Hi all,
Two or three of us in Dublin are interested in starting an engineering (combined software and hardware) co-op / partnership devoted to Free / Libre Open-Source Software / Hardware. (I'm not sure what structure we will go with ultimately but we might provisionally refer to it as a 'co-op'.) We aim to differ from a typical "business" not just in our licensing however; perhaps even more importantly, we intend to be only "semi-commercial" (more details below).
There are more details in various docs at https://drive.google.com/?pli=1&authuser=0#folders/0B3roVHMOAaQPVFA3WGlZakt… (We'll hopefully be moving from Google docs to a FLOSS platform - e.g. Kune / Owncloud - at some stage.) There is a short list in one of the files there of some of the actual hardware / software projects we might undertake - although we do have others, and welcome new ideas.
To the extent possible we want to provide an antidote to the contentional "business" - in that we would like to practice values such as sharing, co-operation, altruism, and gift economy. So how will we make money? We're not sure yet, but we have ideas (and welcome new ones). Ultimately this wouldn't be just about "making money", and we would prefer that the people we work alongside share our values - which can be read at https://drive.google.com/?pli=1&authuser=0#folders/0B3roVHMOAaQPVFA3WGlZakt…
A relevant discussion is at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057093702
If anyone has any questions they are welcome to contact me on or off-list. And if anyone knows other parties who might be interested, feel free to forward this to them.
There was a brief meeting before Christmas and will probably be another over the coming weeks. I might post details of that here in due course, if that's ok with the group.
Sincerely
David
The Dept of Education is holding a consultation on the role of "ICT" in schools:
http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communi…
There is a consultation paper
http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Information-Communi…
It's mostly (from my brief skim) about ICT as a tool, possibly with
some level of being able to use it, rather than turning pupils into
programmers. There is also only one mention of software (apart from
in the bibliography). Nonetheless, IFSO should perhaps throw its
contribution into the pile if we can think of a way of saying
approximately
"We should not just be training people to use tools from the
currently-dominant vendor. We should instead be encouraging
problem-solving and creativity, and Free Software is best for this."
We have until the end of the month to get something in. To discuss at
next meeting?