alex.polvi.net

Well, it wasn’t that big… but sort of a climax.

The group:

• Dean Adams : Dean, College of Engineering
• Dr. Quinn: Active EECS Professor
• Jim Lundy: Involved with the space allocation process
• Scott Kveton: Word up OSL!
• Brandon Philips
• Mike Marineau
• Me

This was our chance to share our proposal regarding new space with in the College. Here we could gain our traction to start working towards open source in education.

Before the meeting even started, Dr. Quinn started talking about a recent curriculum meeting the EECS department had. Pretty much they are hiring as many tenure professors as possible, move towards more research, and have less emphasis on undergraduate studies. Sad. However, they are going to start relabeling classes to be more open source friendly. “Linux Systems Administration”. I guess this is a step, but not really too helpful. It is progress none the less.

We gave our pitch during the meeting and it went pretty well. I am pretty confident they are going to get us an adequately sized space for the LUG.

As for getting actual education around FOSS? Well, we need to get cracking on the platform for learning. This will ideally be our next move. Right now COE is in a flux with what to do with the CS dept. The EE guys have tekbots and everybody loves it. We need to match that with a platform for learning based around open source software.

The right people are listening, we have the support, we have the students, it is just going to take leadership to make it happen.

Today the OSDL, from Portland, came to OSU to talk to students about a “membership” into the OSDL. Sort of like how ACM, NSPE, or EFF is funded.

Here are my notes:

- About the OSDL

* Mission: “… Center of Gravity… ”
* Vendor neutral
* No products
* Supply full time developers to the community
** Linus
** Mortan
* “doing patches to 2.7 right now”
* “All tests posted on the web”
* Production kernel: Morton, Experimental: Linus. (I thought it was the
opposite)

- About the memberships

* OPB style
** Gifts for contribution
* Supports kernel development
* Supports Legal efforts
** SCO Suit
** Easier for users because they do not have to worry about SCO
** Grow legal fund
** Open Source Licenses.
** Works with OSI

* Do not sell members products
* Trying to get involved with the end user.
** Getting involved with the desktop initiative.

“What would make you feel good about giving a donation?”
* Help kernel devs
* Help engineers
* more projects
* more initiatives

Pays Linus to work full time to develop the kernel.

She also said twice “Down with Microsoft.”

My comments on the situation:

Honestly, I am not quite sure what the OSDL is up to about this. This
could easily be looked as a fund raiser, but I do not think it is.
Simply because they would not make much money from us poor college kids
;) They seemed to understand that. So what else is there? I suppose they
could be trying to build an elite community, but that _sort of_ goes
against the whole open source world. Even though there are some elite
OS groups out there — nobody (that I know of) paid to be in them.

If they really want to build a good relationship with FOSS users and
devs in college, they need to offer scholarships and internships. This
year was the first year they provided internships to the popular MECOP
program on campus. Good start. They also need to be proactive about
getting speakers down here to talk about how cool they are. The OSDL has
plenty of interesting resources, in people, that could greatly benefit
students. Now we just need to get them to share, with out having to buy
our way in.

We told them all this.

I think this was a good start for them. They started by coming to our
community and gathering our thoughts. However, the fact that they did it
as a “Focus Group” just screams cooperation. If they want to come
across as a community member they need to interact more with the
community, in a community style. They probably would have gotten more
feedback and attendance if they just would have came to a LUG meeting.
:)

If nothing else, they understand that selling a college student this
“membership” is not going to be easy.