Thinking about promotion of FS/OS in schools, I got an idea. As far as I see, FS/OS programs can be specifically useful for schools either accidentally (because the technology happens to be convenient in school settings, e.g. LTSP) or by guessing that a specific thing would be nice and writing it (e.g. DrGenius). In the first case the software is created for other reasongs and usability for education is a free bonus. In the later case, there is a deliberate investment of time to create something attractive to schools but judging by current situation these are mostly shots in the dark.
So, since there *is* a motivation among hackers to provide schools with free software that would benefit them, why won't the schools tell us what they want? I'm thinking along the lines of some site where schools/teachers can post "wanted" requests describing what they want. Perhaps HaMakor could convince the ministry of education to create such a thing. It could be presented from the "enraged tax-payer" point of view: we eventually pay for the commercial software purchased by schools, we have good reasons to believe it could be spent better and some of us are ready to contribute time to create missing pieces. What we request is to tell us what software schools currently use and pay for and what new investments are planned. This would be in line with the wide practice of spending state money by a competition between companies for the task; it's just an extension of it into a world were individual volunteers have a lot to offer too. It could take the form of some official policy from the MoE encouraging schools and teachers to openly post their requirements for software. As for the process itself, it should be as direct as possible, avoiding any beurocracy. Perhaps it would be enough to simply post such info on an existing site (Whatsup?). And of course all this is not limited to education but that seems a particularly important niche. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Three Laws of Copy-Protechnics: http://www.technion.ac.il/~cben/threelaws.html ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
