[TOS] Greetings, and a modest proposal.

Ross Gardler ross.gardler at oucs.ox.ac.uk
Thu Mar 12 12:53:14 UTC 2009


2009/3/11 Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com>:
> GOAL #0: "Make TeachingOpenSource.org the center of the 'open source in
> education' conversation."
>
> This is really a meta-goal, but an important one.  There are a lot of
> these conversations happening already, and I think part of the problem
> we're having is that they are happening in all kinds of places.  So
> bringing as many people to TOS as possible is an important goal.

+1

> * * *
>
> GOAL #1: "Build a complete, modular, cross-disciplinary, widely endorsed,
> freely redistributable curriculum, suitable for direct adoption or
> customization by universities worldwide, within two years."
>
> There's actually a pretty substantial amount of material out there for
> those who want to teach about open source.  Some of it is even freely
> redistributable.  But it's pretty difficult to track down, and for people
> who may or may not understand the subject matter very well, it must be
> fiendishly difficult to tell which is "best of breed", and where to get
> started.  There's just so much to know: licensing, patent issues, business
> models, economic theory, interpersonal communications, not to mention the
> actual mechanics of building software.
>
> My guess is that we could make a really good start here by simply
> cataloguing all of the resources currently available, and giving it a bit
> of structure.  We made a modest start on this at the Seneca site, but I
> think we could, and should, build a much more complete and useful
> reference.  I also know that people (hi Ross) are hard at work building
> more of these resources.

+1 see http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk for our resources

As Greg says there are many other resources out there ready for
re-use. What is needed is for them to be pulled together into modules
that can be useful to support leturers. At present all the materials
are spread out all over the place and not coherently themed.

However, that takes effort and there has to be benefit in it. I'm not
have my staff rework our materials for use in an teaching environment
(that's not what we do). But if we can generate enough community input
into some central resource then I'd be happy to submit and classify
our work accordingly.

Are there enough people here willing to do what is necessary to bring
all thus stuff together, most importantly is someone able to put the
required effort in to make it all happen in a coherent way?

> GOAL #2: "Provide publication and research opportunities that will count
> towards tenure for professors who participate in open source development."

+1

As before, I'm not likely to lead on this, but we will actively help
out if someone takes the lead.

> It might be useful to maintain a list of successful open source projects
> that started life as university research projects.  I'm sure there are a
> good number, and consulting these professors to help figure out "the
> tenure problem" might be worthwhile.

Here at OSS Watch we have a project doing just that (for UK funded
projects). The software is, of course, open source. It goes a step
further in that it links people together based on their engagement
with projects under similar themes etc.

The software is at http://simal.googlecode.com. Current status is
early alpha. There is a demo site with minimal test data at
http://simal.16-degrees.

The software is intended to allow a federated set of repositories. One
central repository for data, multiple satellite repositories for
specific collections. So there may be one for UK projects, one for
Canadian, one for US, one for the whole world. There may be one for
projects with mentors to work with students, one for intern
opportunities etc. etc.

Again we are funded to do this work, but we don't actually have anyone
working on the software right now (recruitment problems). Anyone want
a job in Oxford, UK?

> Patches welcome.  :)

Leadership also welcome. I'm happy to take the leadership role on the
software catalogues since we already made a good start on this (the
governance model is meritocratic, I don't see myself as a Benevolent
Dictator, but right now it's just me and a few interested parties)

Ross



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