Open Source TV

Lish writes "Everyone's favorite tech prognosticator, Robert X Cringely, is going to do a TV show called 'NerdsTV.' It will be available on the web and playable on pretty much any system. The cool part is, they will provide three video versions: one geared at techies, one for suits, and one with all the raw footage so you can edit your own version to your heart's content. There will also be audio-only versions in Ogg and Mp3. All of this is freely redistributable."

Comments

Educational?

[capt.Hij]

It [Nerds 1] is aimed at the education market, not homes,...

I enjoyed the show a great deal and I'm willing to ignore the shameless promotion filler at the top of Cringley's article, but... is this something that has much educational value for our schools? There hasn't been enough time past to make it valuable for a history class and the technological info in the series is surely way to low to be of any value.

Moreover, I doubt that the pictures of geeks making millions will be enough to stop the school bullies from beating the snot our of nerds. In fact it may make it worse!

Is GPL best license for this purpose

[jukal]

"Viewers will be free to share and redistribute the shows under the General Public License, which is something no other TV network in the world is doing. So there! "

Or would some else do better, such as the GNU Free Documentation License FDL be better? Or something completely different and maybe new? I just have the feeling that GPL is tailored for software in a way that makes it incomplete or even invalid for licensing a TV show.

Does someone have more insightful input than my "feelings" ;)

here are the original articles

[sc00p18]

Here are the original articles which have some more information about the new show.

1. Is the World Ready for a Cringely Open Source TV Show?

2. Downloadable Video Cringely is on His Way

Something missing.

[DarkHelmet]

From his article:

Luckily this is the U.S. version, which lacks my big nude scene from the UK version. I am not making this up.

Cringely, I'll be buying the "Special Edition" of your DVD when it comes out in another year.

Do NOT disappoint me.

Time for a Cringely topic icon?

[ekrout]

I've said this before, but I'll say it again [a little extra karma never hurt anyone] -- we need a Cringely topic icon.

Why, you ask?

Basically, some of the best discussions come from the Slashdot community after we collectively read a piece from Cringely. His ideas are often fairly original and interesting, which makes for a nice "vacation" from the usual OS Wars, Text Editor Wars, and Software Licensing Wars.

I'd even be happy to make the icon for the Cringely topic.

So, editors, care to give a little feedback on this? There are several other topic areas that we could certainly do without, but I feel that a Cringely area of the site would be well worth it.

Thanks for listening.