[TOS] Teaching the concept of Free Software

Karlie Robinson karlie_robinson at webpath.net
Wed Dec 2 13:37:42 UTC 2009


On 12/01/2009 04:03 PM, Stormy Peters wrote:
> I mentioned TOS in my last weekly update and Richard Stallman asked if 
> people in this group are teaching the concepts of free software as 
> well as the open source model? (Free software, the movement and the 
> ideals as opposed to open source software.)
>
> Since many of the materials I've seen include a history that usually 
> mentions Richard, I'm thinking many of you do ... but I'd like to put 
> the question out there and introduce Richard to the group.
>
> I'm also sure that if people are interested in covering it in your 
> classes, we could find guest speakers from the community as well.

Stormy,

Last night kicked off the 3rd quarter of Honors Seminar at RIT which 
focuses on 4th Grade Math activities for SugarLabs.org.

As part of last nights introductory lecture, the students were given 
history on patents, trademarks, copyright -- What they are, why they are 
used and how they came into existence.

The lecture then transitions into all the other options that exist and 
why they're used.  Everything from George Clinton and the Grateful 
Dead's take on sharing music right on through formal license agreements 
such as Creative Commons, GPL and the general definition of open source.

In fact the Happy Birthday to GNU video featuring Stephen Fry was shown 
and one of the homework assignments for this week includes reading one 
of Mr. Stallman's ACM articles. (So sorry, I thought I had the link.)

As an answer the other emails in this thread that address the 
development model vs the philosophy,  I think RIT is doing a good job 
covering the field.

While going over past projects and the 11 week syllabus, Prof. Jacobs 
seemed to get it all in there.  So not just introducing licensing, but 
also introducing the technical aspect of the course.  That includes GIT 
as well as the need for the students to get up to speed on the FOSS 
community's use of IRC, Wikis, mailing lists, etc as primary 
communication tools.

Remy DeCausemaker and I were the value added folks last night.  Had we 
not been there, I'm confident the students would still have a good 
understanding of the technical and philosophical aspects that will come 
into play over the quarter.

~Karlie



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