[TOS] how broad a mandate?

Greg Wilson gvwilson at cs.utoronto.ca
Thu Apr 30 12:32:40 UTC 2009


[Disclaimer: I'm not trying to make trouble or raise temperatures in this, 
just trying to get a feel for what participants in this list think is in 
scope.]

It's pretty clear that materials for teaching open source have to talk 
about licensing, which I believe necessitates discussion of the wider 
social context of copyright vs. file sharing, software patents, free 
speech, etc.  Discussions of open source "in the large" also often touch 
on the needs of developing countries.  Given all of that, should we also 
cover equity issues, such as why gender ratios in open source are much 
worse than they are in the industry as a whole (where they are in turn 
worse than in most white collar sectors)?  Incidents such as Mike 
Gunderloy's resignation from the Rails Activists group [1] over the 
responses to Sarah Allen's complaints about GoGaRuCo [2] mean that 
students are going to encounter the question; should we be trying to give 
them context?

Thanks,
Greg

[1] http://afreshcup.com/2009/04/28/a-painful-decision/
[2] http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-gogaruco/



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