[TOS] how broad a mandate?
Greg Hislop
hislopg at drexel.edu
Thu Apr 30 16:48:31 UTC 2009
Actually, I'm surprised that you even offered the disclaimer. While there
might be discussion of how or where to address topics like this,
everything you mention would seem like an easy fit to any computing degree
program that address open source. The equity issue is serious enough that
it is shaping the culture and limiting the size of the professional
computing community. How could it not be a topic included in TOS?
Greg Hislop
From:
Greg Wilson <gvwilson at cs.utoronto.ca>
To:
tos <tos at teachingopensource.org>
Date:
04/30/2009 08:40 AM
Subject:
[TOS] how broad a mandate?
[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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