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

["David M. Bucknell" <david@members.iteachnet.com>]

Nice comments, Roger and Michael. I like Michael's energy on this, by the way.
I just don't want him to do needless work. That said, I think it sounds as if
his idea would work fine.

Schoolforge.net does need a home, Roger, and I like your idea of using it to
"ramp up" the services offered to school-oriented proects. It's a good idea.
As you say, it's a missing piece and whatever brings cohesion to the group of
people working in about the same direction is good, I think.

For those who don't remember or know about it, schoolforge appears to be the
next step in developing not only school apps, but the content that goes in
them.

I actually wrote a letter to Philip Greenspun asking him to get his Web apps
class to work on developing a version of sourceforge that was more suited to
teachers without tech backgrounds and accomodated content as well as app
development. Needless to say he was too busy, but perhaps there'd be someone
else with a class of eager coders?

Anyway, I'd be glad to work on this with anyone else interested and there's
probably no better place/group than seul/edu to host it.

Certainly, this would be part of the coalition, eh?

David

Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> said:

> 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
> 



-- 
David M. Bucknell
http://members.iteachnet.org/~david
http://www.OpenSourceSchools.org
http://members.iteachnet.org/webzine/
Fax: (US) 775-244-0803