[TOS] Scribd

Kevin Mark kevin.mark at verizon.net
Sat Jun 26 17:03:43 UTC 2010


On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:30:23AM -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> I take some issue with your conclusion.  I see some complements
> between projects such as FLOSSManuals and Teaching Open Source, but
> our missions are completely orthogonal.  If you think they are that
> closely related, perhaps that misunderstanding is one of the roots of
> our miscommunication?
> 
> To understand why we are building the Teaching Open Source brand as a
> stand-alone brand and entity, imagine this:
> 
> I'm at an education conference, it's somewhat technical, and the brand
> 'open source' has meaning to people.  The teachers there have maybe
> been using FOSS in the classroom and knows they can maybe save some
> money or something?  One of my goals is to show them how they can use
> open source as a teaching mechanism that is worth many, many times
> more than any potential cost savings on software.
> 
> So I say, "Yeah, that's what we are doing at Teaching Open Source.  It
> is a single community for education practitioners interested in
> teaching open source participation.  As I pointed out before, this is
> different and more powerful than just using open source tools.  Here
> is the website where you can find all of our teaching content ..."
> 
> Then I say either:
> 
> "... FLOSSManuals.net."
> 
> or:
> 
> "... TeachingOpenSource.org."
> 
> First of all, giving one name to work with is going to be easier, no
> matter what.  Second, we're talking about teaching open source, not
> writing free and open content, so a jump to FLOSSManuals.net is
> disruptive and confusing.  Third, FLOSS is an acronym that suffers
> from the usual problem of excluding non-insiders.  In other words,
> every teacer I tell to visit FLOSSManuals.net is likely to not know
> the acronym FLOSS and feel immediately outside of what I'm telling
> them is a welcoming community!  I'd be lucky if people didn't think I
> suddenly got confused and started talking about dental hygiene.
> 

I understand the branding issue. But there are technical ways around that. You
can make a rebranded flossmanuals.net subsite with TOS logos. And have
teachingopensouce.com/book redirect to that. So the user would enter the TOS
site and see a rebranded FM subsite and just go and edit away. But at some point,
they could go to FM directly and still see the material there and also have
other FLOSS folks see and edit it as well. Just a thought, but that would take
time and you made a decision because you needed to get work done.



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