Gates and Others Offer $150k For Open Source School Software

WebMink writes "With an impending deadline for America's schools to satisfy new federal reporting requirements on academic achievement, a new alliance of state educators is creating a system of open source software to help schools gather and submit the data that the rules require. To get the whole thing started, the Gates Foundation and Carnegie are funding two $75,000 awards for the open source developers who create the in-school software. The winners could also become the linchpins of a new industry in academic software."

Comments

Re:What software ??

[politkal]

http://skolelinux.org/ skole linux ?

Re:What software ??

[houghi]

There are several Linux distributions directed at education/schools. Most (All?) based on existing distributions with different packages installed.

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Education is just one of them. Using SUSE studio makes it easy to make your own.

Before SUSE Studio, there was Lincat for Catalunia. http://linkat.xtec.cat/portal/index.php. They have moved to openSUSE edu.

Re:What software ??

[Penguinisto]

SEUL?

I remember they had a huge push to put Linux in schools back in 2000 or so. They also run/host Schoolforge.

Educators know that Gates is bad for education

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are showing your ignorance quite strongly here Mr. 2736913. You clearly don't know the history at all, and the corruption is far too detailed and pervasive to cover in a Slashdot post. It is especially showing that you cannot even get the details of the one morsel of the behavior of which you have heard. The one thing you can be 100% certain of is that if Gates is involved, there is something in it for him. Here is one of the ways the effort should not be seen as philanthropic, from this blog ...

"However, just having the source code and standards for the technology won’t get you too far. The real work (and the real money) is in the process of making sure the system can connect to all the state’s various data sources, and is customized to meet the particular requirements of each state, a process known as integration. This part will not be done for free. On top of that, the deployment of the SLC system will generate consulting fees, training, ongoing customization, add-on features, and other needs known as professional services. Wireless Generation’s $8 million data-coaching contract with Delaware is just a small example."

Wouldn't a guy with a net worth of 66 Billion dollars offer more than $150,000 to help this effort if he was serious about philanthropy? Wouldn't he also guarantee that the cost of deployment of the system would be covered, rather than picked up by the taxpayers.

This is all standard Gates tactics, as old as the hills. The reason why he has 66 billion is because he has made a history of drug dealer tactics involving tricking people into thinking they are getting something great for free and then keeping them hooked on his garbage. And make no mistake about it, what was produced under his watch was quite intentionally, garbage.