Hello Guido,
Thanks for taking time and enabling a discussion. First please allow me to urgently dispel the notion of "punishment", because it's actually all about positive reinforcement and earning, rather than taking away. In the demo system a parent can add any number of white-listed websites. You could also award 1000 hours of credits just for completing a 5 minute activity, for example.
The other part which I see needs better explanation is the connection to free education software. The goal is not to teach kids to embrace free software. That's not a bad goal or anything, but that's not what this platform can do. Rather, this platform (and proposed campaign) can result in the development of more free education software by giving people a reason to make it beyond mere altruism.
Basically, the above 2 paragraphs refer to 2 distinct communities: parents and developers.
For readers who have not seen the
latest slides, here is the idea: I began developing free education software 16 years ago, initially for my own 2 young children. I followed-through with some of the better ideas and got them onto Linux distros and into schools. My motivation was merely "faith" that something good would happen later, perhaps that a free education software revolution would take-off and there would be rewards down the line. Motivation aside, with the applications themselves there was always the problem of getting my kids to work carefully, to focus and to think.
Fast-forward to 2012 and I have been led, by "necessity", to develop the proposed system: a Raspberry-Pi WiFi HotSpot which firewalls them in unless they use credits which they've earned to open the firewall to their list of devices. They have free access to any number of white-listed websites, including the one(s) where they earn credits by completing activities. I call them the "credit-meter" and the "credit-feeder", respectively.
My results were very positive: the kids had a bird - bird-feeder relationship with the system, i.e. they served themselves when they needed more credits and it was essentially hands-off and drama-free for me. And they would have plenty to talk about at dinner, such as things they read, etc.
The big thing, however, was that any activity could be substituted and they would be motivated to make an effort just the same. This is the connection to free software development, i.e. the platform has the potential to accommodate anything you plug-in. It works as a single point of motivation for any content. I'm no biologist, but a biology activity could certainly work here if one existed. So, for the thing to reach its potential it should attract contributions from the largest number of developers possible. And this, in turn, would require complete openness and transparency so as to include FSF/E and anyone else.
Charging parents a subscription in order to compensate developers would result in value flowing in two directions: money from parent to developer, and applications from developer to parent. Let the money be handled by a trustworthy foundation, and let each parent distribute their own subscription fee among developers as they see fit. Require each activity to run independently of the platform and to be licensed as free software. The result is a transparent and healthy new market for free education software.This plan offers an opportunity to begin a new chapter in free education software development by providing incentive, an organized community, a user base, a market and an increased likelihood of developer satisfaction, at the same time as focusing positive attention on the FSF/E. There is plenty of room for new innovations in education software, and there are plenty of creative people who might be interested if there was an active community and some incentive beyond altruism. The tools are there, the ideas are there, the developers are there, but without an organized community, without strength in numbers, those ideas will wither and die.