Re: open-source labs and homework

[Timothy Wilson <wilson@VISI.COM>]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Richard Hake wrote:

> This same idea was discussed at the recent AAPT meeting in San Diego
> by Richard Furnstahl & Seth Rosenberg(1) and by Michael Wittmann.(2)
> Furnstahl and Rosenberg propose a curriculum development and reform
> model based on the "bazaar approach" to computer software development
> described in ref. 3.  In the case of physics education, individual
> teachers or departments would be the counterparts of the community of
> code warriors (hackers) who have contributed so effectively to the
> development of open-source software such as Linux.

I'm very interested in open source software and open content licensing. In
addition to the Open Content and Open Publications licenses there is also
the GNU Free Documentation License which bears some similarity to the GNU
General Public License for software. You can read more about the GFDL at
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

There are some significant differences between the different licenses. It
would be worth the effort to look them over before commiting to one or the
other. Note that the GNU organization doesn't believe the Open Content
license qualifies as a free documentation license. The Open Publication
license does...mostly. They have a brief summary at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#DocumentationLicenses

-Tim

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