on Monday, researchers identified what may be the source of a curious phenomenon known as "hidden consciousness" or cognitive motor dissociation (CMD).

Hidden consciousness is seen in patients with acute brain injury who appear to be in a coma or other unresponsive state.

Patients with CMD seem to be able to hear and comprehend verbal commands even though they cannot carry out those instructions because the body does not respond, study author Jan Claassen, a researcher at Columbia University and critical care neurologist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, said in a statement.

The CMD phenomenon has only been identified in the past few years and is still poorly understood.

Methods have been developed to detect CMD in unresponsive patients. These include analyzing changes in electrical activity or cerebral blood flow recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) respectively. But both of these methods currently have their limitations.

Nevertheless, it is thought that around 15 to 20 percent of patients who appear to be in a coma or another unresponsive state display signs of CMD when evaluated with such methods, Claassen told Newsweek. The detection of CMD is reshaping our understanding of patients in comatose or other unresponsive states.

Associated With Recovery of Consciousness

Clinicians define when a patient is in a "coma" purely based on the clinical examination, Claassen said. They apply this label to patients who display a complete absence of arousal (for example, eye opening) and awareness.

Patients with CMD do not seem to be able to follow commands and may in clinical examination appear to be in a coma.

But an analysis of EEG or functional MRI, recorded while patients are given verbal commands, reveals that the brains of these unresponsive patients are being activated in a similar way to conscious patients, Claassen said. This supports the interpretation that patients with CMD are to some degree conscious.

Identifying patients with CMD has important clinical implications for interactions, communication with families and the guidance of therapeutic decisions, according to the study.

Importantly, in prior research, Claassen and colleagues have been able to associate CMD with the recovery of consciousness and long-term recovery of independence in brain-damaged patients.

Researchers have been trying to develop more effective screening methods to identify which patients are likely to be in a state of hidden consciousness. But progress has been hampered by the fact that the brain mechanisms underlying the phenomenon have remained a mystery. This is where the latest study comes in.

In previous research, Claassen and colleagues found that subtle brainwaves detectable with EEG are the strongest predictor of hidden consciousness and eventual recovery for patients with brain injuries.

Many Patients With Hidden Consciousness Remain Undiagnosed.

For the latest study, the scientists used EEG to examine 107 unresponsive patients with acute brain injury. Almost half of the patients appeared comatose, while one quarter were in a vegetative state—i.e. their eyes were open but they could not follow commands.

The remaining patents were in a minimally conscious state—meaning they could track an examiner with their eyes or look at them but were not able to follow any commands.

Using the EEG, scientists can identify when patients are trying, but are unable, to respond to a command such as "keep opening and closing your right hand."

This method detected CMD in 21 of the patients. The scientists then analyzed structural MRI brains scans from all the patients.

Using a special analysis technique, the team were able to identify patterns of brain injury that the patients with CMD shared and contrast those to the individuals who did not display signs of hidden consciousness.

The researchers found that all of the CMD patients had intact brain structures related to arousal and command comprehension. This supports the idea that they were able to hear and understand the verbal commands.

But they also found that the CMD patients had damage to brain regions responsible for integrating and carrying out motor commands, which is why they were unable to take action.

"Our study suggests that patients with hidden consciousness can hear and comprehend verbal commands, but they cannot carry out those commands because of injuries in brain circuits that relay instructions from the brain to the muscles," Claassen said in the statement.

The findings could lead to more frequent and earlier diagnosis of CMD. This, in turn, could help better predict which brain-injured individuals are more likely to recover with rehabilitation, according to the scientists.

More research is required before the approaches documented in the study can be applied to clinical practice. But the latest study shows that it may be possible to screen for CMD using widely available structural brain-imaging techniques.

Due to the technical complexity of CMD detection, at this time it is only available in a few academic centers. As a result, the vast majority of patients with hidden consciousness in the United States and around the world remain undiagnosed.

"Not every critical care unit may have resources and staff that is trained in using EEG to detect hidden consciousness, so MRI may offer a simple way to identify patients who require further screening and diagnosis," Claassen said in the statement.

