Re: "Educational Freeware Project"

[cg@cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot)]

I'm the culprit who wrote above paper, and I'm glad to have discovered you 
guys as a set of largely compatible minds. In the meantime, I took the liberty 
of getting a .org domain for it (it's getting easier these days...) so the 
project has more-or-less been kicked off (oses.org - Open Source Educational 
Software, website due in <72 hours).

Without having browsed through the archives of this mailing list, it looks 
like we're having the same ideas. I certainly don't want to start a 
competition or so, but OSES is a bit different in that it stresses 
platform-independence (I mention/require Java, but Python, Perl, etcetera 
would be good candidates as well - something that I do not want to decide 
alone).

I'd love to see Linux in every classroom, but it ain't gonna happen in the 
coming few years, and it is quite likely that after that, OS'es have become so 
unimportant that you want your stuff to run on a PDA (or on a Brand X network 
computer, whatever). So, the stance that OSES is going to take is to avoid 
platform-indepence as much as possible, while still advising people to take a 
serious look at Linux (and SEUL in particular).

My idea of a well-equipped classroom is a bunch of NC's being barely able to 
fire up HotJava pointing at a Linux server box somewhere in the head-master's 
office, BTW. But then, I'm a Java advocate...

When there is news, I'll take the liberty to announce this here. I hope that 
there will be a fruitful cooperation between the respective projects 
(remember, it's the kids this is all about!).

Regards,

Cees


-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@cdegroot.com>