[OS:N:] Re: open-source-now-list digest, Vol 1 #642 - 10 msgs

On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 06:17  PM, 
[email protected] wrote:

>>> When you are creating learning materials, do you contribute your
>>> changes, improvements, criticism, ideas and sources back to the
>>> community?
>>>
>>> -- no
>>
>> What?!?!?!
>>
>> I give up.
>
> Please dont.

I am quite new to Open Source so I will apologize for any naive 
statements up front but I wanted to start with the above sentiment - 
Don't Give Up

That said...

It seems that a great deal of the heat in the last few days has come 
from people talking a bit past each other.  Taking the heat/jabs out it 
sounds to me like this:

JMD wants students to be able to learn using all open source tools.
        I am guessing that is something Les and Jeremy don't have a 
problem with provided it is one of a constellation of choices.

Les wants to feed his kids.
       I am guessing that JMD doesn't have a problem with that (if it is 
legal and moral, etc.)

Jeremy feels strongly that Redhat has been a good friend to the Open 
Source community.
      Again I am guessing that JMD would agree with that if we can set 
the FSEDU agenda aside for just a second.

And so on....

But to get to my point without further rambling...

One of the things that seems so great about the Open Source community 
is the habit of trying to work with existing code rather to make it 
better rather than starting a new project from scratch because it lacks 
some feature. So my question is for JMD:

I am guessing that RedHat would be willing to offer RHCE training using 
all open source (no java or Flash, etc.) if:
1) Someone paid for the development of new courses up to their 
standards.
2) They made the same money that they get from the current courses 
(assuming they make money - I have no affiliation with Redhat so I 
can't say either way).

So rather than start something like FSEDU and reinvent the content 
'wheel', why not donate your time, effort and money to convert existing 
Redhat, successful courseware so that it doesn't use the offending 
software and let Redhat offer that along side their Java/Flash version? 
  I hope this doesn't sound flippant because that is not my intent.  It 
is a serious question.  And one to be applied to each of the 
vendor/authors you are poling.

I will end with the opinion that if you recreated the existing 
courseware without Java and Flash and offered it for the same amount of 
money, that it wouldn't sell.  And that would raise the question of how 
valuable this 'right' of Free Delivery Platforms (rather than just free 
Platforms - java and Flash) is to the students.

Bryant


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