Re: [seul-edu] A new topic

[Chris Ellec <chris@linuxforkids.com>]

Doug Loss wrote:

> Hilaire Fernandes and I had a discussion the other day about the role of
> SEUL/edu in the development of open source educational software and the
> advocacy of Linux ports of existing educational software.  I'll probably
> accidentally misrepresent Hilaire's views slightly here, so I'm counting on
> him to correct me.  OK, Hilaire?
>

I have not seen another reply to this so far, so I'll give my 2 cents.

>
> Hilaire believes that we should be devoting the bulk of our effort to the
> development of open source educational software for Linux.  He believes
> that any time spent in trying to convince commercial educational software
> vendors to support Linux is not only wasted (as they'll do Linux ports
> anyway if it becomes profitable for them), but actively detracts from the
> efforts we're making toward software development.
>

I would tend to agree with Hilaire, maybe for different reasons. For the few
months I have been on this list, I believe most of the posting is done by
"technical background"  people. This is probably due to the fact that Linux is
still somewhat difficult to get up and running for somebody who thinks GUI is
what the Taco Bell dog says in its commercial. But then that's what SEUL was
started for in the first place, to make it simple !

My point is that technical people are good at solving technical problems, not
at convincing vendors that they should do "the right thing". So in a way,
trying to use geeks to sell something is a waste of time. They are more
efficient at writing code.

On the other hand, judging by the flurry of somewhat overhyped press releases
on Linuxtoday, I don't think commercial companies will need to be pushed
really hard to port their apps to Linux. The problem will be to convince
companies with interesting products to do it.

>
> I respectfully disagree.  I believe we have enough people here to work on
> both these (and other) aspects of the goal of making Linux a great
> operating system for schools without spreading ourselves too thin.  I
> contend that the people who don't feel themselves able to contribute to the
> coding or writing of documentation can be involved in such commercial port
> advocacy without slowing down any other efforts.
>

I agree with that part. Your advocacy how-to is a really nice starting point
on how to talk to those companies.

Either way, I think there is plenty of room for commercial and open source
software at the same time. There will always be people that want "just the
source", and some  that will want an automount, autoinstall, binaries only, no
questions asked software, and they'll be happy to pay for it. Let's do our
best to satisfy the former group ourselves, and convice others to take care of
the later.

Chris.