[seul-edu] Re: [OS:N:] Re: Moving forward... - RE: Who do we contact?

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

Michael Williams wrote:

> hey Doug,
>  I actually don't see this as competition. Paul and I are taking the first steps to
> consolidate the k12linux listserv and web site. Paul and Eric have already done
> tremendous amounts of work on developing the k12ltsp and at one time a modified RH
> distro. Ben is already working out the kinks of a phpwebsite. I have already expressed my
> support for focusing our efforts on the seul list. Paul and I are have the same goals and
> are working to acheive them from different angles.
>
> If we leverage our resources I believe that we will all be able to accomplish our goals
> faster.

You don't know how glad I am to hear that.  I was afraid we might devolve into the bickering
that is unfortunately not uncommon in the open source community when two projects appear to
be working toward similar goals.

We've tentatively named our coalition Schoolforge, mostly because David Bucknell already owns
that domain (schoolforge.net).  We're still working out just what the major divisions will
be, and just what the scope of the coalition will be.  I think different people have
different perceptions of how tightly tied it will all be, from it being a supersite where
everything educational lives to it being a shell that is essentially a directory to all the
existing Linux in education sites.  I suspect it will eventually be something between the
two.

My preference is for it to be more toward the "shell" side of this axis, with links like
schoolforge.net/opensourceschools being essentially redirects to www.opensourceschools.org,
for example.  Where there's a hole in the current crop of Linux in education sites (no one
doing a particular task yet), that could be hosted directly on the Schoolforge site.  I would
think the site would be managed by representatives from each of the affiliated
organizations/sites.  That way we could all maintain our independence, yet benefit from
consultation with other groups working toward similar goals, and could present a unified
appearance to visitors from the outside.  And we might be able to modify our goals and tasks
so as to have less duplication among ourselves and get more resources devoted to actually
accomplishing our goals.

Although we haven't made a lot of noise about it, we're seriously thinking about moving the
various functions of SEUL/edu (the Linux in education reports, the case studies, the software
database, the wiki, the listing of Linux in education links, the mailing list) off to other
willing projects or to Schoolforge itself if no one else wishes to host them, and closing the
SEUL/edu website.  We'll have to see if that makes the most sense, but we think that having
less duplication is a good thing.

--
Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain