[TOS] Moving towards a first draft of TOS Textbook

[William Cohen]

Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
> So I've spent some time honing the first part of a book outline:
> 
> http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/User:Gregdek/Textbook
> 
> I'm through about Section 4.  Feedback welcome.
> 
> --g
> 
> --
> Computer Science professors should be teaching open source.
> Help make it happen.   Visit http://teachingopensource.org.
> _______________________________________________
> tos mailing list
> tos at teachingopensource.org
> http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos

I like the outline. A couple thoughts on teaching open source.

Maybe have section that points briefly shows people how open source can work
towards their own benefit. Most  people are not in open source because they want
to simply give time and effort away.

Using open source software is an efficient way of working.  One common case is
research. Imagine if they had to start from scratch building a compiler to test
out one idea. There are many areas of a compiler that are may not be of interest
to a researcher (for example the language parser). The researcher may have a new
idea for optimizing code. The researcher doesn't want to  spend time recreating
a parser for C (or any of the multitude of other needed but mundane compiler
parts). You should be able to find some concrete examples on:
http://gnu.cs.pu.edu.tw/software/gcc/svn.html

Being able to incorporate that idea into a piece of open source software
provides good review of the idea and implementation and increases the
probability that the idea will actually be useful rather than yet another thing
in a paper.

Working in opensource software provides a portfolio for people to point to. Many
people that work at Red Hat were hired directly because of their contributions
to open source software. Imagine hiring people in a skilled trade never seeing
their work. Would you hire a wedding photographer without seeing any samples of
their work?  (looks like this might be mentioned in  "Your future boss can see
you coming!")


Licensing

Licensing is the foundation that the software is built on. Once a license is
selected it is difficult to change that after the fact. Changes in license have
to be agreed to by the various contributor to the software. Careful selection of
the license has an impact in success of the project and where the software  can
and can't be used. Might be good to illustrate the differences between GPL and LGPL.

-Will