Daniel Leidert wrote: > Am Montag, den 03.03.2008, 22:07 -0600 schrieb Carlo Segre: >> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Thibaut Paumard wrote: >> >>> So, should all science software really go under Education??? Or should I use >>> both Graphics;3DGraphics;Viewers *and* Science;Astronomy;DataVisualization? >>> >> The consensus on the debian-science list is no. > > Can you please point me to where "we" made this consensus? I can > remember a large discussion. I *cannot* remember, that "we" made a > consensus. Could someone please remind me of the location of that thread as well? >> Education is simply not the right category. > > This is your interpretation of "Education", reducing the meaning to > "teach someone". As a native en_US speaker, I'd say that *is* pretty much the primary meaning and connotation of "education", regardless of how Free Desktop people may have defined the category. Take a look for instance at the results you get typing "define:education" into Google. From http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=education , as an example, all the relevant definitions imply "knowledge acquired by learning and instruction", i.e., new to the individual being educated but already known by experts in the field. This is distinct from knowledge acquired through scientific research, which is new to society as a whole. I agree with Carlo that "education" is not an appropriate category for software used in scientific research (either basic or applied) performed at universities or corporations. Sure, research-oriented software can all be used in an educational way, like training grad students how to use it, or having them use it to explore pedagogical examples. But research, not education, is the primary reason for existence of software like ROOT (data analysis program and framework mostly used by physicists), BLAST2 (DNA sequence alignment program), GRASS (GIS system), GROMACS (molecular dynamics simulator for biochemists), etc. On the other hand, software like Celestia (solar system simulator), Dr. Geo (ruler/compass constructive geometry teaching tool), or GPeriodic (periodic table viewer) fits in an Education (or even "Toys" in some cases) category quite comfortably. More in the hazy region between pure research and education would be things like Transcalc (microwave and RF transmission line calculator), which I could see being used either to make a quick engineering calculation, or to demonstrate properties of transmission lines in an EE class. Maybe one useful thing that can come from this overly wordy email would be a suggestion that "Research" be added as a recognized Free Desktop category. Anyone have any feelings about that? best regards, -- Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@gmail.com> WWW: http://www.starplot.org/ WWW: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/ GPG: public key ID 4F83C751
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