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Open source: dangerous to computing education?

Posted by HoTMetaL on · 2 comments
opensource.com; By Greg DeKoenigsberg 		Mail this story
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Mark Guzdial, respected professor and Vice Chair of the ACM Education Board, has expressed some concerns about the impact that open source is having on computing education. Are these concerns legitimate?

He starts from an awfully dramatic position: "At a time when we are trying to broaden participation in computing, open source development is even more closed and less diverse than commercial software development."

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Comments (2)

Almindor ·
This is a ridiculous article. I'm from Europe and as such it's even more shocking for me to see this kind of political correctness Nazi behaviour (yes, I realise the irony of that statement). So basically this person states that it's difficult to change an OSS project's heading and that we're not doing enough to form a multi-culti whatever utopian thing he things should be here.

Now first of all, if you want to change an OSS project and the original authors disagree, you do a fork and if it's better you win (ideally.. in practice it takes a lot of effort from you but it's possible).

Second, if there's 99% of white males doing the OSS projects it's nobody's business to dictate that "they should take more minorities". If the minorities do not produce quality code and effort they're not welcome. If the majority wouldn't they wouldn't be welcome either, nobody cares about their race or sex or anything else.
gus3 ·
The author, and the ACM yahoo that he quotes, make a point of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, which has its defenders in OSS. I like this particularly heart-felt defense of small contributions:

Quoting: Recently one thread is published in 17lamp.net, it congratulated one Chinese student of Xi An post and telecom university succeed to submit one patch to the late kernel. This patch corrected one bug of return value in the late kernel.

The thread became the hot in some forums in China. Many replies encourage this student to keep it on and expect him to win more achievement.

But there is a few of replies complain it’s no worth celebration, They complained this student only patch one very small bug.

I think everyone who try patching any bug for the kernel is worth celebration. The kernel is one community-driven project. Because more and more fans take part in the kernel project, and contribute lots of patches to the kernel. This make the kernel more and more successful than some commercial productions.

We shall encourage any person, especially for the student, to patch the kernel, even if this patch is only to correct the spelling mistake.

Those kicker should stop complaint and begin to study the kernel and try to contribute the patch.
http://gus3.typepad.com/i_am_therefore_i_think/2008/11/baby-... (original now appears to be off-line)

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