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.
Roll Call
Interested in
E-mail List
Let's use the OSIE-list (osie-list@redhat.com, http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/osie-list) for initial discussion.
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 places" 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
Proposed Initiatives
- Create a peer-reviewed Journal of open source development
- Encourage universities to view Code Development as Research and Open Source as Peer-Reviewed Publication
- Create a taxonomy of Open Source educational levels