Re: academic alliances or the like
Morten Bo Nielsen writes ("academic alliances or the like"):
> I am an open source guy, and have been happily using Debian for a long
> time, so I am looking for a FOSS supplement. The large corporations make
> it very easy for us teachers to just use their systems and materials,
> and I feel it skews the students impression of what is relevant.
Right. Essentially, a problem here is that Debian is far more
interested in technology than it is in marketing. (With all respect
to the work done by, eg, the Debian press team.)
We might better serve some of political goals related to software
freedom if we had better marketing, but speaking personally, at least,
it's not part of my core skill set.
> Have there ever been thoughts on doing a Debian "academic alliance"
> style partnerships?
>
> My wish list
> 1) a contact person that could help me find relevant local/regional
> companies that use Debian
I don't have a good answer to this. It's going to be hard.
Proprietary software companies keep registers of their licencees, but
of course Debian does not. Most people who use Debian never talk to
Debian about this. (This is a good thing because we'd drown under the
weight of their messages otherwise...)
> 2) course material that makes it easy for me to teach linux from a
> Debian point of view
This would be valuable. I'm not aware of something like that.
But ...
> 3) some organizational structure where my students can contribute on
> their level
... perhaps, if I may be cheeky, the students could write the course ?
I guess advanced students writing introductory courses would be a
place to start.
Free Software is uniquely accessible for this kind of effort. There
is a lot of internal documentation and the source code is all
available.
Regards,
Ian.
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