Packaging edu software (was: Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: Computers in the classroom])

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 05:53:38PM -0700, Chris Ellec wrote:
> For what it's worth, I have been selling the LinuxForKids CD collection
> from the web site http://www.linuxforkids.org. I sell it for $5.95,
> which just leaves a couple buck of profit after all is said and done
> (which I am reinvestng in LinuxForKids). Obviously I am not doing it to
> get rich. The whole CD is GPL, so people can get one CD and share it or
> make copies. In its present state, it is about 100Mb of source tarballs
> and a few rpm, with a copy of the web site. So it is not for linux
> newbies.

I just took a look at the page (http://www.linuxforkids.org/store.html
for others who want to look at it). The primary stumbling block it seems
is that they are source, not rpm's. This means that most people who are
getting them as part of a distribution boxed set (and that's probably
our best distribution channel) won't know how to use them. Even if they
do know how to use them, they'll still be a hassle and a 'toy' until we
can get clean rpm -Uvh and -e to work.

> > I bet we could get Mandrake and Suse and Redhat (among others) to
> > include the educational software cd in their boxed sets, with just a
> > bit of advocacy, if we can come up with something that's at all useful.
> > (Everybody wins.)
> 
> I am slowing working towards a more friendly version, with installer and
> such, that I plan to offer the big distributions to include with their
> CD as you just said.

I don't think the installer is the highest priority. I think if they
were all packages, they would be a lot more useful to people both on the
CD and separately. There are already plenty of front-end installers for
packages. We need to find some people who enjoy packaging.

I've tried to find such people for a while. I haven't found (m)any.

Perhaps Mandrake or ofset or osef would like to offer financial
incentives?  Chris: is there a list somewhere of those programs that need
to be packaged and the status of their packaging? Can we get debian-jr
in on this too?

Can I get an ISO of your CD and make it freely available from a seul
mirror site?

Thanks,
--Roger