Below are the links and notes on two interviews I did last week--the first one with Ragavan Srinivasan from HP, and the second with Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Movement. ----- http://educationbridges.net/k12opensource/wp-content/uploads/RagavanHP.mp3 http://educationbridges.net/k12opensource/wp-content/uploads/RagavanHP.ogg "Ragavan Srinivasan from HP Gives a Primer on Open Source Licenses" An extremely well-prepared Ragavan Srinivasan of HP gives an overview of Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the Free and Open Source Licenses. He provided a PowerPoint presentation to go along with the interview, which I have converted both to flash and Open Documents formats. Click on those links and you can follow along with him. Some other links from the interview are here. For me, one of the real high points of the discussion was his description of the two different ways in which FLOSS is used in schools: "FLOSS in Education," and "FLOSS as Education." "FLOSS in Education" is the use of FLOSS for regular computing tasks, whereas "FLOSS as Education" is the teaching of programming--and collaborative programming--by using FLOSS. Thank you, Ragavan, for giving me a better vocabulary for something I end up talking about a lot.. Another sigificant aspect of the interview was Ragavan's descriptions of where HP as a company has seen significant value in the use of FLOSS internally. HP and IBM are both visibly posturing to show the world their support for Linux and FLOSS, but to hear how HP is actually benefiting from FLOSS itself is pretty compelling evidence of the real-world impact of FLOSS. ----- http://educationbridges.net/k12opensource/wp-content/uploads/rms.mp3 http://educationbridges.net/k12opensource/wp-content/uploads/rms.ogg "Richard Stallman on Free Software in Education" Richard Stallman and I emailed back and forth several times before he agree to an interview with me on Free Software in Education. Not that Richard is not passionate about Free Software in Education, but he has some strict requirements about the presentation of his material. As the founder of the Free Software Movement, he is both passionate and principled, and doesn't want to dilute his message. When I called him last Saturday to start the interview (and yes, the date I give in the recording is wrong...), he asked if I remembered his two conditions for the interview. I said that I did, but he repeated them for me: to avoid common errors, I needed first to use the term "Free Software" only and not "Open Source," so as not to associate his work with that label; and second, to not confuse GNU and Linux. As you will hear in the interview, Richard cares very much about being exact with language. And, I think, for good reason. In the interview, Richard defines the use of the word "free" in the context of software. He also defines the four essential freedoms that are behind the Free Software Movement, and the four reasons that he believes that schools should use exclusively Free Software (see also his essay on this topic). And lots more--including the fact that he likes Wikipedia, which makes A TON OF SENSE since all text at Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License--which Richard wrote! That might help to explain why Eric Raymond was so vocal about not liking it in his interview with me... I think you will find this interview interesting listening. -- Steve Hargadon steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx 916-899-1400 direct www.SteveHargadon.com - (Blog on Educational Technology) www.K12Computers.com - (Refurbished Dell Optiplexes for Schools) www.EdTechLive.com (Podcasts, Workshops, & Conferences) www.TechnologyRescue.com - (Linux Thin Client Solutions) www.LiveKiosk.com - (Web Access and Content Delivery Solutions) www.PublicWebStations.com - (Disaster & Shelter WebStation Software) www.K12OpenSource.com (Public Wiki) www.SupportBlogging.com (Public Wiki) _______________________________________________ Fedora-education-list mailing list Fedora-education-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list
