Open Source classes

[Brendan]

On Saturday 08 May 2004 02:48, David Kramer wrote:
> Well, they were, and they were closed down, for doing business just as you
> propose.  They were called Certiviable, and they were based in Waltham.  I
> had some bad dealings with them.  This January I was contacted by the
> Department of Education about them.  It seems you need certain licenses to
> teach, even if you're not offering certification.

Interesting. Do you have any more info on that? Whom did you speak with and do 
you have any numbers? I don't want to step on toes or get in hot water with 
this, but I am pushing forward. I want to create an environment where people 
can learn and not just the regular, average "here's your book" kind of 
course.


> I know someone else who tried this.  They made several mistakes:
> - They did it in Western Mass so land was cheap, but nobody wanted to go
> out there.

We're ok there. Somerville, right off of Highland Ave, on School St.

> - They bought a bunch of fast computers and expensive office furniture
> right up front, instead of leasing or buying refurb, and starting smaller.

A few P3's. A dual-p3 and a p4. Already bought and paid for. We have the 
bandwidth, the space and the hardware to make this fly. We had our first 
cross-continental video conference with Brazil, this weekend.

> - They did not embrace what they taught.  They sent out advertisements to
> me several times after I unsubscribed several times, and they sent emails
> with MSWord attachments.  I sent them constructive criticism on these
> topics and they blew me off.

Ick. Nope, both of us live the FOSS life and half of you have met me at the 
key-signing party. I was the tall, smiling guy. 
I have been working with Linux since the mid-90's, and have contributed piles 
of patches (both source and documentation) over the years for KDE in general, 
Kmail, Kalzium, Kig, Kstars, OpenOffice and Mozilla. I'm certainly not near 
even the middle of the pile in development effort, but I know enough to be 
dangerous.

> - They didn't hire teachers that both knew the subject and could teach it.

I have so many immensely-qualified candidates that I feel mildly intimidated. 
I can feel that I'm going to learn so much just by being around these people. 

> How about configuring Linux?  Or how to choose a distribution?

Those may be important to us, the users, but I think (at least at first) most 
people are going with what they hear is "the standard": Red Hat. We, 
personally, have no vested interest. I would usually like to use Mandrake or 
Debian, just for the reproduciability (just made that up) of the standard 
distributions, the longevity and ease of upgradeability (at least for newish 
Mandrakes and any Debian).  

Configuring Linux will be part of most of our "Living Linux" series. It's hard 
to have configuration without the use of the configured software, you know 
what I mean?

Brendan