2 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Jack Aboutboul <jaa(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hello Everyone,
I realize that some people have been confused, perplexed and perhaps annoyed
at the lack of information being disseminated about what is going on
vis-a-vis some programs being planned in the educational realm. After my
brief comments at the NA ambassadors meeting a few weeks I would like to
outline what has been going on to provide some clarity as well a grounds for
discussions for everything. Let me start by saying that I apologize if it
seemed like this was being done in secret, which it absolutely isn't, its
just the choice was made to keep everything quiet until we could make some
formal announcement in the coming months and that lead people to believe we
were trying to cut people out of the process, which is not the case at all.
Jack,
It's too bad we were unable to talk more about this at the booth at
LinuxWorld. The college at which I'm a student, Cabrillo College in
Aptos, California (Santa Cruz County), would be ripe for the projects
mentioned below (and I'll outline that later).
Before I continue, I've only been an ambassador since May. I bring
this up because it's still unclear to me where the boundaries lie
between Red Hat and Fedora -- if any -- and if that actually matters
in the first place. I bring it up because I'd like avoid the mistaken
assumption that we can use the terms Red Hat and Fedora synonymously,
however in the e-mail the distinction is a little blurry.
Also, as inode0 implies, after reading your missive, it's hard to
imagine how people WEREN'T cut out of the process. As such, that at
least seems to show a degree of secrecy that runs contrary to my
perception of openness at Fedora, which is of great concern to me. I
trust that this is a rare occurrence rather than the norm.
<snip>
1. Open Source Curriculum - We are working with a talented group of
people
to try and put together both a platform and set of course materials in order
to teach people and students world wide how to program using modern software
engineering methodologies and with a focus on Free and Open Software tools
and philosophy.
This is great and something we can use at Cabrillo. I hope the
talented group of people involved includes students, and I'd like to
know whether there is room for contribution from ambassadors on this.
2. Campus Reps - A US Pilot program to try and get students on
college
campuses involved in Fedora and general FOSS advocacy. Initially, they will
all report back to one person within Red Hat who can be help responsible and
accountable for all this. Purpose is two-fold, first, students advocate for
open source and fedora on their respective campus. Second, they provide
eyes and ears on the ground and work with students and faculty to find
interesting opportunities. Students also provide a face for us to the
faculty which is familiar to them which doesnt seem like its some corporate
backed scheme to recruit students without paying their sometimes insane
fees. Reps have a few basic responsibilities, mainly holding one event a
semester, whether it be a tech talk or info session about something fedora
or open source related and maintaining good rapport with faculty to try and
make new opportunities spring up.
We're set up at Cabrillo for this already -- I'm an ambassador here
and the outgoing president of the Cabrillo GNU/Linux Users Group
(termed out, but will probably hold another officer's position). We
have biweekly meetings/installfests and enjoy a very good relationship
with the faculty here, and have many faculty members who are
Linux-sympathetic, at the very least.
3. Red Hat High 2.0 - Redefine RHH as a program working with the
country's
elite science and math high schools in order to get students familiarized
with open source at the high school level. This ties in with the Open
Curriculum. We know there are a number of similar initiatives but none
which focus around getting students familiarized with open source.
Just one question: Is there any reason to stop at the elite science
and math high schools? The Cabrillo College G/LUG is already making
inroads with charter schools in our area, offering instruction and
limited support for those schools wishing to convert to Linux and
FOSS. In addition, the KIPP charter high school in San Francisco can
serve as a model of how Linux is used in a high school computer lab
setting (albeit it's an Ubuntu lab, but still). I think this program
is limiting itself, not to mention coming across as elitist, by only
addresing the science and math high schools.
On the whole, I'm looking forward to this project and will do what I
can to make it work. By the same token, I would like to reiterate my
concern about maintaining the openness of this endeavor to make it
all-inclusive.
Larry Cafiero