Spring Break
Students help Open Source Lab receive grant
RealNetwork Inc. rewards lab with $500,000 for work of two students
Mickey Clark
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: News
"Let's get lunch, we need to talk," said Michael Burns to Justin Gallardo - and he wasn't kidding. Burns and Gallardo are pre-computer science undergrads who are making names for themselves developing software for a charitable cause.
RealNetworks Inc. rewarded the Open Source Lab with $500,000 for the Burns and Gallard creation of software to help educate children in developing countries.
The work they did on campus in the Open Source Lab may soon be in the hands of millions, and it all began with a phone call.
"It started with Mike asking some questions about networking on the One Laptop Per Child mailing list," said Gallardo, chatting via instant messenger from his laptop at the Capitol.
The One Laptop Per Child project is a non-profit association dedicated to developing $100 laptops, which can be used by children in impoverished parts of the world .
Since starting work with the One Laptop Per Child association, life has been busy for the two sophomores.
The laptops need compatible software and Burns volunteered to work on the project.
"[Burns] got a reply from a big name in the community, and got some encouragement from that," Gallardo said. "Soon after that, someone from the OLPC organization contacted him saying e-mail was too slow and called them instead."
Government officials had trouble designing a program which would open Microsoft Word documents.
"Actually, there was no way to open any sort of text file," Gallardo said.
Gallardo and Burns started throwing around ideas over lunch about making a working word processor for the laptop. After lunch Burns had an e-mail waiting from OLPC when he returned to the office. OLPC expressed interest in having a word processor developed for the laptop.
"But with one catch," Gallardo said. "They needed it finished the next Wednesday, and it was already Friday afternoon."
Gallardo spent a sleepless weekend working on coding and learning the system.
RealNetworks Inc. rewarded the Open Source Lab with $500,000 for the Burns and Gallard creation of software to help educate children in developing countries.
The work they did on campus in the Open Source Lab may soon be in the hands of millions, and it all began with a phone call.
"It started with Mike asking some questions about networking on the One Laptop Per Child mailing list," said Gallardo, chatting via instant messenger from his laptop at the Capitol.
The One Laptop Per Child project is a non-profit association dedicated to developing $100 laptops, which can be used by children in impoverished parts of the world .
Since starting work with the One Laptop Per Child association, life has been busy for the two sophomores.
The laptops need compatible software and Burns volunteered to work on the project.
"[Burns] got a reply from a big name in the community, and got some encouragement from that," Gallardo said. "Soon after that, someone from the OLPC organization contacted him saying e-mail was too slow and called them instead."
Government officials had trouble designing a program which would open Microsoft Word documents.
"Actually, there was no way to open any sort of text file," Gallardo said.
Gallardo and Burns started throwing around ideas over lunch about making a working word processor for the laptop. After lunch Burns had an e-mail waiting from OLPC when he returned to the office. OLPC expressed interest in having a word processor developed for the laptop.
"But with one catch," Gallardo said. "They needed it finished the next Wednesday, and it was already Friday afternoon."
Gallardo spent a sleepless weekend working on coding and learning the system.
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