Roger Whittaker
I've just subscribed various people to the list - please post a message to say hello and introduce yourselves.
Hi, If you were at the meeting, I was wearing a Debian t-shirt (with a red swirl logo on it) --- there's a photo at the top of this article, where I'm wearing similar stuff (except for the penguin ;-) http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/articles/issue6/lu6-Editorial-A_patently_bad_idea... I'm a Debian GNU/Linux developer, and run the UK Debian mirror, and am responsible for producing the Debian official CD images: http://www.uk.debian.org/ http://cdimage.debian.org/ I have only a peripheral interest in educational matters, in that I've been frustrated in the past in my efforts to provide free computers (which were otherwise destined for a skip), but I can certainly contribute on a technical side, and having been involved in Debian (which is completely voluntary, like OSIE is expected to be) since 1996 I may be able to make some suggestions about how to ``organise'' such a thing. For those of you who've not come across Debian before, we're a world-wide voluntary organisation (read, chaotic jumble of mailing lists) that puts together a Linux distribution (and soon a HURD distribution) and gives it away. Debian doesn't pay people to do this, and doesn't sell what it produces, and in most legal senses doesn't really exist (i.e. the machines in the mirror network mostly belong to people like me, rather than to Debian, and the bandwidth is donated rather than paid for). This probably gives a pretty good feel for what Debian is all about: http://www.uk.debian.org/social_contract which you will notice leads into the The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), which is where the Open Source Definition came from. My internet machine, that hosts the Debian UK mirror, may be of use to OSIE, since it has about 30GB of spare disk, and a 20Mbit/s connection at a well connected ISP. This machine could act as either a primary host or mirror site for the web site, and could do DNS secondarying etc. as well. Something I'd be interested in working on (although perhaps a SuSE list is not the right place to spend too much time discussing this ;-) would be producing Debian CD images, tuned to the needs of educational users. Debian has accumulated some funds in the UK, and have been looking for a worthwhile cause to spend them on (we never really need to pay for anything that actually makes Debian work, so don't have much use for money), so we could probably afford to have a few thousand CDs pressed, and send them out to schools that are interested. Cheers, Phil. -- Say no to software patents! http://petition.eurolinux.org/ Philip Hands. +44 (0)20 7744 6244 philip.hands@uk.alcove.com Alcove UK --- Liberating Software --- http://www.alcove.com/ http://www.hands.com/ phil@hands.com http://www.uk.debian.org/