UNU open courseware

[Charlie Schweik]

Hi,

I'm in Beijing China right now so will miss the IRC. On my trip I
stopped at the United Nations University in Macau to give a talk. I also
had some discussions with a Computer Scientist named Tomasz Jankowski
who is involved with doing workshops in developing countries. I guess
the UNU has an open courseware initiative going on and as I understand
it there is little GIS in it at the moment. I mentioned to Tomasz the
OSGEO effort and he is going to get me more information on the program
which I will pass on when I get it. It might be a useful connection for
OSGEO edu in the future.

Also, I just saw a demo on commercial Chinese GIS software called
"Supermap" in case anyone is interested... http://www.supermap.com/
-- I hadn't heard of it before.

Charlie


On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 00:42 -0500, P Kishor wrote:
> Sorry, I came late to the party. This thread underscores a very
> important point -- clarity of vision not just in our (OSGeo's) mind
> but also how we convey that vision to others.
> 
> OSGeo's website does a pretty nice job of stating what the
> foundation's preferred licensing regime is (see
> <https://www.osgeo.org/content/faq/foundation_faq.html#Open_Source>,
> but perhaps it needs to be even clearer.
> 
> The frequent source of confusion is the tension between "free,"
> "commercial," and "proprietary." This license business is messy and
> chaotic, and frankly, a huge turn-off. For most part, general public
> doesn't care even to read the license, let alone understand and act on
> it. The more we can do to make it easy and simple for the creators of
> material to understand and use the license, the better it is going to
> be for us and the community.
> 
> The edu committee can definitely speak to the quality of a course
> offering, but what kind of license it should carry in order to be
> blessed by the foundation, well, that is really the Board's reckoning.
> 
> The two days last week at the Science Commons conference did not
> really do much to clear the smoke, although there was some attempt to
> tackle various other problems that impede data sharing. Licensing was
> really not addressed. Nevertheless, CC seems to have a lot of momentum
> behind it, and has done some work at simplifying understanding,
> choosing, and applying a license. Perhaps OSGeo could take a few pages
> from that book.
> 
> On a separate note: my calendar tells me that we are scheduled to IRC
> chat in about 7 hours (UTC (or GMT/Zulu)-time: Friday, October 13,
> 2006 at 13:00:00). I have a meeting conflict that will likely keep me
> from coming online although I will try. In any case, I will catch up
> via the IRC logs.
> 
> 
> On 10/12/06, Arnulf Christl <arnulf.christl at ccgis.de> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, October 10, 2006 21:33, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> > > Hi Gary,
> > >  From my perspective I think this is a good idea.  Using this
> > > recognised license is preferred to something custom, its meaning and
> > > intent are laid out quite well.
> > >
> > > Tyler
> >
> > Hi,
> > sorry for being such a drop out after having started this discussion, I am
> > busy at the Intergeo fair and will need some time to sort things out
> > again.
> >
> > Maybe Rich has another opinion on this topic, I know he is not a friend of
> > the FDL and we need all kinds of input to eventually come up with a
> > comprehensive solution. Or maybe just go broadly inclusive and look at how
> > the different options develop.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Arnulf.
> >
> > > On 9-Oct-06, at 11:54 AM, Gary Watry wrote:
> > >
> > >>              GNU Free Documentation License
> > >>                Version 1.2, November 2002
> > >>
> > >>
> ..
-- 
Associate Professor 
- Department of Natural Resources Conservation (www.umass.edu/nrc) 
- Center for Public Policy and Administration (www.masspolicy.org),
- Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government (www.ncdg.org)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: (413) 545-1824
Website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik