Re: Fwd: Boxer on Linux

[bickiia@earlham.edu]

>You are right, Boxer on Linux is a great idea! I'd love to get it
>done. I presume you've inspected our Web site. I just sent to the
>publisher the manuscript for a book on Boxer. We're working to develop

>open, tool-like educational materials of many sorts, in collaboration
>with others.
>
>Here are our constraints, though. I don't see how we could go open
>source at the moment. We are hand-to-mouth with support for Boxer
>development, and when we run our of University support (very soon), we

>will just have to have an income stream, or our own Boxer development
>will die. It's just me and my programmer that's keeping the whole
>thing alive.

I don't know that this is a viable option for Boxer or not, but it seems
like it might have potential for Free Software in general: would it be
possible to get grants to write free software?  I know grants suck and
are a pain to get, but money in general sucks and is a pain to get.  The
project would have to be suffiently nonprofit to seem applicable --
though I imagine some grants are willing to supplement commercial
developement -- and it would probably have to target Windows and/or Mac,
since those platforms offer the most direct benefit and results... but
more free software for any platform is good for Linux.

It just seems like there's a tremendous amount of money being dumped in
to computers in education right now -- IMHO most of it without much
thought or plan -- that at least some of it could come this way.

Again, I don't know if Boxer could do this -- I imagine it already has
existed on charity, of sorts, for a while by way of the university
affiliation.  But I'd love to see something like this happen for
someone.