By the way, you can usually get someone to
teach an informal/impromptu class on any topic - useful if you want
to pick up a new skill, or your students need to learn
something.(mchua,
17:56:03)
Common practice is to agree on a
date/time/IRC-channel between the students and the teacher, then
email that to a public mailing list (for the project) so others can
join in if they wan.(mchua,
17:56:27)
Here's a sample classroom session on
Packaging.(mchua,
17:56:38)
Logging bots come in many different versions,
and are often open source - you can use a project's existing bot, or
you can run your own on your own server.(mchua,
17:57:06)
By the way, you can usually get someone to
teach an informal/impromptu class on any topic - useful if you want
to pick up a new skill, or your students need to learn
something.(mchua,
17:59:33)
Common practice is to agree on a
date/time/IRC-channel between the students and the teacher, then
email that to a public mailing list (for the project) so others can
join in if they wan.(mchua,
17:59:37)
Here's a sample classroom session on
Packaging.(mchua,
17:59:42)
Logging bots come in many different versions,
and are often open source - you can use a project's existing bot, or
you can run your own on your own server.(mchua,
17:59:48)
Zodbot is Fedora's bot, and its commands are
documented in the link above.(mchua,
17:59:54)
You can also look at all the meeting logs that
have ever been taken in a particular channel - for instance, "I
wonder what my student teams have been talking about in their
meetings."(mchua,
18:00:00)
IRC bots can sometimes also do non-meeting
functions, like telling you information about a contributor.(mchua,
18:00:16)
For instance, I just typed ".fasinfo mchua"
into the channel - you can read the full log at this timestamp to
see the output that produced (it spewed out some info about what I
do within Fedora).(mchua,
18:00:51)
FOSS projects often have in-person gatherings -
major projects tend to have one (or more) large get-togethers per
year (several hundred people from all over the world fly in to
collaborate, talk, etc)(mchua,
18:01:35)
They're usually (1) free, (2) incredibly
informal - look up the words "unconference" and "barcamp" - and (3)
a lot of fun.(mchua,
18:01:54)
They are particularly cool/welcoming to
students, as a way to meet folks they've worked with remotely
face-to-face, and as an opportunity to present their work to a
community outside their school.(mchua,
18:02:19)
Here are a few examples of events FOSS projects
have - if you're thinking of getting involved in a community, one
good way to do that is to see if you can go to an event.(mchua,
18:02:45)
FOSS projects also often have hackathons -
bringing people together to work on something for a few days.
Different projects do them in different ways - in Fedora, we call
them FADs, or Fedora Activity Days.(mchua,
18:03:39)
Schools can host hackathons. For instance, if
you want to get your students together for a 3-day weekend to sprint
on some interesting piece of code, or to assemble a test case
system, or etc - and it would be perfect if you could only have (1)
pizza and (2) these two developers who know a lot about Python (or
whatever) come join you for the weekend, then ask if you can host a
FAD - there's often funding.(mchua,
18:05:28)
This is not unique to Fedora; other large FOSS
projects have this notion of hackfests as well.(mchua,
18:05:43)
In general, there are resources out there, and
they're informal to request and easy to get - just ask!(mchua,
18:05:53)
Maddog believes it's important to create local
jobs and local businesses - and FOSS can do this.(mchua,
18:38:02)
maddog also believes FOSS creates a balance of
trade, and makes a country more secure - able to rely on its own
work. Reduces piracy.(mchua,
18:38:42)
If you can't afford to buy a $100 software
license, you're just going to steal that software.(mchua,
18:39:35)
Back to national security - imagine the Chinese
military putting American (Microsoft) code in their planes. Er...
yeah.(mchua,
13:40:00)
Also - what if MS were to go out of business?
Then a lot of folks are just plain out of luck.(mchua,
13:40:00)
How many people remember Digital Equipment
Corporation? Apollo? <other defunct tech companies>?(mchua,
13:41:00)
A lot of software rots along the way - without
access and ability to fix the code, you can't do anything about
it.(mchua,
13:41:00)
Back when I (maddog) was young, software was
written and passed around by hobbyists, amateurs - "I'm not really a
programmer," just doing this for fun - sharing software, sharing
modifications.(mchua,
13:43:00)
There was a social structure of sharing this
stuff, you didn't really think about making money from
software.(mchua,
13:43:00)
FOSS, for students, lets you (1) make
interesting software as a non-solo contributor, on a team, on real
products, and (2) have a portfolio of that work and that
collaboration with others before graduation.(mchua,
13:47:00)
John Lions, from the Uni of South Wales,
believed in training students by showing them good code by good
coders. He documented v6 of Unix - commented/annotated kernel - for
education usage, but was blocked for publication by AT&T.(mchua,
13:50:00)
However, this was *such* a good resource that
it was secretly photocopied and passed around - there are 10th and
more generations of photocopies (copies of copies of copies, etc)
being passed around.(mchua,
13:51:00)
If this had just been FOSS, the whole absurdity
of having to get around that would have been avoided.(mchua,
13:52:00)
FOSS has a complete CS curriculum. For
instance, operating systems: linux, *bsd, <tons of other kernel
projects> - multiuser, 32bit, 64bit... there are multiple
variants of almost everything in FOSS.(mchua,
13:53:00)
You also get to work across multiple platforms,
avoiding learning specific things like "Intelism" (shortcuts you can
take with Intel processors that give you problems when you try to
port to other processors). You learn to step back and look at
general architectures instead of being blindly tied to one.(mchua,
13:55:00)
FOSS programs are often modular and can have
chunks swapped in and out - easy to break down sections of
problems/projects for classes to look at.(mchua,
13:56:00)
maddog is detailing different features (64 vs
32 bit, multithreaded and multiuser architectures, etc) that are
good for students to be exposed to and explore.(mchua,
13:57:00)
Another area is research - you may be told by a
company that "if you work on our product, it'll benefit ALL OUR
CUSTOMERS!"(mchua,
13:58:00)
...however, after you make that code, it
belongs to that company, not to the commons - so why not use FOSS
instead?(mchua,
13:59:00)
Places to learn Networking with FOSS - tcp/ip,
etc... also security, graphics (X, opengl), clustered
systems.(mchua,
13:59:00)
By hacking on FOSS projects, you'll learn how
to generate bugfixes and patches for customers.(mchua,
14:01:00)
And sometimes people will just pay you directly
to do that bugfixing and patching for them.(mchua,
14:01:00)
Not just software - electrical engineering
(spice, circuit simulators, arduino, etc)(mchua,
14:04:00)
Not just CS - look at social studies!
