NC State Computer Science Embraces FOSS Into Its Curriculum (Red Hat News) [LWN.net]

A college course in open source software is the subject of an article at Red Hat News. A graduate level course at North Carolina State focused on actually working with the community on an open source project. "You cant learn FOSS exclusively in books collaboration with the community is a critical element to success. While lectures covered the basic concepts of FOSS, the true innovation and learning occurred through student work with FOSS projects. A measure of success for this class and other collegiate-level open source classes is to have students continue working on FOSS projects beyond their required work in the classroom."

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NC State Computer Science Embraces FOSS Into Its Curriculum (Red Hat News)

Posted Sep 9, 2008 1:07 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice. For as much grief as I've given Red Hat and Fedora lately, I still must say I'm impressed and pleased that NC State will at least recognize the merits of an academic study in FLOSS.

Certainly, the fact that Red Hat's corporate headquarters is in the North Carolina state capital might have something to do with this (I haven't yet read the article). Good job, Red Hat!

NC State Computer Science Embraces FOSS Into Its Curriculum (Red Hat News)

Posted Sep 9, 2008 3:56 UTC (Tue) by lovelace (guest, #278) [Link]

Not only is Red Hat's HQ in the NC state capital, it's actually on the NC State Centennial Campus.

NC State Computer Science Embraces FOSS Into Its Curriculum (Red Hat News)

Posted Sep 9, 2008 1:46 UTC (Tue) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] (1 responses)

It's kind of amusing (and sad in a way) that a university "admitting" free software into their curriculum is big news, considering the rich heritage of free software development by universities and their students. One would think that universities would have been using free software all along, since their alleged goal is to educate students, in this case about the inner workings of computer science. The synergy should be hard to miss. But I fear many institutions' CS departments have become wholly owned subsidiaries of proprietary software companies' developer tools marketing departments. (The fact that one such company has freed its main development platform is a cause for hope, but few others will take such a step, I fear...)

NC State Computer Science Embraces FOSS Into Its Curriculum (Red Hat News)

Posted Sep 9, 2008 8:05 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

This is talking about a course that doesn't just happen to use FOSS tools while teaching algorithms or compilers or something, but whose topic is itself FOSS development. I am quite skeptical about there being any universities that are teaching graduate CS courses on how to use MSVC or whatever, but feel free to prove me wrong...

US education system jargon

Posted Sep 9, 2008 12:28 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (2 responses)

It would be helpful for overseas readers if terms like "college" were made a bit more specific when referred to in articles. Are we talking about 17 year old secondary school students, 19yo students studying towards an undergraduate degree, or 23yo students conducting research for a post-graduate degree? Or is it a residence for students of all ages?

US education system jargon

Posted Sep 9, 2008 13:34 UTC (Tue) by gbouro (guest, #30593) [Link]

Although historically different, a "college" and a "university" are very similar these days; they are institutions of higher education and come after secondary education (high school).

Some offer Asociate's degrees (2 years) and most offer Bachelor's degrees (4 years). In addition, both colleges and universities may offer graduate degrees such as Master's and PhDs.

US education system jargon

Posted Sep 9, 2008 14:46 UTC (Tue) by pzb (guest, #656) [Link]

In the US, secondary schools are usually called high schools and students attend until grade 12. They are usually about 18 years old when graduating from high school.

After High School, one moves on to college. Although confusing, one may attend college at an institution with the word "college" or "univerity" in the same. For example, one might ask "What college do you attend?" and a reasonable response would be "I go to North Carolina State University." A Bachelors degree generally takes four years to complete and is consider a full college degree.

In the article, it refers to "graduate-level" courses, which usually means courses for a Masters or Doctorate degree.