Re: Major interview

[Malonowa <malonowa@wanadoo.fr>]

Ray Olszewski wrote:

> At 02:18 AM 9/3/99 +0200, Malonowa wrote [edited]:
> >
> >What does "Open Source" mean? "Open Source" software is not "free software". I
> >think it's very unrealistic to think that any commercial edsoft companies would
> >embrace the free software model.
>
> I agree, and you'll forgive me, I hope, for omitting the rest of your
> argument. But the audience for this interview isn't the EdSoft companies -
> it is the traditional Linux community.

Maybe I should have started a new thread on this. The fact is that there are some
very good educational apps. out there that couldn't be done by the community. Not
from a technical point of view but from licensing costs for video data,
characterisation etc. To persuade software companies that porting is viable can only
benefit users. I'm assuming as well that this interview will be linked from
seul-edu's home page. In light of that, I expect that there may be more than just
the Linux community reading it.

> Whatever you (or I) may think about
> how essential Open Source approaches are, much of that community is
> committed to them. As is, I think, much of this mailing list. And ther has
> been work trying to figure out ways to make money writing Open Source (not
> successful work, to my eye, but one can hope). So it would be helpful to
> discuss the issue as part of the interview -- that's all I intended to say.

I think teachers and parents are probably more concerned with access to good
educational resources within whatever limited budgets they have than whether it's
open source or not. Most teachers really wouldn't have the programming skills to
make use of the open source model.

One thing we overlook here I think is that teachers generally aren't computing
experts. They teach their subject and they try to do this as best they can. More
often than not, they really wouldn't have time to concern themselves deeply in the
technologies that we have to offer them. They're looking for an affordable "black
box" that helps their teaching - they really are the simple end users that seul
exists for.


Roman.