Statistics, geographical info (openstreetmap, opengis), dynamics of
communities.(mchua,
14:06:00)
And intellectual property law! And Project
Gutenberg's massive collection of books!(mchua,
14:07:00)
And business practices! Service-based
businesses thrive in FOSS - other examples of service-based
busineses are surgery and law.(mchua,
14:09:00)
And for creative works - such as musicians.
They entertain, they play music - they're not "money producers."
Music is a service business.(mchua,
14:09:00)
FOSS is not just CS. Look at Creative Commons
for the arts.(mchua,
14:17:00)
Look at the scale of FOSS projects - 230k+
projects and 2.3M+ developers on SourceForge alone.(mchua,
14:17:00)
This is without China, India, LATAM, etc. not
having fully come online, even.(mchua,
14:17:00)
Think about how many people in an actual
software company are software engineers (as opposed to marketing,
design, people who pack the discs in the boxes, etc) and those
numbers look even larger - because the SourceForge numbers are
*just* engineers.(mchua,
14:20:00)
FOSS is a new (old) model of developing
software. When software is free, you pay for service - to
copy/distribute, to get features you need when you need them, to
integrate into your setup, to train.(mchua,
14:21:00)
To learn FOSS, you have to teach... distributed
development, licensing, standard-writing, writing code to standards,
how to motivate devs, how to find and engage communities, how to
innovate, how to evaluate/size customer needs(mchua,
14:25:00)
Groups of interest: Free Standards Group
(freestandards.org)(mchua,
14:29:00)
Linux Professional Institute (lpi.org)(mchua,
14:29:00)
Open hardware: simputer.org, solarpc.com, open
telephony(mchua,
14:29:00)
You can use FOSS to solve all sorts of
interesting problems - image rendering, modeling seismic
disturbances, virtual reality, calculating financial
reserves...(mchua,
14:35:00)
"How many of you saw the movie Titanic?"
RENDERED ON FOSS!(mchua,
14:38:00)
...and Matrix! and Shrek! Harry Potter! Lord of
the Rings! (maddog quoting the very large number of FOSS-running
processors that rendered these movies.)(mchua,
14:38:00)
Lots of pictures of massive clusters and
statistics about said clusters are now scrolling across the slides.
Mmm, supercomputers.(mchua,
14:40:00)
You could take individual machines in a lab and
turn them into a supercomputer - same room, same hardware, just add
a bit of software - and BAM! Supercomputer lab.(mchua,
14:41:00)
You can also tinker with embedded systems in
FOSS. Modular kernel == easy for embedded! Also,
royalty-free.(mchua,
14:41:00)
Example: OpenMoko phone (sort of out of date,
but some folks are still using it.)(mchua,
14:42:00)
"Create hackers, not crackers." - People who
build things and make things, not destroy them.(mchua,
14:45:00)
maddog is describing a case study of work with
a group of high schoolers - "Hackerteen" program that taught
students about tech using FOSS; they're now employed and in some
cases teaching other students.(mchua,
14:46:00)
maddog also has a longer list of cool projects
(misterhouse, etc) that students may find interesting.(mchua,
14:48:00)
A challenge for the profs in this room: find
your brightest students and get them to propose embedded projects,
then develop them - EE/CS partnership - and see if they can get into
the market.(mchua,
14:48:00)
maddog bringing up case studies of students -
very young kernel developers, consultants, entrepreneurs, company
presidents - that started because of the opportunities FOSS
provided.(mchua,
14:50:00)
Well-meaning misconceptions: "Software that
costs $0" != "Free Software"(mchua,
14:56:00)
Misconception: "Everyone uses our platform!"
(yes, but you control and bottleneck it.)(mchua,
14:56:00)
(there were more misconceptions on the slides,
but they went by too fast for me to transcribe)(mchua,
14:57:00)
FOSS can also run school infrastructure - for
instance, http://sagu2.solis.coop.br - can handle entrance/placement
exams, room scheduling, financial/accounting systems, human
resources, etc. for schools.(mchua,
14:59:00)
Other resources: Moodle, K12LTSP, Free
Technology Academy, MIT (and others) Open Courseware(mchua,
14:59:00)