Some cool open source links…

Mozilla Bugzilla

POSSE

Fedora

Planet Mozilla

Planet Fedora

Mozilla Cross Reference

Laurie Williams (not open source, but good work on teaching programming)

Proposed Open Source Textbook

An article on us in the Raleigh NNO

Addin’ to the POSSE…

That my students and my department need to participate in the open source community is clear; how we will pull it off is a horse of another shade.  The problem we have as academics is how to make new stuff part of our official program.  Our students, of course, have an overall goal of getting a piece of paper at the end of the process, and anything that does not in some way contribute to that goal will be sternly questioned by both the students and the institution.  In addition, when I encounter students like Ian Weller, the high school student with big league open source skills, it forces me to question the efficacy of our entire process.  At the end of their entire program, with a CIS degree in hand, my students are completely oblivious to a major technology entity like the open source community. HUH?

The only way I can see this being effective for us is to have a semester long class in open source development.  Actually that might be a great class to have after the students take their two mandatory programming classes and before their senior project.  Of course it will take time to develop a course in this, but during the interim I can put this community on our students’ radar screen.  Of this I am certain:  if we can plug the NCCU students into this community, as a matter of course their expertise will grow exponentially.  I can’t remember one week where I learned as much as I did about something that I knew very little about.  It has been quite an experience…

A Splendid Feast

Last night Greg D. treated us (on Red Hat’s gracious nickel) to a fine table at The Pit, an exquisite BBQ joint in Raleigh.  I swear it looked like all of Red Hat was there.   I had an amen corner with three Red Hat engineers, and we talked tech till the wee hours (well, actually until about 8 when I had to dash).  I am really looking forward to working with the crimson chapeau folks in days to come.  They are quite a bunch…