[iDC] mining open source

[adam]

heyho,

just wanted to comment from my experience in teaching various softwares...

In my mind learning software is about largely about :
1. learning the paradigm of the software (what it is supposed to do)
2. learning the interface (how it is supposed to do it)

In my experience, progressing through an explanation of the roles of different softwares is not necessarily the shortest route, (a quick 'how-to' would be quicker)
but it does help students adapt to using different softwares that have similar roles. Its important students have a good understanding of how the jigsaw of
softwares fit together within their area of interest, before throwing them in to a quick 101 on photoshop.

On top of this comes software interface concepts and paradigms. Many of these ideas are shared between FLOSS and commodified softwares and if a student
understands what a software is supposed to do then the language/iconography of the interface can often be translated. It is _sometimes_  easy to transfer the 
understanding of how to use one tool to using another regardless of the softwares licence politics/economics.

It seems to be the issue here is not about so much about 'industry standard' interfaces as sometimes there just isnt such a thing. What is an 'industry standard'
transcoder? I agree that in some sectors there does seem to be a software that dominates the field, but I think often the issue isn't whether you are a virtuoso
with these softwares as the compatibility of the file formats and thankfully (for example) Gimp exports and imports to PSD as well as Inkscape creates Illustrator
compatible SVGs...(on the other hand, have you ever tried to edit a .mov file on Linux? eek.)

It seems to me that the real choker in the education system, preventing FLOSS from flourishing, is the university bureaucracy. Recently I have illicited
feedback on a proposal for a project to support design schools (and one one audio academy) to use FLOSS tools. Some of the feedback I got from educators was their
fear that educational institutions don't know how 'not to buy' software. How does a university budget for free tools? Sounds a bit mad, and I am still researching
this, but it seems perhaps that universities are more willing to accept a product that they can buy than one they can't. I'm not sure its the same issue as the
Open Source Initiative have tried to address by suppressing the word 'free' and replacing it with the more marketable 'open' but perhaps it is. I would be
interested to know from the many educators on the list if this aligns with their experience as I would be very happy to be wrong here. Additionally it would be
great to know what arguments could be used to 'sell'  FLOSS to educational institutions.

Independent of this issue, is an issue that i think many FLOSS tools still need to address before they are really usable within educational environments
- documentation.  Have you ever tried the wonderful Ardour application, then looked at the less than wonderful Ardour documentation? Ardour is the top Linux
digital audio workstations (DAW), and its very good at what it does... check out the docs however : http://ardour.org/manual/

sad!

The sad state of software documentation in the FLOSS arena is a major issue for anyone wanting to teach or learn free/open tools. When I first started to learn
Linux and spent many painful hours (err...days) doing stupid stuff like getting the screen resolution right on my laptop, or getting the scroll button to work on
the mouse (ah, the pain the pain!) a good friend and Linux mentor (Chris Kummerer) gave me some good advice. He had helped me out of some dark Linux holes and
at the end of one particular dark config period, he suggested that I should document what I had learnt so others would not have to go through the same thing. I
think this is very good advice, and I think it would be interesting to turn some of the energy spent on FLOSS evangelism into energy for creating good professional 
documentation on free tools.

adam





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Adam Hyde
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email : adam at xs4all.nl
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