When you need to remember something important, it makes sense to look around for hacks and tricks to maximize your recall. And plenty of those are out there, but do they actually work? One popular tip involves chewing a certain flavor of gum or spraying an specific scent in the air while you study or work, then using the same gum or scent when it’s time to perform, such as when you’re taking a text or presenting the material you went over. The tip relies on the so-called Proust Effect and if you use it, your mileage may vary.

What is the Proust Effect?

Marcel Proust, a 20th-century writer you may already be familiar with, was the man who came up with the term “involuntary memory” to describe being hit with a memory because of a scent, taste, sound, or other sense-based trigger. As a reward for his efforts, he got this effect named after himself.

It’s a real thing that happens to the best of us: A sensory stimuli, like walking by someone wearing the perfume your mom used to wear, can jolt us into a vivid memory of the past. The phenomenon has resulted in a lot of research, because it’s deeply human but also deeply physiological and scientific.

How do people use the Proust Effect to study?

When you search for studying and memory tips, this one comes up a lot. The University of Nebraska Kearney, for instance, recommends using unfamiliar scents as a “brain booster” by spraying a different scent every time you study a unique subject. Before your test in that subject, spray the corresponding scent because, they say, “this can help you recall information.”

Does the Proust Effect really work for studying and recall?

Here’s the thing: Involuntary memories are more emotional than they are practical. Research shows that olfactory cues are much more effective at triggering emotional memories than visual cues are. The scent of a spray or the taste of a gum might transport you back to when you were studying, but it’s not guaranteed to help you remember the details of what you were studying so much as make you feel the way you felt when you were doing that.

It’s similar to the idea of changing into a designated “study outfit” when it’s time to hit the books in that way: Scents can help you compartmentalize and get in the zone, which can have a positive impact on your focus and output, but they aren’t the magic cure-all to make you remember entire passages of text.

Chewing strawberry gum while you study for chemistry and again when taking your chemistry test is more likely to help you feel like you’re in your chemistry zone than anything, which, again, can be helpful. To really remember what you studied, though, make sure to double up on hacks by using a study technique, such as interleaving or the primacy effect.

A SCOBY may look pretty gross, but new research suggests the bacteria and yeast glob could help Type 2 diabetics lower their blood sugar levels.

The study found participants who consumed 8 ounces of kombucha for four weeks saw their blood sugar levels decrease from 164 to 116 milligrams per deciliter.

Scientists from Georgetown University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the nonprofit MedStar Health reported the findings Tuesday in the Frontiers in Nutrition journal.

Kombucha, a fermented, sweetened black tea drink produced from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, has long been touted as healthy, based on claims it enhances immunity and energy levels, reduces food cravings and alleviates gut inflammation.

“Some laboratory and rodent studies of kombucha have shown promise, and one small study in people without diabetes showed kombucha lowered blood sugar,” study co-author Dr. Dan Merenstein, a professor at Georgetown’s School of Health, said in a statement.

“But to our knowledge, this is the first clinical trial examining effects of kombucha in people with diabetes,” he continued. “A lot more research needs to be done, but this is very promising.”

In the study, one group drank the kombucha while another downed a placebo beverage.

No one was told which drink they were receiving.

After a two-month period to “wash out” the biological effects of the beverages, the mixtures were swapped between the groups, who were directed to drink their new concoction for four weeks.

The placebo beverage didn’t seem to have any effect on blood sugar levels.

The American Diabetes Association advises that fasting blood sugar levels should be between 80 to 130 milligrams per deciliter.

Participants drank kombucha produced by Craft Kombucha, a commercial manufacturer in the D.C. area.

The study authors noted different brands of kombucha have slightly varying microbial mixtures.

“However, the major bacteria and yeasts are highly reproducible and likely to be functionally similar between brands and batches, which was reassuring for our trial,” said Dr. Robert Hutkins, the study’s senior author.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 37 million Americans have diabetes, and 90% to 95% of them have Type 2 diabetes.

Approximately 96 million American adults — more than 1 in 3 — have prediabetes.

“Diabetes itself is the eighth leading cause of death in the US as well as being a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney failure,” lead study author Dr. Chagai Mendelson said.

Mendelson said further studies are needed to assess kombucha’s effect on diabetes.

“We hope that a much larger trial, using the lessons we learned in this trial, could be undertaken to give a more definitive answer to the effectiveness of kombucha in reducing blood glucose levels, and hence prevent or help treat Type 2 diabetes,” he added.

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