Welcome to future home of Freedomware Marketing. The Tux Project is going to be shifting gears a bit. This site is set to become a grass-e-roots website where we can all work together to openly collaborate on promoting the use of Freedomware in our local communities. Whether you are a business owner who uses or offers Freedomware solutions, or an individual enthusiast. You will find that this is the place for you to share your promotional ideas and work together collaboratively in order to make them a reality.
GNU-U (GNU Univercity) for GNU/Linux training
The idea is simple. Start an official university in the small town of Pomeroy WA (in south east WA state by Clarkson and Lewiston) that is free for students that work in the school's restaurants and other businesses. Also if we get funding from the GNU/Linux community and sponsors then it would help out a lot. I know people that are retired that use to run colleges. The GNU OX would be the mascot and we could have sports teams. If we started out small other local colleges could teach basic math and other skills that are transferable to our University. We could apply for Grant money and set up a fund for donations and sponsors.
Currently my family owns a lot of land that is 1/4th a City block that would be big enough to teach many different Computer classes. (I'll take a picture and put it up here) Those who went to college there could work part time in my computer business to find their niche and each year we would pick the cream of the crop to work in our business full time. We would also recommend them to other businesses.
Some would just want to fix computers, other program, and still others design hardware from the ground up. Robotics would be a fun class. We could get national or even global attention by simply inventing new and innovative robots that did strange things on their own. We could also work on competitive products like Microsoft's SYNK and Table PC in order to eliminate a monopoly and lower prices on consumer goods.
Why Pomeroy? Why not? Pomeroy is a small town of 1500 that use to be much larger when the dam workers were here. Restoring this town is not the only reason. The next reason is because in this area a lot of people are not aware of GNU/Linux and I think our students should participate in GNU/Linux assemblies and awareness not only here but in other places in the US and other countries. We could train people to be GNU/Linux ambassadors for the FSF.
I think it's a good idea and doable but I expect a lot of criticism. Who's with me?
I'm registering the www.GNU-U.com .org (can't get .edu) right now.»
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>> Who's with me?I am too
>> Who's with me?
I am too far away (prob near the furthest point from you on the continental US).
>> I expect a lot of criticism
Critique #1: Trading lessons for work hours may work out if you have a firm rule and stick with it. Personally, I have little patience for these sorts of trades if they appear open ended in a way where I might feel being taken advantage of. The best thing might be to quantify precisely jobs/wages as well as tuition (to match whatever ratios you have in mind) and go from there. You can charge higher tuition and then give some students grants. You appear to know people that have experience, so I won't say too much more (eg, be aware of legal issues).
Critique #2: I spent some time thinking about the term to use in the title. I favor "Freedomware" over FOSS, open, ... , and over GNU. I understand freedomware to mean roughly free software (based on land0's recent comment, though I originally thought it referred to FOSS which includes nonfree licenses, that is, where we can partially see or touch or use but not really that fully). Freedomware can also be vaguely defined to currently mean "free software" but be adjustable over time (eg, if the 4 freedoms are modified or made 5 or whatever.. maybe some other better or clearer legal laymen model than the "4 freedoms" arises). I debated for a while on being more encompassing. Nonfree software is sometimes very useful and we all deal with nonfree software much as there are some corresspondences that are private (ie, closed). Anyway, for a "Univercity" focus, I like Freedomware. If you want to be a subsidiary or close partner of the FSF and in the process limit your appeal towards the greater FOSS community somewhat, GNU is as good a term as any. If you don't want either of these 2 things (or only one), then I'd probably go with something closer to "Freedomware". Lots of people outside the FSF (who don't associate themselves with the GNU brand) write free software as well as GPL software specifically.
Critique #3: Was "Univercity" a typo or does it have an interesting story behind it or what?
I am very interested in seeing open curricula developed and helping out a bit. Just came across this for example: http://www.blenderanimation.com/ . I think many university professors keep online ready-to-use course material that third parties can use. There is so much online documentation and learning material (from Linux projects, for example). Are there "open" school programs we can tap? Preferably practical material accessible to a wide audience (vs. say http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm MIT Open Courseware, which would attract a more limited audience, BUT which is still something not to be passed by). If the licensing is right, we can contribute back to those documentation/courseware projects as we tap into them. I believe there are a number of university courses where the classes actually build FOSS software and students maintain the work over the years. [Oh, just remembered one more example, MINIX was designed for a teaching environment.]
And separately but related, I am hoping to engage locally with others in some sort of Linux laboratory(-ies) where we might explore almost any FOSS. Specifically, though, I am looking to dissect distros and applications as we engage in something like this http://thetuxproject.com/node/306 . That link is tough to read. Try skipping down to where phase 0, 1, 2, and 3 are discussed to get a feel for what I have in mind [Yeah, the intro would put me to sleep if I didn't actually know what it was about ahead of time. It's really a very rough draft. I figured posting something was better than posting nothing since I think the project does have a lot of potential. I'll try to present code and/or (various) website(s) later on as that would make things clearer.. as well as maybe rework the posting some and or move it to a wiki.] The laboratories can be hosted from schools for example (I live in big city (Miami, FL area to be specific) with tons of high schools and numerous small colleges beyond the two big ones UM and FIU).