Coordinate different education spins/efforts?

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Hi all!

Disclaimer (1): I'm not really interested in any education 
spins/efforts; in fact I got tracked into this accidentally and now need 
to make the best out of it...


The short version of this mail:

    Fedora afaics has multiple efforts in the education area. People
afaics wanted to work together, but it for some reasons didn't work out
(nobody afaics is a bad guy/group here and responsible for it; it afaics 
just happened that way without purpose, thus there is no need to 
blame/flame anyone). Thus I'm wondering if the Board, FESCo or the 
members on this list could mediate between the different groups and 
encourage them to work together instead of doing a lot of work twice.


The longer version:

    We afaics we have two different efforts in the education area:

* There is Warren, who afaics works a lot on the K12Linux stuff in the
past few months; Quoting http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/K12Linux : 
"K12Linux is Fedora's spin for educational technology." Mailing list:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12linux-devel-list (freshly
created a few weeks ago afaics)

* There is the Fedora Education SIG; Quoting
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Education : "The project aims to
optimize Fedora for use at universities and schools as well as for
education usage by schoolers or students. [...]" The SIG has at least 
five members (according to the wiki) which was formed by Sebastian 
Dziallas ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SebastianDziallas ), who 
created a rough Education Spin (
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SebastianDziallas/Education ) which he
wants to get approved. Mailing list:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-education-list (old list
that was re-used by the SIG)

---
Disclaimer (2): I know Sebastian privately; he made a two or three weeks
internship in the company I work for (unpaid internship; he had to do it 
for school). He used Fedora before, but afaics I made him interested in 
participating in Fedora (/me is a bad guy...). I let him find his way 
into the project mostly on it's own, but helped him a bit/mentored when 
he got into a dead end (which happened more than once and showed me yet 
again that it's IMHO way to hard to become a Fedora contributer; but 
that's a different topic)

Sebastian (who is traveling right now) recently seemed a bit frustrated
how things evolved and that made me write this mail.

So back to the topic:
---

Both K12Linux and the Edu-Sig have slightly different target
audiences/goals afaics, but they are not that different and I suppose
most users will not understand the difference between "K12Linux is
Fedora's spin for educational technology." and "The project aims to
optimize Fedora for use at universities and schools as well as for
education usage by schoolers or students.". Thus I'm wondering if it
really makes sense to let those two groups work in parallel, as that
afaics leads to quite a bit of duplicated work and likely confusion
among the users. That why I think someone needs to mediate and that's
why I write this mail to FAB.

Afaics (which really is necessary here, as I'm neither involved in
either of the two groups) the best for Fedora would be something like this:

   * a CD spin with a Desktop Environment, the most common/important Edu
apps and the different clients to connect to Servers used in education
areas (K12Linux, RDP/Windows, VNC, X-Client, ...)

   * a DVD spin with a Desktop Environment, even more Edu apps, the
different clients to connect to Servers (K12Linux, RDP/Windows, VNC,
X-Client, ...) as well as a possibility to setup a K12Linux-Server with
a few easy steps

Warren, Sebastian, others that are interested in the EDU-sig  (Rex,
Axel?) or K12Linux: does that sound like a plan? Or is there a better
way for Edu-Spins in Fedora (I suppose there is, thus the above proposal
is more meant as a starting point for further discussion). Or does it
really make sense to let the EDU-Sig and K12Linux work on different
things for the education area?

CU
knurd