I recently joined Steve Hargadon’s K-12 Open Source Community Ning site. After clicking through resources, related pages, and links, I made the following post on the site:
Okay. We have an open source community on Ning. I go to to the wiki and it is Wikispaces. I click on resources and I am delivered to Google sites.
It seems to me that Open Source fails to meet the needs of its own proponents. Or do we have different definitions?
This is an honest question. Discussion?
Needless to say, this provoked a number of responses—20 in less than twenty four hours—most very thoughtful and well reasoned. It has led to a discussion ranging from school cultures to the definition of open source.
My latest (probably not my last point) was this:
My concern is that people may not even be considering open source for their web based solutions–even ones that are easy to use. I am also concerned that too many of us (myself included) blithely check off the Terms of Service without considering the ramifications.
I also believe we need to think long and hard before sending our students off to the free hosted solutions. I think we need to be concerned with data ownership and privacy. I question whether we, as teachers and schools, have the right to tell students to use these tools as part of school assignments. In essence, we are ordering them to surrender personal information.
If any are interested in server-side open source tools, I’ll be glad to help. I also encourage everyone to give them a shot by renting some inexpensive shared server space and give these great tools a try. Once you have your account, some of the options can even be easier to deploy than you have ever imagined.
No, I am not a purist like Richard Stallman, or even close, but I ask that people take a look (as you clearly have) at the open source alternatives.
I invite you to weigh in on this conversation here or on the Ning site.
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