TOS Consortium Discussion

The Teaching Open Source track at FSOSS 2008 converged on the idea of a Consortium to further the discussion between Open Source Communities, Educational Institutions, and Businesses. This page is devoted to concrete planning for such a group.

Edit this page ruthlessly!

Two primary goals for this group:

• To provide a place to work out Open Source educational models, support and funding schemes, community relationships, and other issues.
• To advocate for the changes that are necessary to further the goal of teaching Open Source.

Notes from discussion whiteboard

Apprentice and teaching models

• How do open source projects contribute time, energy
• Financial models
• Bringing open source into humanities/social sciences

System Biz model vs. Practice Skill

• List of "drivers" (modules, software) that need to be written (What has value [to the community]?)
• Hand holding to point contributors to a useful and good place
• Application of projects to Google Summer of Code (GSOC) requires additional tasks that need work
• Profiling of projects
• Creation of "safe plpaces" where flames are low - newbie lists
• Welcome forums for things other than code

Professional incentives

• Skills to teach OS
• How to embed in a community
• Offices of technical transfer
• Tenure, research, training
• Teach open source culture to students earlier in program
• Adopt open source software

What can we do together going forward?

• Academics
• Business
• Foundations
• Open source communities

• Outline who is out there doing what
• Consortium of "us" -- people serious about growing teaching model (funding)
• Identify 1 or 2 new places where open source can be taught
• How do you educate government?
  • Get serious partners

Key lessons

• Publications != open source participation
• Develop understanding of value
• No incentive (personal)
• Sponsors
  • Real contribution
  • Reading of talent
• Have open source contributors "in residence" at universities
• Generate confidence by participating
• Trust and validation
• Expanding academics involved + business schools
• How do we evaluate students?
• How do we get involved?
• Senior open source people mentored the professor and conveyed reputation
• What do programs need to competent
• Community's investment in teaching or helping teaching
• What's the upper limit of a community/growth?
  • Godfrey
• How do open source communities structure themselves to be open to participation and scalable?
• Involve technical writing program
• Colleges vs. universities == teaching vs. research
• Focus on campuses not in the value network of proprietary software companies