Re: [seul-edu] (FWD) Red Hat Proposes Alternative to Microsoft settlement

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

SteelHead wrote:
> 
> I am alreading starting a discussion with Red Hat on this
> and I would like to know what comments or concerns any of
> you might like to add.  This being the Thanksgiving Weekend
> here, I will be in my office working on it only
> sporadically.   I will post the text of my message here
> before sending it to Red hat.
> 
Sorry I'm getting in on the end of this discussion thread; I've been out
of town for a few days.  I know there are (or were) some folks from
RedHat on this list--if you're still around, could you let the folks at
RedHat know of our interest in working with them on this?

I don't know if RH did this just to count some publicity coup or if
they're serious about this sort of school outreach.  If they are, I
think we should offer up whatever services we can to their effort.  As
Bill said, it might be nice if other distro manufacturers got involved
too.  We know that both Mandrake and SuSE have strong interests in the
educational field.  They might be persuaded to join a Linux educational
coalition if approached by RedHat (or if necessary perhaps we could work
as a neutral go-between to mitigate any "turf war" feelings).

We have resources that I think could be quite useful in this effort.  I
noticed in the comments to the posting on LinuxToday about the RedHat
counterproposal that a few people talked about getting local LUGs
involved as school support teams.  This goes very nicely with our
occasionally-stated but never acted-upon goal of developing school
support material for LUGs to use.  I think that now is a very important
time to work on that.

I'd like to get some discussion from the list (including those of you
who don't participate much--we need as many points of view as we can
get!) about how LUG support of schools is best accomplished and what
shortcomings need to be watched out for.  Once we have that worked out
we should develop a list of documentation and possibly other resources
that we can provide to LUGs to help them be more effective in their
school support.  With that list in hand, we can work on creating the
parts needed to further this push.

But we need to get on the stick _now_, while the idea is in the front of
the Linux community's consciousness.  If we let it go, it'll be
forgotten, I'm afraid.  So let's hear from you!

Doug Loss
drloss@home.com