Re: [Fsedu-developers] Getting the show on the road

[Stephen Compall]

On Sunday 30 March 2003 09:16 am, Peter Minten wrote:
> An important decision to make is our approach to schools. I highly
> second the motion that we should not use some Open Source arguments
> since they invalidate the Free Software ones. I mean the arguments
> that implicetely asume that there is something like intellectual
> property and those that implicitely asume that it's acceptable to
> sell or distribute software without giving the recipient the Four
> Freedoms of Software.

Agreed.  However, it is not that those arguments invalidate the Free
Software arguments; rather, it is the other way around.

> With other Open Source arguments we need to clearly explain how they
> are caused by the Four Freedoms (changing them to Free Software
> arguments), for example the increased development speed of Free
> Software is due to the users having the freedom to change the code
> and to share it.

Please see http://fsedu.org/fsedu.pl?ForXDiscuss

> Our philosophy is so important that we need to write it down, clearly
> and powerful, without resorting to weak arguments that empower our
> enemies. One document will evolve out of this: the Philosophy file,
> which will be included in every FSEDU publication of a given size.
> The file will be a about the size of a book chapter, giving an
> introduction to Free Software, why Free Software is important in
> education, what the difference with Open Source is and where to find
> more information about Free Software.

Same!

> For Book Writing we will need to set a number of conventions. My
> personal belief is that the books are best written in TeXmacs, due to
> it's closeness to LaTeX and it's WYSIWIG interface. Any objections to
> making that a rule? If the former is approved we will need to set a
> number of conventions to make every book look the same (the LaTeX
> conventions are a little confusing). It would also be nice to have
> some script to automatically syntax markup code in the book, does
> anybody know if such scripts exist and if so where?

I am personally in favor of what GNU recommends: Texinfo.  We can
easily output Info, HTML, and printable documents with that format.
Furthermore, the syntax is much more lightweight than, say, DocBook.

> For Certification we will need a large Certification Commision with
> some experienced members (read teachers) in it and some less
> experienced ones too (for debugging). The Commision will:
> a) Create specifications about the knowledge a student needs to have
> to get the certificate.
> b) Create example exams.
> c) Check exams to see if they live up to the specifications.
> The actual certification of students will be done by companies that
> get their certificates from FSEDU. This will be our primary source of
> income.

I do not understand the importance of certification.  Is there a wiki
explaining this?

>
> Both Book Writing and Certification are tied up with the Curriculum
> subproject. The Curriculum is the collection of all our courses. Note
> that we will offer courses in all areas of Computer Science,
> including for example Discrete Math. This is due to the FSA that
> needs a complete Curriculum.

Which is accessed through Forum, eh? ;)

-- 
Stephen Compall - Also known as S11001001
DotGNU `Contributor' -- http://dotgnu.org
Jabber ID: address@hidden

If you'll think back a few years, the term "pirate" was formerly
applied to publishers that didn't pay the author.  But now it's been
turned completely around. It's now applied to members of the public
who escape from the control of the publisher. It's being used to
convince people that only a nasty enemy of the people would ever do
this forbidden copying. It says that "sharing with your neighbor is
the moral equivalent of attacking a ship."
        -- RMS, "Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer
                Networks"