[TOS] Textbook Release 0.8

[tosmaillist.neophyte_rep at ordinaryamerican.net]

Comments inline:

2010/8/19 Karsten Wade - kwade at redhat.com
<+tosmaillist+neophyte_rep+4c8a4e5c8a.kwade#redhat.com at spamgourmet.com>:
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 03:25:40PM -0700, tosmaillist.neophyte_rep at ordinaryamerican.net wrote:
>> Why to<<do the HTML, HTML Single page, and PDF links for Textbook Release
>> 0.8 on http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Textbook_Release_0.8
>> and http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Textbook_Roadmap link to
>> http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/ subdirectories?  Isn't there a
>> directory on teachingopensource.org for release versions of our work?
>
> Short answer - laziness on my part.

I've always considered laziness an asset for a professional
programmer.  It leads me to find a way for a machine to do the dirty
work.  One must be careful about it becoming a source for less
desirable side-effects, however.

> Long answer - it's not uncommon in FOSS for pre-release bits to appear
> on personal pages.  The guidance is, it is better to release early and
> often than it is to release from the better or perfect release
> location.
>

I don't see "early and often" as being in conflict with "better or
perfect location".  I think it indicates the project may not, yet,
have an adequate infrastructure.  As has been previously discussed, we
can readily add content to our personal User: space in the wiki.  It
would seem to me, we need a controlled space to upload or save
non-wiki files.

> That said :) this is clearly something we can fix and make the
> branding better and reduce confusion.
>
> Chris - can I get shell access or something?  I'm thinking of:
>

I haven't used it yet, but how is Wikimedia Commons implemented?  What
are the other possibilities?  A Content Management System, perhaps?
I'm trying to think of how we make it easy for non-*nix proficient
participants to add files to the project domain.  Shell access assumes
knowledge of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and directory construction
commands like mkdir, and so forth.  Our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs),
teachers in our case, are not all going to be proficient.

> http://teachingopensource.org/Practical_OSS_Exploration/0.8/
>
> ... with a single landing page at tos.o/P_OSS_E/ that links to
> releases and highlights the latest version, with versioned
> subdirectories under that.
>
> (BTW, "tos.o" is a system administrator habit of shortening frequently
> used URLs in discussions.  Just as we abbreviate Teaching Open Source
> to TOS, we abbreviate teachingopensource.org to tos.org or even
> tos.o.  Similarly, P_OSS_E represents the full directory name and is
> not intended as an actual directory name.)
>

Good.  That removes the possible confusion for a new participant.

I like smaller directory names, so thought P_OSS_E might be good to
use.  But, then I remembered how that would be useless when browsing a
series of directories looking for the textbook.  The full name is more
informative.

> - Karsten

By the way, did you rename the "Teaching Open Source textbook" as
"Practical Open Source Software Exploration" so it would be more
readily associated with the "Professors' Open Source Summer
Experience"?  Quite clever branding, if you did, I say.