RE: [school-discuss] Re: Educational/ Open Source Foundries (fwd)

[David Bucknell <david@iteachnet.com>]

Well, I may not understand how the foundries are set up, but someone
looking for software _for_ a non-profit or _for_ education should not
confuse Schoolmation or Red Hat or SUSE's GPL'ed software with their
business-orientation, right? The software is freely available (in all
ways) in either case; the business-oriented purveyors of GPL'ed software
invariably become service and value-added feature providors.

I'm for separating non-profits and education because their list of needs,
while having many things in common, is different. Moreover, I think they
both deserve their own lime light, too. Over-lap would not be bad.

David

 On Thu, 16 May 2002, Matt Jezorek wrote:

> > I know there are plenty of good reasons to keep the educational and
> > nonprofit foundries separate, but at the core of my thinking is the idea
> > that there may not be a critical mass of projects, moderators, and
> > participants to sustain separate foundries and make them vibrant,
> > compelling online communities... And that might be a reason to start out
> > together rather than separate.
> >
>
> I think it all comes down to confusion, and marketing because getting open
> source into schools is A LOT of marketing work.
>
> I am concerned that by mixing the two which seem to get along just fine
> will confuse and bewilder some. For example there are a lot of open source
> educational resources that are run by non-profits so they would fit fine
> into a Educational/Non-Profit Foundry, but what about Schoolmation and
> others who are out to make a dollar they fit into the Educational Foundry
> but what about non-profit? so now people looking for non-profits find
> schoolmation, get confused because hey thats not non-profit. Or for
> example a non-profit org building software that is not for educational use
> they fit into the Non-Profit Foundry but the Educational?
>
> I think while it might be harder to manage to get them both running, it
> makes more sense to keep these seperate. Otherwise you go against the idea
> of a foundry in my eyes and just turn it into a directory. My thinking is
> a foundry should be specialized. A Non-Profit foundry should be
> specialized from a business aspect anyone in that foundry should be a
> non-profit, while an educational foundry should be specialized as far as
> education, having no concern to the business side.
>
> Just my two cents
>
> --
> Matt Jezorek
> Executive Director / Founder
> Linux for Education
> Blue Linux
> http://www.linuxforeducation.com/
> http://www.bluelinux.org
> matt@bluelinux.org
>