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[Fsedu-developers] Draft of FSA manifesto


From: Peter Minten
Subject: [Fsedu-developers] Draft of FSA manifesto
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 16:10:52 +0100

Hi guys,

I've attached a draft of the FSA manifesto, what do you think of it?

Greetings,

Peter
!![TODO]!!

The FSA Project

by Peter Minten

6 March 2003

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Information
------------

Information is what separates man from beast. Information enables us
to do great things like building space shuttles and giant buildings
that reach up into the clouds. Information will one day enable us to
visit other planets and travel to other universes.

Information is the fuel of civilization, the motor of humanity, it is
more powerful than a nuclear bomb and capable of destroying whole
nations. Just think of what happens when the people of a country
realize that their government is bad for them, revolution.

Information has two sides however. When everybody has access to it
it's constructive, yet when access to it is restricted it becomes
destructive. Democracy is build upon the principle of free speech:
everybody may say what he/she wants and everybody may listen to what
an other has to say. Despotism is build upon the principle of
information control: the less people know the weaker they are.

Developing information advances humanity, that's why science is so
important. Science is about developing information and thus about
advancing humanity.

Universities are where science takes place. Universities are also
where new generations is taught how to practice science. So
universities are double important to humanity.

Unfortunately only few have access to universities, most are
excluded, either because they don't have the needed diploma, because
they have too little money, because they live to far away from a
university or for some other reason.

Hackers
-------

When in the previous century the computers entered the universities
some students were fascinated them and started programming on the
computers, they were the first hackers. These hackers were mostly
very intelligent but also a little weird. They're numbers grew and
grew and they organized.

In 1969 the ARPANET (the predecessor of the internet) started. It
connected many universities and labs to eachother and thus also the
local hacker groups that existed there. When small groups of people
are put together they will form a big group, so the small local hacker
groups became one big hacker community. This process took a few
years. Somewhere in those years the hackers became aware that they
were part of they're own culture, with it's own leaders and rules.

The hacker culture is more about constructing things instead of
destructing and it's more about sharing than having. A good hacker
helps others, shares his/her code with everybody and does not try to
harm others.

Unfortunately most universities don't teach their students the hacker
way. Instead they teach Bill's way, which boils down to not sharing
and trying to make profit out of not helping others. Bill's way is the
way of egoism, the hacker way that of altruism. That doesn't mean
however that you can't make money following the hacker way, you just
can't make money with immoral activities.

History of the FSA
------------------

Let's recapitulate, universities have two major problems: they're only
accessible to a small group of people and they tend to follow Bill's
way. A solution to the second problem would to convince universities
to follow the hacker way, this is what FSEDU is doing. A solution to
both problems would be to create a new kind of university.

The Free Software Academy is that new kind of university. It's an
online university for hackers. Everybody with access to the internet
can join it. The FSA is by hackers, for hackers.

Note that in the FSA context hacker has the definition as defined in
"The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001", points 6
and 7: "6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an
astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual
challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations."

A bit of history. In March 2002 I read a book called [TODO: find out
if this is the right book name] "The Hacker Way" by [TODO: find out
the name of the author]. In that book the author talked about an
online university where knowledge would be developed by all scientists
together sharing the information they have.

The idea fascinated me, and I started thinking about how to implement
it. After a few days I came to the conclusion that the organization
needed to support such a university was too great for little young me
to set up. The technical foundation I had in mind was doable however,
so I started working on that. The technical foundation is now known as
DotGNU Forum System (I know it's a long name, I usually call it Forum
too :-).

At the end of January 2002 James Michael DuPont posted a message to
the DotGNU mailing list about creating student groups to push Free
Software at schools and distance learning institutes. During the next
weeks this idea was discussed and developed on, resulting in the FSA
project that was renamed after a week to FSEDU. By the time we renamed
to FSEDU I was beginning to see a possibility. It was getting more and
more clear that FSEDU was going to be a huge project with support from
many important projects and people. I figured that FSEDU could be
just the organization needed to create the FSA.

That's where the past ends and the present starts.

