[OSGeo-Discuss] Abstract, please look at.

[Ian Turton]

On 2/22/06, Chris Holmes <cholmes at openplans.org> wrote:
>
> Eventually I think I would really like to see an 'academic' committee,
> focused more on getting academics and indeed students to use and
> contribute to open source.
>
[...]

The other is
> to encourage 'students' to see themselves as potential contributors.
> Many see their work as not 'real' until they get in to a paying job,
> when in reality they do some of the best work.  Ideally we could capture
> some of that energy for open source.


Using OS also allows students to take thier work with them when they leave
without any big IP fights. I've also found that in an academic world
increasingly pushed to make money placing my code as open source saves on
meetings with the lawyers which can really up my coding time!

One idea to really encourage that is to make a analogue to the
> 'job'/volunteer board, but focus it on projects that are more cutting
> edge, and that would be of the size that one could do for a masters or
> phD thesis.  Hopefully someone in the OS world could 'mentor' them, not
> so much on the actual work, but how to work with the community and get
> their improvements incorporated.  Every year there are lots of students
> searching for cool masters projects, and if we had a lively board of
> interesting ideas I think we could attract a lot of interest.  And
> forward thinking professors would start to recommend to their students
> to start there.  We've definitely had a few good masters students
> contribute work to GeoServer over the years.  And I personally know
> several profs who would happily slot their new students in to OS goals,
> if we took the time to write them up.


I'd like to second this as I have students and while I can usually find
geotools/geoserver stuff for them to do it would be nice to see other
projects, especially for the students who don't speak java.

Ian

--

Ian Turton
http://www.geotools.org
http://pennspace.blogspot.com/
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