On 16 June 2011 12:00, Sam Ruby <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 6:47 AM, IngridvdM <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > I am really in favor of going without anyone being named leader or > manager > > or any name that could create the impression that this person has more > > rights than the others. Maybe we can choose 'contact' as a neutral > > description in case something turns out to be needed? Or is there even a > > more neutral word? > > The only 'contact' that people need for this project is > [email protected]. > > If this list grows too large or too busy, then we can create > additional 'contacts' in the form of more mailing lists.
OK, sounds sensible to try using what already exists until there is a good reason not too :-) Let me test the system ;-) Alexandro Colorado and myself (both been involved with the OOo community for years) have been negotiating with a large training company to provide a community backed certification for OOo but with a vector to potentially 1500 centres. I previously sought and was granted permission by Oracle to use the OOo branding on certificates. I guess we need community consensus here now, to carry on with that. There is quite a long history to all this and I declare a financial interest. I set up a UK government accredited awarding organisation (The Learning Machine Ltd) to enable a mechanism for funding FOSS and CC education development that was independent of licensing ie the business model is QA so no problem licensing any supporting stuff freely. To get started required investment so the only way to do that was to set up a for profit and sell shares. That together with EU grants has put well over £1m of investment into this. We have had some successes such as schools that started using our generic certification with MS products that have now switched to OOo. I can get the FOSS voice heard in influential government places. The strategy is in general to be product neutral but to use FOSS for all exemplars and supporting materials. This gives us a channel to get closed source users at least in contact with FOSS so there is a clear marketing strategy. With OOo certification we can say eg the WP certificate was achieved in the context of OOo Writer and put an OOo logo on the certificate. The assessment criteria are generic so we could do the same with LibO, Koffice etc. or indeed any FOSS software project, Inkscape, Gimp, Audacity etc. WE could even do professional Apache qualifications if there was a demand. Once we work out delivery costs (Its variable and depends on volume) we give a kick back to community funds in return for using the branding. We have the infrastructure in place using a LAMP stack for assessment and certification and Drupal for community support with dynamic links between the 2. Portal is at www.theingots.org. The acronym INGOT is International Grades - Open Technologies. We are accredited by Ofqual the UK national exam regulators and endorsed by the UK Sector Skills Council for Business and IT. All our qualifications are referenced to the European Qualifications Framework. We have 2 EU Transfer of innovation projects and we are monitored by all these so the community can have some confidence that we "know what we are doing". My background is that I was a UK School Inspection Team leader and assessor of the National Professional Qualification for Headteachers. So what I'm asking for is permission to use the OOo Trademark and general community support. Trying to keep this reasonably short so please feel free to ask any questions. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ) www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
