[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

[Robert McWilliam]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 03:09:23PM +0000, Gary Short wrote:
> In the pub afterwards a group of us were talking about a particular open 
> source project that a few of us contribute to. One of the guys said we 
> could learn a lot from the Linux community re managing open source projets 
> because, although its relatively new to the C# world, open source is the 
> life blood of the Linux community.
>
> I thought that was a great suggestion, and so did most of the people in the 
> discussion. But, there were a couple of guys there who said it wasn't a 
> good idea, because they'd tried that and found it alomost impossible to 
> have a discussion with the Linux group because (I believe a vocal minority 
> of) people would just drown out any thread they started with anti Microsoft 
> postings. He referred to this minority as "tin foil hat wearing loons", not 
> because he thought they were paranoid, but using the more general idea of 
> the tin foil hat blocking out any other signals. They couldn't see a way in 
> which any MS project could be good and refused to make any positive 
> comments.

In an entertaining twist that is possibly one of the most important
lessons that you need to learn for a successful open source project:
how to deal with the people who strongly disagree with what you are
trying to achieve and aren't afraid of saying so. Repeatedly. This is
more a general community thing than an open source specific problem
but it gets exacerbated in the open source world since we communicate
via channels that give people enough of a disconnect to be a lot
meaner than they ever would be in person (and for people who are happy
being fairly mean in person this can get bad).  

I don't think there is a perfect model yet but looking at flames on a
collection of open source mailing lists you can get an idea of what
works (and a lot of examples of how to make the situation worse
too...).

> I'm glad you are disappointed because I don't intend to give up. I intend 
> to continue to come along to the meetings (unless of course you guys throw 
> me out) because I believe there are lots of things we can learn from each 
> other. 

Excellent, people taking their ball and going home is far too often
the result of disagreements and that doesn't solve anything. 


> ... you can go on to make a clear 
> arguement why OPLC is better than teachers. 

It's not. It's just a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to
organise. OLPC (or any technology) is not intended to replace teachers
but rather to let the children do the stuff that can be achieved
without a teacher, without the teacher. It lets them go and look
things up for themselves so that the teacher doesn't have to be a
walking encyclopedia but can in fact help with the things for which a
person to interact with helps. OLPC also lets the children interact
better with each other (it is set up to find other people working on
the same things). That is incredibly valuable since the best way to
really get an idea cememnted in your mind is to explain it to someone
else. 

OLPC would be a huge advantage in rural areas where there aren't
enough children to justify having a teacher (when teachers are limited
you put them in the population centers where they can be most
effective). OLPC and some form of net connection can let them connect
with a teacher anywhere. It would even let you and me answer their
questions and help out in our free time rather than having to move to
a developing country (or help pay for someone else to make the move) -
though if your inclined towards that you still can and it will help.

       Robert 

________________________________________________________
Robert McWilliam     rmcw at allmail.net    www.ormiret.com

I think feminists are cute.