Re: [school-discuss] Linux LiveCD Distribution attn: Doug

[Chris Topher <gromto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug,

Indeed, sending improvements and resources upstream is exactly the point. 
Not only is your idea good, it is the ultimate intention of the project.

In fact, most of the software is already available in major distro repositories. As stated, our intention is to make educational content available in addition to software packages. 

This content can include everything from homework assignments to mathematical physical models or even musical score sheets.

There is a time to decide when to fork and when not to. It is widely accepted that if you plan to include a substantial amount of specialty content, then you should fork. (Parallel Knopix is an example of a radical departure from the original, hence the new name and release)

We consider it respectful to remove all references to a project when making radical changes. Maybe Ubuntu or Suse or Mandriva do not want to be associated with what we are doing.

For example, if you were to
 download our woodcreek iso, add a heap of unstable software along with other irrelevant or inappropriate content, we would appreciate it if you would remove all traces of our project before you release it.

Inappropriate could be anything that doesn't coincide with the efforts of the original project. Like your vacation pictures and your mp3 collection.

We must fork first, build something valuable, and then we can contribute to the other distros. 

chris


> I have a question.  It's not meant as a criticism, but as an exploration 
> of the best way to get educational software to the end users. Have you 
> considered, rather than creating a SchoolForge LiveCD distro, making 
> software repositories of all the educational software that could be 
> added to the repository lists for major distros such as Ubuntu, 
> PCLinuxOS,
>  Fedora, Debian, etc.?  By doing that you wouldn't be 
> competing for "mindshare" with all the other distros but enhancing what 
> they have to offer.  I know of 3rd-party repositories that already 
> enhance various distros, like Dries, DAG, FreshRPMs, and ATRPMs, for 
> example.  Might this be something to consider rather than creating 
> another full-blown distro?
>
> Doug Loss

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