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Re: [school-discuss] Updated Coalition Procedures - Members sign up here
Michael Viron wrote:
Justin,
As part of the new membership list has now been made public, please
provide a response at your earliest possible convenience. If I don't
receive a response soon, I will have very little choice but to remove
the reciprocal link being provided on my website to Schoolforge (since
Schoolforge is in turn failing to provide a link to my website via the
"new" members listing page).
Based on the Schoolforge Operating Procedures
(http://www.schoolforge.net/coalitionprocedures), which state "Groups
in the coalition would need to be active, defined as having their
website/CVS/documents/whatever-their-primary-project-is updated at
least once every 6 months. Groups not meeting this requirement will be
declared inactive members, with no vote in coalition management until
they do begin updating things again. After a similar period as
inactive members, groups would be removed from the coalition.", there
are 2 criteria that must be met for an organization to be removed:
1) Failure to update their primary project for a period of 6 months,
at which point the organization would be placed on "inactive" status.
2) After placement on inactive status, no activity for a minimum of 6
months.
Only after 1 and 2 have been met (meaning a minimum timeframe of no
activity for 1 year), can an organization be removed from membership.
Also, "open resources" are defined as being part of Schoolforge's
mission. Specifically, it states "SchoolForge's mission is to unify
independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open
resources for primary and secondary education." As such, the earlier
comment that seems to imply that "free / open resources" are not
welcome as members, directly contradicts the mission statement of
Schoolforge.
Again, please provide a response at your earliest possible convenience.
Thank you,
Michael Viron
President & CEO, General Education Online
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* owner-schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of
*Michael Viron
*Sent:* Friday, December 15, 2006 11:54 AM
*To:* schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* RE: [school-discuss] Updated Coalition Procedures - Members
sign up here
Justin,
Let me address your concerns, as follows:
1) While General Education Online does provide an "open-source" copy
of the software powering the findaschool.org website (albeit not
currently licensed under a specific license atm), producing software
is incidental to the primary goal of General Education Online (to
provide certain free / open resources to others). You'll find that
copies of the source-code for the software developed to run the
website can be found at http://www.findaschool.org/releases/ .
2) Due to certain requirements in listing facilities (ie, verification
of accreditation, existance, etc), General Education Online has not
historically allowed individuals outside the organization to directly
add requests, although they are certainly free to email such requests
in. Many of these requirements are to try to ensure the validity and
accuracy of those entities in our directory. I'm not necessarily
opposed to open collaboration, per-se, but I have valid concerns
regarding providing open access to the admin functions of the
portal (which would potentially affect the validity and accuracy of
information available). If you can suggest an alternative, while
still maintaining the validity and accuracy that GEO's findaschool.org
portal is known for, I'd greatly appreciate the input.
The other projects, as they are still very early in the design /
development stage (aside from the disaster blog (v0.02alpha of the
Education Disaster Information System), powered by open-source blog
software Serendipity), have not yet released any code / software. As
a matter of fact, everything from the design stages forward are open
to community involvement on these other projects.
I'm concerned with the statement "As for SchoolForge Coalition
membership, for now your entries are rejected.", which seems to
indicate that no organization is presently considered a member of
Schoolforge, even though General Education Online (and many other
organizations) had already previously been accepted into membership.
This also raises the question as to who decides to "close" a member's
membership standing in Schoolforge, notification procedures, and so
forth, which are not currently documented. My strong recommendation
is that the decision not be made only by a single individual and that
some type of procedural guidelines be established for such things.
The other question I have, is since I have submitted the information
previously, do I now, based on your response, have to resubmit the
list in its entirity?
Thank you for your time,
Michael Viron
President & CEO
General Education Online, A Schoolforge Founding Member
International Education Resources, A General Education Online organization
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* owner-schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Justin
*Sent:* Friday, December 15, 2006 8:37 AM
*To:* schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* Re: [school-discuss] Updated Coalition Procedures - Members
sign up here
Michael, these are good questions.
"I must again mention something regarding the narrow definition of
"FLOSS" on the website which seems to indicate that "free / open
resources" are not welcome as members of schoolforge. This is in
direct contradiction to the founding principles which allowed for
those projects that provide web-based open resources which may or may
not include providing a copy of the underlying "software" that powers
the site."
Actually, there are no contradictions to the founding principles in
this definition. Over the years since the founding principles were
laid out, the 'web services' landscape has made enough ground that we
can start to see what utilities share our view of free and open, and
can be used to create even better resources in the future. A site such
as Wikipedia, for example, serves as an example of a 'web service'
that is free and open - and facilitates the principles of unity and
resource building through collaboration that SchoolForge was founded on.
Free (cost wise) resources are a great thing, but using that along
with SchoolForge principles seems flawed. An example could be that
Mac offered to provide their operating system free to the OLPC project
for free, which was turned down on the basis that it's not open
source. I think Microsoft has offered their OS for free to schools
that were going with open source alternatives. In both of these
cases, it's the licensing of the open source tools that has prompted a
response of lower costs/free resources.
As for SchoolForge Coalition membership, for now your entries are
rejected. I think what you provide are wonderful resources, and I
invite you to resubmit your request when your resources can be
accessed without any question as to whether they meet the definition
of "FLOSS" as provided on the website. I'm willing to work with you
towards reaching that, but if that isn't the direction you want to go
- please make this point clear.
Thanks,
Justin
Hi!
Thanks for the mail I just received. I do confirm my interest in the
Group's works. Consequently please consider my name on your active
mailing list.
Best Regards
Jan Ciechanowski
skarbien@xxxxxxxxx
Box 27, Quatre Bornes
Mauritius.