Science
-------

>From the dawn of mankind humans have lived to spread their own genetic
information. Some consider this to be the highest goal in life. I
don't. I consider contributing to science the highest goal in
life. But the difference really isn't that great, we're build upon the
DNA of our ancestors and our knowledge is build upon the knowledge of
our ancestors.

I believe our current science world is in a bad shape, it's focussed
around getting published in order to get research funding and, much
worse, there is usually a lot of resistance against new ideas (mental
inertia). While these qualities have their pros (the publishing focus
forces researchers to go where nobody else has gone before and the
mental inertia forces researchers to prove their point) they tend to
be harmful.

Focussing on publication drives science away from detail study of
already discovered lands (which can really be quite useful) and slows
down the scientific debate because scientists don't want to share
their data before it's published because somebody might 'steal'
it. 

The mental inertia makes good ideas go in the trash bin because they
seem far fetched (many great (and cool) scientific theories have
gotten considerable delay by this) or in conflict with the laws of
science that are believed today.

Science meets hackerdom
-----------------------

The FSA is a university for hackers to learn their trait. But it is
also a university where science can be developed. These two qualities
don't conflict however, they support eachother. Having new knowledge
being developed at the same place as it is taught has the advantage of
a short path from invention to actual usage. Having the hacker way as
the leading principle of the university promotes sharing of
information (instead of waiting for publication) and also promotes
acceptance of more controversial theories (hackers are usually very
open minded).

Some critics might say this won't work since scientists need to
publish to survive. But why would Free Software work then? It's
basically the same problem, can you survive as a programmer while
giving your code away is almost the same as can you survive as
scientist while giving your data away before publication. I believe
the answer is yes.

One important thing to consider are the unwritten (well since esr
wrote them down they're not exactly unwritten anymore :-) laws of
hackerdom. One part of that is 'thou shall give credit were credit is
due'. Since scientist don't get funding because they publish, but
because many other scientists refer to their publications this will
work in science too. If all scientists give credit where credit is due
the scientists who deserve it will get credited often and thus get
much funding.

Another important thing are the laws of 'thou shall not fork' and
'thou shall not duplicate efforts'. In the software world this
prevents projects being split up unneccesarily (causing much grief and
less productivity) and project doing the same being started. In the
science world this could prevent a race between two or more teams of
researchers to a goal with the same means. It would not prevent useful
duplication of effort like two teams performing the same experiment
independantly to be really sure of the answer, since in that case the
duplication is useful and the two teams will get equal credit.

Goals of the FSA
----------------

Having defined the ideals behind the FSA I can now explain the
concrete goals. The most important goal is to serve humanity by
sharing and advancing knowledge. This goal is reached through two
smaller goals.

The first smaller goal is to allow hackers to learn their trait
(whether it be programming, mathematics, theoretical physics, etc) in
an enviroment optimized for hackers.

The second smaller goal is to provide a forum for scientific
discussion for open minded scientists.

Limits of the FSA
-----------------

The range of the FSA is really great. In fact everything that you can
transfer over a network connection (thus theory) can be used in the
FSA. There are however a few limitations.

The first is of course the applicable law.

The second are the laws of the hacker culture, this mainly boils down
to the common opinion of the hackers participating in the FSA.

The third is the common opinion of the hackers participating in the
FSA. The difference with point 2 is mainly that opinion is much more
flexible than laws (it changes faster).

Due to the flexibility of point 3 it's not easy to predict what will
make the grade. Take for example a course in Zen Buddhism. One the one
hand it's religion, which is clearly outside the scope of the FSA. On
the other hand many hackers are influenced by Zen Buddhish and thus it
can be seen as a cultural thing. The question is will it be
accepted. I know of three possible answers. Yes, No, and only the Zen
part (pure Zen is non-religious).

Another example shows how far the borders can go. I predict that a
course in quantum bogodynamics would be accepted even though it has no
scientific value. The major reasons would be: fun and culture. Quantum
bogodynamics is a joke, but looking at the amount of Jargon File
entries a large and common joke which many people enjoy.

--

Copyright (C) 2003 Peter Minten

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