Slashdot Mirror
OSDDP: Involving Students With Open Source Docs
cel4145 writes "The Professional Writing Program at Purdue University recently began the Open Source Development and Documentation Project (OSDDP) where students and instructors across multiple sections of business and technical writing are producing documentation for and about open source applications (see the press release or a mirror). The community and project are modeled after the open source development model and based on service learning principles. For example, students are already working on end user documentation and case study analysis for Drupal and market research and analysis for OpenOffice. Completed texts will be published using a Creative Commons license."
From what I know of the open source world, documentation is one area that people make money on the free product.
Although, I suppose it does make sense, given the fact that what is published could most likely be printed, bound, and sold, just the same as any other documentation.
Because Lawrence Lessig is cool Stanford Professor that argued in front of the Supreme Court about copyright extensions, and Richard Stallman is hippy-looking MIT drop-out that argues with geeks about Linux really being GNU/Linux? :)
Related to topic (and more related to my field of study) is the question of journal articles. Most journals are contributed to by academics, and the academics don't get paid to write in the journals. However, the journals are copyrighted to the teeth, and for an academic/researcher/scientist trying to get access to the journals you have to pay.
That seems like quite an outdated method to me, but it hangs on because of the prestige associated with the older journals (MISQ is a big one in Information Systems). I hope to soon see some prestigious journals coming along with something like a creative commons license, or even better (though much less likely for financial reasons), a big journal swapping all their content over to creative commons.
It just seems ludicrous that these publishers, who no longer serve a purpose, get paid as the gatekeepers to knowledge in so many fields when it would otherwise be free. Most of the Editors of the Journals are luminaries that get paid nothing, and the contributors to the field get paid nothing as well. With web access meaning you can hit a huge audience virtually instantly at a low cost, why not free the information?
Iran has endorsed
Its ironic that you mention that. Apache is a tool that needs great documentation (as opposed to sniffing through newsgroups), as opposed to OpenOffice, which is, for the most part, self-explanatory.
"It just seems ludicrous that these publishers, who no longer serve a purpose, get paid as the gatekeepers to knowledge in so many fields when it would otherwise be free."
For all forms of knowledge there are gatekeepers. Even your beloved Internet has a gatekeeper know as an ISP.
"Most of the Editors of the Journals are luminaries that get paid nothing, and the contributors to the field get paid nothing as well. With web access meaning you can hit a huge audience virtually instantly at a low cost, why not free the information?"
Yes, lets hold up as a good example of what we'll get, The Internet. OK so you've just read something on the web. So how do you know it is correct? It's free, that should be good enough for everyone, right?
The course is an elective, and was offered for the first time last year; not many students decided to take it. Those who did, got hooked; some commented that it was the course where they really understood what it meant to program.
The following projects were completed last year:
This year the course will be taught in English and will be offered to students across Europe through the EU's Erasmus student mobility programme. I hope to be able to report on new exciting results through slashdot next year.
I'd have loved to do stuff like that for my grades when I was a student - I hated doing pointless programming like most assignments force a student to do.
Knuth's Computers and Typesetting material should be taught to students who want to learn about documentation. Knuth's writing style is very straightforward and direct. Every student who wants to develop a well documented project should at least scan over one of TeX or METAfont program books to learn how to document code. The two programs also deal with orginization, making the most of a given implementation, and good general natural language composition in general. All students who want to pass on knowledge to others should learn from Knuth's example. Knuth is an excellent teacher. I can make that statement from just reading his books. Anyone who want to write clear and concise papers, programs, books, and anything that is meant to teach others should at least study some of Knuth's works.
...I am amazed that the machine stayed up under a Slashdotting.
So did everyone just go "Documentation? Screw that. No way I'm clicking on that link" or what?
--AC