- <title>Skolelinux-intervju: Olav Dahlum</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_intervju__Olav_Dahlum.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>I serien med intervjuer av folk i
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>-miljøet, får vi nå
-høre fra et nyvalgt medlem i foreningen
-<a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/">Fri programvare i
-Skolen</a>.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvem er du, og hva driver du med til daglig?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg heter Olav Dahlum, og er frilans oversetter, tester,
-prosjektleder og bruker av fri og åpen programvare som
-LibreOffice. Jeg er også et av styremedlemmene i FRISK.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvordan kom du i kontakt med Skolelinux-prosjektet?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg kom i kontakt med prosjektet i 2009, da jeg ble ansatt i
-stiftelsen Åpne kontorprogram på norsk for å oversette og teste den
-norske utgaven av OpenOffice.org. Arbeidet har hele tiden vært
-koordinert sammen med Skolelinux, og mange av de samme menneskene er
-involvert, så på den måten ble jeg en del av den utvidede
-familien.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hva er fordelene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Skolelinux handler i likhet med utdanningssektoren om å dele
-kunnskap med andre, og det er dette som er hovedstyrken til
-prosjektet. Selv om Skolelinux hovedsaklig er involvert i utvikling
-av programvare, er det også et sted der man kan utfolde seg uavhengig
-av bakgrunn og ferdigheter.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hva er ulempene med Skolelinux slik du ser det?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Liten utbredelse og manglende støtte fra leverandører som leverer
-pedagogisk programvare til skolebruk. Kunne kanskje hatt flere
-verktøy som letter administrasjonen ytterligere, slik at også mindre
-erfarne databrukere kan utføre lett vedlikehold og rutinejobber.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvilken fri programvare bruker du til daglig?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Jeg er nesten forpliktet til å si at jeg bruker LibreOffice... Jeg
-bruker forøvrig frie og åpne operativsystemer basert på
-operativsystemkjernen Linux, for tiden openSUSE 12,1 med KDE4. Men
-hvis jeg skal dra fram noen flere eksempler så er nok Mozilla Firefox
-og Thunderbird to av de jeg bruker mest. I tillegg er jeg en flittig
-bruker av OpenSSH, Irssi, Midnight Commander, Git, Subversion,
-Translation Toolkit og Super Maryo Chronicles (litt gøy skal man ha,
-og med to håndkontroller liggende er det ikke til å unngå).</p>
-
-<p><strong>Hvilken strategi tror du er den rette å bruke for å få
-skoler til å ta i bruk fri programvare?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Vi må få leverandører av pedagogisk programvare med på laget, men
-også utvikle vår egen tilpasset det norske markedet. Det er også
-mulig å involvere utdanningssektoren direkte i arbeidet, for eksempel
-gjennom studentprosjekter der elevene selv er med å utforme
-programvare direkte eller indirekte gjennom aktive bidrag. Dette gjør
-ikke bare samarbeidet tettere, men fokuset på standarder og friheten
-til å velge sin egen løsning vil kanskje stimulere interessen for
-framtidig deltakelse i bransjen. Vi som driver med fri og åpen
-programvare ønsker oss ikke rene konsumenter, men tenkende og
-selvstendige individer som kan være med å skape sin egen fremtid.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
+mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
+thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
+<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
+Squeeze</a> version.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
+Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
+(Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
+by Angela).</p>
+
+<p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
+and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
+touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
+the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
+becoming an osteopath.</p>
+
+<p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
+have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
+introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
+"IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
+skills with communication skills.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
+"IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
+reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
+people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
+distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
+
+<p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
+commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
+Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
+went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
+and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
+got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
+attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
+the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
+
+<p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
+people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
+protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
+
+<p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
+
+<p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
+bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
+by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
+whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
+IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
+customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
+possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
+standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
+degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
+locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
+point.</p>
+
+<p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
+all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
+for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
+has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
+of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
+tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
+
+<p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
+defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
+Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
+equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
+teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
+spare time.</p>
+
+<p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
+networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
+here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
+teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
+non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
+
+<p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
+class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
+avoidance do exist.</p>
+
+<p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
+social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
+for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
+several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
+they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
+at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
+and probably a gain for all.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
+any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
+the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
+workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
+project communication, honest communication within the group of
+developers, etc.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
+
+<p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
+#311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
+client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
+should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
+about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
+several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
+contribute).</p>
+
+<p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
+find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
+promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
+there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
+these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
+all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
+meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
+there being rather disconnected from the development department of
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
+
+<p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
+serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
+more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
+
+<p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
+development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
+PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
+is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
+
+<p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
+as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
+I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
+the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
+whiteboard.</p>
+
+<p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
+enrol people.</p>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff