Re: [school-discuss] ZIS Server Dreams

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Michael Williams wrote:

> Doug Loss wrote:
> >
> >  How about FreeSIF
> > <http://freesif.org> then?  That domain doesn't seem to be taken.  If we want to go
> > ahead with this, we can reserve the domain and find hosting space and services for it.
>
> Okay, I signed up to get more info and stated I was interested in piloting.

Signed up with Edustructure?

> I am currently piloting distance learning courses from Apex Learning, We use
> Follett software district wide and we're in negotiations with Compass Learning for a
> pilot, all of which are members of SIF. (Why all the pilots? Everybody wants to say that
> they play with the new buzz word "Linux") :-)

Ah, but what do they mean by that?

> I am uncomfortable with the "free" word, I think it causes more confusion than
> it's worth. I also don't think open source and commercial should be mutually
> exclusive.

Who ever said they should?  While I don't have any problem with "Free," either as a word or
a concept, I'm not fanatic about its use.  We could call it LibreSIF, or OSSIF (Open Source
SIF), or whatever else anyone likes.  But I feel strongly that we need to have a
non-commercial version of the SIF agent and ZIS if we're to play in at least the US market.
Since the whole idea is interoperability, I don't see any reason why such a ZIS would
exclude commercial applications' agents (unless those agents made use of some unpublished
proprietary extensions to lock users into their vendors' versions of ZIS; but that could
never happen, could it?).

I'm intrigued by Chris Puttick's messages.  We should continue work on this I think, but if
what they're developing will be able to act as a ZIS server with some fairly minor
modification it could be a nice quick way to leap ahead.

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant