[education-wg] Fwd: Fwd: [sf-uk-discuss] US edu contacts

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

Gah.  Stupid Google reply-to-no-one-by-default.  Grrrr.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Greg DeKoenigsberg <greg.dekoenigsberg at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: [education-wg] Fwd: [sf-uk-discuss] US edu contacts
To: Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman at gmail.com>


On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Excellent, you're one of the few people I'd trust to do this, Greg.
>
> And if I can offer one suggestion: if you have an opportunity, hammer
> on the fact that non-commercially licensed software is not and has
> never been open source.  A huge chunk of federally funded software
> (i.e., NSF) languishes in the non-commercial non-foss limbo and
> changing that harms *nobody*.

They know it, too.  Have you read the Text of S. 1714: Open College
Textbook Act of 2009?  It's delightfully brief for a bill.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-1714

It's a proposal for competitive open textbook grants.  Right now it's
stalled in committee, and that's one of the things I'm going to be
asking about.  Read section 5, though, in particular:

* * *

(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law,
educational materials such as curricula and textbooks created through
grants distributed by Federal agencies, including the National Science
Foundation, for use in elementary, secondary, or postsecondary courses
shall be licensed under an open license.

(b) Accessibility- The full and complete digital content of each of
the materials created as described in subsection (a) shall be--

(1) posted on an easily accessible and interoperable website, which
site shall be identified to the Secretary by the grant recipient; and

(2) made available free of charge to, and may be downloaded,
redistributed, changed, revised, or otherwise altered by, any member
of the general public.

* * *

This is A BIG DEAL.  The vast majority of bills that go to committee
*die* in committee.

I think that this working group has the opportunity to engage in this
particular fight.  If we were to articulate a single useful goal for
this year, it could be "to organize a community effort to get S. 1714
to the floor and passed."

So my goal in my visit to DoE will be to discuss this and any other
efforts going on that unite "open source" and "education".  My
@redhat.com email address helped me to get the meeting, but the folks
I'll ask for help will be from this working group.

That's the update.  :)  More next week.  Exciting times ahead.

--g

(In the meantime, maybe we could get the ball rolling: what sorts of
things could we do to raise awareness of S. 1714?  We could start by
publicizing a list of all of the Senators in the committee, and start
a letter-writing campaign.  Trouble is, it's the same committee
dealing with healthcare right now, so they're kinda busy at the
moment.  More info @ http://help.senate.gov/)