[TOS] Seb Benthall on FOSS vs academic culture

[Mel Chua]

> On Mar 7, 2012 2:36 AM, "Jim Bowring" <bowring at gmail.com
>     Why the closed-minded vitriol about the academy?  Positive actions
>     are required!

Jim -- I can see how this might not have come through in my original 
message on this thread, but I've found that I'm a harsh critic of the 
things I love the most. If I didn't have such high regard for the 
academy and its power to affect the world, and had no hope or intention 
of changing it for the better, I would not be sitting in the ivory tower 
right now. :)

As Seb pointed out, identifying the problems in anything is the first 
step to improving them; positive actions tend to stem from visions of 
how something could be better than it currently is. Since this mailing 
list tends to have a lot of academics on it, my writing here tends to be 
skewed more towards the "here's what FOSS does right and academia does 
wrong; let's transfer goodness in that direction!" theme (perhaps 
sometimes unfairly so).

Conversely, when I'm in a group of mostly-hackers, I tend to talk more 
about the things that FOSS is doing wrong and academia is doing right, 
and argue that FOSS should adopt those practices. For instance, FOSS 
projects tend to have ridiculously high failure-and-dropout rates due to 
poorly designed scaffolding (or a lack thereof), and schools are more 
proactive about identifying and aiding newcomers who are struggling. I 
guess I should say these sorts of things here more as well -- thanks for 
inadvertently pointing that out.

Either way, the first step to change is understanding -- and I think 
what Seb and I are trying to do, as relative newcomers to the academic 
world (and experienced denizens of the FOSS world) is to understand and 
make sense of our new environment -- and part of that is fumbling around 
and saying (seemingly) stupid things and learning from how folks respond 
to them. The comments on my blog post 
(http://blog.melchua.com/2012/03/07/foss-thinking-vs-academic-thinking/#comments) 
have likewise been illuminating food for thought -- I totally didn't 
expect this big a reaction, but hey... that's how we learn.

Ideas for specific positive actions to take are welcome. I mean, I do 
need a dissertation someday. :)

--Mel