http://www.fas.org/press/faq/nationalcenter.html
See subject. Not clear exactly when they'll begin soliciting grant proposals or how much $ they'll have to do so (it seems like the answer is "at least in the tens of millions") but this is fascinating. Olly noted in IRC that there's a heartening clause at the bottom: "All material resulting from the research will quickly be made freely and nonexclusively available to the public. This provision may be waved if the National Center's director and a unanimous vote of the Board determine that some restrictions on free and nonexclusive availability would result in significant public benefits." My initial reaction is "huh, that's interesting, but I'm not sure..." 1. Whether that sort of clause is commonplace in US government agencies these days, and if so, how much it actually means. 2. Whether there are equivalent agencies in other countries, and how they work (and honestly, /if/ they work) 3. Whether teaching open source - or any of the tools we use to do it - would fall under the purview of these sorts of grants, or whether they're more interested in things like "look, this game teaches children the alphabet!" What are other people's thoughts? Basically, I'm curious whether folks think this is any sort of a game-changer for them (or would be if it happened in their country). --Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
