[seul-edu] Re: coalition future (was: RE: [coalition web ring])

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 10:28:11PM -0600, Ms.G wrote:
> Short-term: Web-ring - basic, simple, good.  Get the word out to "join"?
> Middle-term: Single listserve?  Geographic sub-lists?
> Long-term: Consider coalescing/merging groups and sites into one-stop
> "clearinghouse".  Much easier said than done.  Egos must budge.  Identities
> must evolve.  Distro's must be neutral :)  Must find Mini-Linus for
> benevolent dictator.  But impact will increase, redundancy will be reduced
> and efforts will be more organized.

The role of the SEUL project over the past 4 years has mainly been one
of coalescing mature groups who are working toward the same goals, and
encouraging new groups when they have new goals. I find it surprising how
frequently projects splinter at the beginning and then get back together
down the road when they realize they have pieces of the same solution to
offer each other.

I don't think we need to worry about merging or splintering yet. seul-edu
provides a forum for discussion (probably the largest around -- we've
got nearly 400 subscribers here), http://www.OpenSourceSchools.org/
is turning into a fine news site, etc. As for a leader (Doug? David?),
that can wait too. Somebody will emerge who's actually *doing* things,
and that will be the leader. :)

Speaking of a service that isn't well-covered yet, I still have a
half-written mail to David Bucknell from a week and a half ago from
when he mentioned schoolforge.net. It looks like schoolforge.net
doesn't currently live anywhere. One of SEUL's tasks is to coordinate
communication between projects, and to host related development projects,
particularly those relating to education and science. David, would you
be interested in putting schoolforge.net on one of the seul servers, and
ramping up the services we offer to educational free software projects?
(Can I get some volunteers for setting that up and running it?)

Having such a collection of educational- and end-user-oriented groups
means that they can work together, sharing ideas, users, developers,
publicity, etc.

I've tended to avoid the sourceforge/savannah interface so far because
it's graphics-heavy and klunky (our blind users can't use it at all!),
and we're doing just fine handling services for each project individually
(http://www.seul.org/pub/hosting.html), but I'm open to suggestions or
opinions there as well.

--Roger