Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: Re: [OS:N:] Summing up our discussion so far]

[BMan <bman@redhat.com>]

Doug,

Correct me if wrong here.  I here you saying you would like Red Hat to
play more of a Counsulting/Marketing role.  More or less brokers of
resources that help this project and the open-source community as a
whole.  Weather we provide added web space, information or contacts
generally a place where folks come to find answers or links to answers. 
This would be very powerful I think.  I'm sure Drew and his gang have
plans for the Open Source Now web site that they can't share yet.  My
guess, and this is only me thinking out loud here, would be our site
will foster higher communication/sharing among all participants of this
newly created "open-school-community", if you will.

On the distro side, the only thing I would go as far to say out loud is
unless it's a Red Hat distro it probably won't get ftp space on our
servers, but this isn't my decision I'm just taking a wild guess.  For
corporate reason's however it would only make sense, I'm sure you
understand.  Personally, I would (/me ducks from the stray Red bullets)
love to see this apart of every Linux distro.  I personally run Red Hat
on my machines however, my main machine also runs Suse, Mandrake and
Debian on it.  Why, because I need to know the other side of the fence.

Maybe a good thought for ya'll would be to only develop an add on to all
of the distros.  Meaning allow the vendors to provide the main distro
and ya'll provide a LTSP load for each.   This would minimize the
bandwidth needs when folks go to download it. They wouldn't have to
download everything, just the LTSP cd.  Again, I'm thinking out loud
here and not about the feasibility of it all, so take it with a grain of
salt. Just a thought and my 2 cents worth, yours?

Regards,
BMan

Doug Loss wrote:
> 
> "Drew M. Meeks" wrote:
> 
> > Doug Loss wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm unclear on what you mean here.  We all thank you and RedHat for your
> > > support, of course.  Are you saying that RedHat is planning to consolidate a
> > > lot of Linux in education stuff on the OSN website?  If so that's the first
> > > I've heard that.
> >
> > Doug, Consolidate might be the wrong word. A primary goal of the OSN web
> > site is to facilitate involvement and participation in this effort by
> > providing clear and easy access to comprehensive information and
> > resources about the groups, projects, schools, and individuals who are
> > making this effort happen. This is not a "Red Hat" project, per se, it
> > is a community project in the best sense of the word. As you have
> > pointed out, there is no comprehensive resource on the web covering the
> > activity in this movement. We, too, are hoping to change this.
> >
> 
> OK, so we're all looking toward the same thing.  As I see it we have two options.
> In the best tradition of the internet community, we can divide up onto sides and
> subject each other to searing ad hominem attacks (if you'd like to see our warm up
> practice for that, take a look at http://www.itsallpetesfault.org/; we're pretty
> organized about this sort of thing :-) ), or we can pool our efforts further and
> work together even more.  I'm for the second choice; it's too much work to keep a
> good righteous rage up for a long time.  Do you see OSN being this site, or would
> you be amenable to some other site being the focus point?
> 
> >
> > > I understand the necessities of commercial competition, but is RedHat
> > > interested in sharing support of this coalition with other distributions?
> >
> > As far as I am know, Red Hat is not involved in promoting Linux and open
> > source in schools for any other reason than to help bring educational
> > opportunity to our children.
> > This is not about market share or profits, it is about the fundamental
> > fairness and equality of opportunity that open source can bring to our
> > schools. Thus, I see no reason why other distributions should not be
> > invited to contribute. Well done!
> >
> 
> Great!  We haven't actually _heard_ from any of them yet, but it's nice to know
> we're in the "big tent."
> 
> >
> > I'm curious. What what would *you* like see from Red Hat in terms of
> > support? Is it hardware and bandwith as BMan suggested? Infrastructure
> > and tools? Web design and development? Content? Software? Something
> > else?
> 
> Hardware and bandwidth wouldn't hurt, although at SEUL we're not hampered by the
> scarcity of either.  Infrastructure and tools are arguments waiting to happen (see
> above about the grand internet tradition).  Web design, content, software are also
> questions for discussion.  I think from my point of view RedHat can best help us
> with information and publicity.  Information in that you have a higher profile in
> the world than we do and may hear about opportunities or shortcomings that will
> affect our efforts before we will.  If so, we'd like to know.  We'd also like to
> know about what things we're doing that are helping get Linux into the schools, and
> what things aren't.
> 
> That glides into publicity.  You definitely can get the attention of the world
> better than we can.  It would be nice to have a "press office" that could get the
> successes of Linux in education around the world noticed by the general public.
> 
> Some long-term goals of SEUL/edu (and of many other groups, I think) are to develop
> material to help LUGs set up school support teams and to develop an installable CD
> of educational software that could be easily added to a standard installation, be it
> of RedHat, SuSE, Debian, whatever.  This would entail RPMs, DEBs, and the
> appropriate installation scripts for them.  Once we get to that point, help in
> developing those would be very handy.  Even more useful would be an agreement to
> ship such a CD with your distro, either as part of the regular package or as a
> specialized educational package.
> 
> I hope others will chime in here too.  The above is just my viewpoint and not words
> graven on stone tablets.
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
> Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
> Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
> dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain

-- 
Regards,
BMan
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