Hiring Edubuntu Staff

[R. Scott Belford]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Jonathan Carter
(highvoltage)<jonathan at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi Scott
>
> R. Scott Belford wrote:
>> For what it is worth, it is now nearly a year since I tracked down
>> every key Canonical employee I could find at Linuxworld 2008, both at
>> the conference and at after-hours events, to communicate two messages:
>> the state of Edubuntu and its User community was having an *adverse*
>
> I agree that the state of Edubuntu has been quite bad, and a bunch of us
> have been working towards changing that. In my opinion, we've been
> making some good progress under the circumstances for the Karmic release
> and in particular, changes that will open up Edubuntu to more positive
> things in the future (more space on installation media, access to the
> universe repository, etc).
>
> Isn't it a bit unfair though to say that the user community has an
> adverse effect on the adoption of gnu/linux in education? I'd rather
> applaud those (like you have mentioned below) for their unselfish work
> rather than point out that it's insufficient. The demand for support out
> there is really big and I believe it's better to attract more people to
> help in supporting than to alienate those who are doing a great job already.

Thanks for the thoughts, Jonathan.  If the list were just the user
community, my comment would have been out of place.  However, the list
is kind of a hybrid between some users, the core developers, some past
developers/contributors, and others.  More importantly, we were/are
summing up the state and the future direction.  It helps to understand
our history.

It is definitely more important to focus on the opportunity at hand
and to unify all of this current interest.  So please take my comment
as one of tough love, as much as I hate that expression.  Maybe we can
keep one more thing in mind: There are Developers of Software, there
are Users of Software, and there are Developers of Communities who
attempt to bridge the divide between the un-initiated and the
experienced.  I certainly fall more into the third.

I've been through all of this before.  Our oldest gnu/linux lab in
Hawaii's Department of Education was the birthplace of Fedora about 7
years ago.  At the time, a young HS student, Warren T., had installed
a RedHat based thin client lab at his school.  Eventually a DOE school
took him up on his offer to install one.

Along the way he tired of the package management problems and the
deficiencies with RedHat, so he started what became Fedora and moved
on.  However, this left a teacher and a school with a computer lab to
manage.  They had expectations.  Enter HOSEF, our charity, that tries
to bring new users into the fold, keep them from being intimidated,
and inspire them to reach their potential.  By 2004 we had the
Superintendent of Hawai`i's schools applauding HOSEF and the Free and
Open Source based computer labs we donated to schools across our DOE.

So, we see developers come and go, and we see users come and go.  But
someone, somewhere, needs to be solid enough not to move away.  I've
tried to do that.  With all the Ubuntu hype in the early days, who do
you think everyone called when they installed 7.10 or 8.04 thinking it
would be as good and as magical as Ubuntu and as easy as the K12LTSP
for thin-clients?  They called me, Mr. Free, Mr. Open Source, Mr.
Linux, blah, blah, blah.  So, in spite of my tough comments here, on
our list, you can be sure that I am a very positive representative for
Ubuntu/Edubuntu because people turn to me for the answers.  I
certainly know and feel all of the pain of the software developers
because I, too, am help accountable for what is not perfect.  I just
can't code my way out of it.

>
>> *impact* on the adoption of gnu/linux in education, particularly in
>> thin-client environments,and that two people should be hired - Gavin
>> and Asmo.  As Ace observed, he actually thought Gavin worked for
>> Canonical.  I used to think so, too.  Asmo has been instrumental at
>> greeting and inspiring new users and help-seekers on this list, and he
>> likes Frank Zappa.
>
> Don't forget Jordan Mantha, without him there wouldn't even have been
> any Edubuntu release the last 2 releases. He's been carying the bulk of
> Edubuntu work even to his own detriment. I wholeheartedly agree with you
> on Asmo and Gavin though.

Thanks, Jordan, and anyone else who was not thanked and hugged
appropriately.  You deserve to feel very proud for all of your hard
work.

>
> -Jonathan
>

--scott