Inside Higher Ed recently reported that language important language regarding open source has been removed from the report from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. At the last minute, after the language in the report had already been approved by members of the Commission, the Microsoft representative pitched a fit and had all mention of open source removed from open source reduced to a mention in a key paragraph in the draft.
While changing the language certainly serves the goals of Microsoft and Blackboard/WebCT in maintaining or solidifying their monopoly in education, removal of that language was not in the best interest of education. Open source should be an integral part of that report, the reasons for which are laid out in the Proposed NCTE/ CCCC Resolution on the Adoption and Use of Open-Source Software (2006). I would strongly encourage all educators to read this proposal and understand why open source is very important to education .
This proposal grew out of a Computers and Writing 2005 Conference Town Hall event in which researchers and teachers from composition studies discussed the benefits of open source software use in education. As a result of that meeting, an ad hoc committee decided to codify the reasons for open source adoption and prepare a resolution for submission to NCTE and CCCC. Over the following year, members of this committee corresponded by email and shared resources and ideas on a wiki. The current version was drafted in May of 2006. So far, this resolution has been approved by 7Cs, has been submitted to the WPA Executive Council for their approval, and will be submitted to NCTE for consideration later this year. Members of the committee who prepared the document include:
- Marcy Bauman
- Robert Cummings
- Bradley Dilger
- Keith Dorwick
- Jonathan Goodwin
- Gail Hawisher
- Judi Kirkpatrick
- Charlie Lowe
- Clancy Ratliff
- Brendan Riley
- Cindy Selfe
- Dickie Selfe
Update: I updated this post per Nick's insightful commentary on my over enthusiastic inaccuracies in the original post concerning the Commission.
Correction: Language amended, not removed
The report did not remove language on open source software. They amended the language to mainly drop the names of specific products and projects from the language:
Here's the original paragraph as quoted in the Inside Higher Ed story ( http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/01/commission) mentioned by Charlie:
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Such a portal could stimulate innovation, and serve as the leading resource for teaching and learning. New initiatives such as OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative, the Sakai Project, and the Google Book project hold out the potential of providing universal access both to general knowledge and to higher education.
Here's the new version of that paragraph, redrafted in response to a complaint from a commission member, Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector division, about the use of open source software (she did not object to open source content, by the way, only software):
The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of information-technology-based collaborative tools and capabilities at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling access, interaction, and sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Both commercial development and new collaborative paradigms such as open source, open content, and open learning will be important in building the next generation learning environments for the knowledge economy.
Yes, Elliott did try to remove all mention of open source software from the report, but that didn't quite happen.
thanks!
My overenthusiasm got the best of me. I've updated the original post :-)
However, it is significant that the paragraph no longer primarily promotes open source and open content, but merely mentions in the context of larger initiatives to collaborate on software development. It's a big step backwards.
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
eh, ahem
And I posted both of those paragraphs in the original blog on the topic, thank you. :-)
Of course, when I can get some time, I'll be blogging on the NCTE stuff as well.
bradley || bleckblog.org
I know
I know. And I read it then. I'm an idiot. My anti-Microsoft behaviour got in the way. lol
BTW: Brad, I'll have to tell you the story sometime about how Ian got in trouble at school this fall over the phrase "I'm an idiot" because of me :-)
-----
Charlie | cyberdash
kid stories
At least it wasn't "I'm a f$%&*@#! idiot." Tobias let a few things of that sort slip while in day-care, though not for a few years thankfully. I think my language has cleaned up a bit, thanks to him and Rachel.
bradley || bleckblog.org